Best New Tracks

Best New Albums

Swim

Caribou
Swim

[Merge; 2010]

8.4
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

After drawing from IDM, krautrock, and sunshine pop, Dan Snaith's Caribou project sets its sights on dark, intricate dance music. Swim is darker both in tone and spirit than its predecessor, 2007's day-glo Andorra, swapping expansive drum-circle arrangements and ebullience for chilly rhythms and a bummed-out disposition. Easy entrance points here are scarcer than on any of Snaith's previous full-lengths-- as with 2005's kraut-centric The Milk of Human Kindness, repeat listens are key. But despite his chameleonic tendencies, Snaith retains his singular identity as an artist-- and Swim is a reminder that even at his most challenging, the man's compositional capabilities can dazzle.

The Wild Hunt

The Tallest Man on Earth
The Wild Hunt

[Dead Oceans; 2010]

8.5
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

Swedish troubadour Kristian Matsson returns as a more confident vocalist and a more nuanced and effective songwriter. As with previous albums, The Wild Hunt features mainly voice and guitar, and in this intimate, austere setting-- where the banjo on the title track almost sounds like an indulgence-- Matsson coaxes a wide range of colors from that limited palette. His lyrics are rough and often ragged, more concerned with evoking aching emotions than with making explicit sense. But that coded aspect only makes him sound more urgent, as if he's trying to convince you of something he couldn't possibly put into words.

Big Echo

The Morning Benders
Big Echo

[Rough Trade; 2010]

8.2
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

This San Francisco baroque-pop group's second album is a homecoming of sorts, as it finds the Morning Benders embracing a more coastal, kaleidoscopic California sound. It also finds them embracing the cavernous experiments of Grizzly Bear, whose Chris Taylor shares a co-production credit. His studio presence is all over Big Echo. From warped music-hall strings to hymn-like, soft-focus vocals, exquisite accents help frame the Morning Benders' highly successful stylistic transition-- one any band would envy and many listeners will love.

Fang Island

Fang Island
Fang Island

[Sargent House; 2010]

8.3
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

Fang Island describe their aesthetic as "everyone high-fiving everyone," and on their wildly infectious second album, the Brooklyn rockers take manic musicianship and shoutalong choruses to another level-- even with only a couple of verses and choruses. Fang Island is fractured like any post-punk record while also speaking the language of classic rock, yet often feels like an intricate collage pieced together from elements that make songs memorable. It's simply honest, life-affirming and infectious, and it's that rare concentration of directness and simplicity that makes Fang Island so uniquely and wonderfully inclusive.

The Monitor

Titus Andronicus
The Monitor

[XL; 2010]

8.7
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

Modern indie rock generally treats emotion as something that should be guarded or disguised. The Monitor does not subscribe to this viewpoint. Loosely based on the U.S. Civil War, it may be one of the most absurd album concepts ever, invoking the battle that caused Abraham Lincoln to claim, "I am now the most miserable man living," to illustrate the sound and fury of suburban Jersey life in a shattered economy. Echoing the fatalistic fuck-all of early Replacements, the cathartic singalong gutter-punk of vintage Pogues, and the brutalist thrashing of east-coast hardcore, The Monitor is a 65-minute endorsement of angst and opposition as the best way to present combustible sorrow: Light it with footlights, throw a giant shadow against the back wall, and rock the fuck out of it.

Plastic Beach

Gorillaz
Plastic Beach

[Virgin; 2010]

8.5
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

Forget the cartoon characters. Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett's animated misfits have always been mainly interesting as a concept, and on much of the third Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, it feels like Albarn and co. are ditching the idea of writing pop songs a cartoon band might front anyway. The one-time Blur frontman has transcended some of the post-modern artifice of this project, and created the group's most affecting and uniquely inviting album. Joke's over, Gorillaz are real.

Sisterworld

Liars
Sisterworld

[Mute; 2010]

8.1
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

For a band known for switching gears from track to track and album to album, Sisterworld is the most thoroughly Liars-sounding record so far. It has the rhythmic insistence of Drum's Not Dead, the sleepwalking chants of They Were Wrong, So We Drowned, and the straightforward songwriting of Liars, often sounding like a streamlined update on the latter. The narrowed range brings increased depth, and it's intriguing to hear Liars focus on detail and texture rather than stylistic schizophrenia. It turns out refinement suits them as nicely as reinvention.

A Sufi and a Killer

Gonjasufi
A Sufi and a Killer

[Warp; 2010]

8.4
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

Working with producers including Flying Lotus and Gaslamp Killer, vocalist Gonjasufi has created a fascinating slab of hallucinogenic head-nod music. Unlike the digital bleeps and squelches of SoCal contemporaries FlyLo and Nosaj Thing, however, Gaslamp Killer and Gonjasufi draw from their hip-hop background to create an LP that could as easily fit on the Stones Throw roster as well as it does IDM-centric Warp. The beats knock, but for every moment of b-boy-friendly atmosphere, there's another moment-- or a simultaneous one-- that makes like 21st century acid rock.

Have One on Me

Joanna Newsom
Have One on Me

[Drag City; 2010]

9.2
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

The full-length follow-up to Ys is no less ambitious, but this 3xLP set also has some of the most inviting and accessible songs of Newsom's career. While songs here evoke moments of Ys and Milk-Eyed and Newsom's harp is still the dominant musical focus, it's striking how much Have One on Me feels like its own thing. Not a progression, exactly, more of a deepening. The highlights are spread out evenly, and Newsom couldn't have sequenced the record any better. The best songs here feel more like conversations rather than artworks to be hung on the wall and admired from several paces away. Newsom seems to sing from somewhere deep inside of them, and her earthy presence has a way of drawing you in, bringing you closer to her music than you've been before.

Black Noise

Pantha du Prince
Black Noise

[Rough Trade; 2010]

8.3
Find it at: Insound | eMusic | Lala
Share

The German producer Hendrik Weber's follow-up to This Bliss is big and dense with the kind of detail that rewards close attention. Weber is unlike most minimal techno producers in that he doesn't look to locate one groove and ride it for the course of a track. His songs open up, unfurl, and regularly change course. With Black Noise he develops this to incorporate a wide range of sounds-- field recordings, atonal noise, and stray percussion all populate the album. Each track is its own micro sound world with enough rich detail to draw you back for deeper investigation.

> View More Best New Albums

Best New Reissues

> View More Best New Reissues


Recently