St. Vincent - Strange Mercy

1. Chloe In The Afternoon
2. Cruel
3. Cheerleader
4. Surgeon
5. Northern Lights
6. Strange Mercy
7. Neutered Fruit
8. Champagne Year
9. Dilettante
10. Hysterical Strength
11. Year Of The Tiger

Annie Clark strikes a downright divine balance between scornful rock squall and serenely sweet vocalizing. Her third album is her most mercurial yet, a dense clash of post-punk fuzz and baroque-pop rumination, with esoteric 
new elements, from atonal electro-jazz to synth scratches to cheeky talkbox. While she was charmingly fey on 2007 debut Marry Me and caustic on 2009 follow-up Actor, she's introspective and fanciful here, crafting a single mother's lullaby on the title track, and repenting for her insecure past on "Cheerleader." Yet she's no passive pom-pom girl: Clark's complex femininity, both self-possessed and keenly evolving, is what makes her music so powerful and fascinating...www.spin.com

Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo - Almanac

1. Billowing Sea
2. Reckless
3. Ropes
4. Little Deaths
5. Dancers
6. Pause
7. Openings
8. Calendar
9. Light
10. Witch of Pittenweem
11. Bones

What a peculiar place folk finds itself in at the start of 2011. A pleasant place, but nevertheless far from anticipated. With coverage of the recent Radio 2 Folk Awards more prominent than ever, winners like Chris Wood and Bellowhead beamed into the living rooms of new audiences, and folk-influenced artists Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons succeeding at the Brits – the latter outfit were shortlisted for a Grammy, too – it’s clear the genre is in rude health. It is poised, perhaps, for the first time in decades, to properly impress upon the mainstream.

So, what next? More artists in the Mumford mould, taking tropes from traditional songs but filtering influences through pop accessibility? Or great live bands like Bellowhead following (Roots Award-winners) the Levellers into the charts? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere between these two potential points, with artists like Emily Barker. Clearly schooled in the style of Britain’s folk convention and rooted in a time before tweed-clad boys went multi-platinum, acoustic guitars leading the way in a mix making space for accordion, brass and banjo, the Australian singer’s warm tones are easily the equal of any crossed-over artist. Working with the trio of Gill Sandell, Anna Jenkins and Jo Silverston – The Red Clay Halo – Barker adopts a point-man position for some wonderful four-part harmonies which envelop the listener, each vowel draped in the finest velvet.

Barker has already begun to make the right inroads – lead single Little Deaths, a delightfully woozy composition with an airiness that belies its portentous lyrical content ("It’s the little deaths of ideas / That dash me against the rocks"), has enjoyed support beyond folk circles, and her pre-Red Clay Halo releases were recommended by John Peel. Nostalgia, the opening track on Barker’s 2008 LP Despite the Snow, was used as the theme tune to BBC 1’s Wallander, and subsequently won a Bafta. With such fine groundwork laid, Almanac’s 11 tracks of pirouetting melodies, entrancing lyrics and overarching tone of endearing honesty will, surely, guide the singer to a greater level of recognition still. Everything’s here to make it so, certainly.

From the bucolic build that opens Billowing Sea, via the mournful strings of Dancers – which, again, treads a lyrical path to bodies of water – to the sumptuous climax of Bones, a song capping the album’s greatly graphical wordplay with talk of "a wound of a thousand cuts", this is a dream of a record. So perfectly formed is it that, chances are, the listener will need to go around again immediately, to make sure they weren’t imagining anything. A new Marling, then? No, Barker offers something else – vocals that soar and arrangements that shine, but all the time anchored by a strong, sincere respect for the heritage behind an inevitable rise...www.bbc.co.uk

The Decemberists - The King Is Dead

1. Don’t Carry It All
2. Calamity Song
3. Rise to Me
4. Rox in the Box
5. January Hymn
6. Down By the Water
7. All Arise!
8. June Hymn
9. This Is Why We Fight
10. Dear Avery

Like any band with a clear, identifiable concept-- in this case, a penchant for verbose, high-concept screeds-- the Decemberists are beloved and chastised for all the same reasons: The quirks that make them such a target for snickering, disaffected aesthetes (namely, stuffing their songs with arcane historical allusions and library language) are also what make them a boon for drama kids in three-button vests.

Whether the Decemberists are actually any nerdier than, say, Animal Collective isn't worth arguing-- the ambition is the thing, and the Decemberists reached a gumption apex on 2009's The Hazards of Love, a proggy rock opera based loosely on an EP by the British folk singer Anne Briggs. The record follows the story of a woman who falls in love with a shape-shifting creature she meets in the woods; there's forest-sex, spells, an overbearing queen, and plenty of thick, quasi-metal guitar. As an antidote of sorts, the band comes back with The King Is Dead, a breezy country-folk record with no discernable narrative. The concept here-- wait for it-- is that there is no concept.

Recorded in a converted barn on Oregon's Pendarvis Farm, The King Is Dead eschews the high, mystical wailing of British folk for its North American counterpart. Rustic and roomy, the record nods to Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, early Wilco, the Band, Neil Young, and especially R.E.M. In places, it almost feels like a disrobing: "Let the yoke fall from our shoulders," frontman Colin Meloy bellows on opener "Don't Carry It All", his voice loose and easy, freer than he's sounded in an awfully long time.

Meloy is an established fan of certain strains of Americana music, and he's enlisted a few inimitable guests: R.E.M.'s Peter Buck plays on three tracks, Gillian Welch sings on seven, and Welch's songwriting partner, the guitarist Dave Rawlings, appears every so often as a backing vocalist. There are moments when the record's twang can feel a little overcooked (the Decemberists have never been great at spontaneity, exactly), but there's an interesting tension between the inherent unpretentiousness of country music-- it's rural, it's populist, it's based in universal emotions-- and the Decemberists' literary cartwheeling. So while there's still plenty of fussy wordplay ("Hetty Green/ Queen of supply-side bonhomie bone-drab," Meloy bleats in "Calamity Song") and at least one Infinite Jest joke, there are also loads of simple, rousing choruses. In the past, Meloy's ability to write a sweet, memorable melody has occasionally gotten lost, but on King, his songwriting shines.

A few tracks feel like homage ("Down By the Water" is an easy analogue of "The One I Love", while "All Arise!" seems to repurpose bits of "Honky Tonk Women"), but mostly they're solid showcases for the band's best features: On the exquisitely pastoral (and guest-free) "January Hymn", Meloy sings about time and snow ("April all an ocean away/ Is this the better way to spend the day?") while Chris Funk adds the tiniest bit of octave guitar to Meloy's acoustic strums.

For all its rural pedigrees, The King Is Dead is still a clean and meticulously crafted album; the production is smooth and the performances are unnervingly error-free. Consequently, it's missing a little vulnerability-- the best Americana records tend to feel a little lawless, but the Decemberists just can't quite relinquish control...www.pitchfork.com

Pattern Is Movement - All Together

1. Bird
2. Peach Trees
3. Trolley Friend
4. Right Away
5. Sea Captain
6. Sound Of Your Voice
7. Jenny Ono
8. Sylvia
9. Brown And Hard Curtains
10. Elephant

Pattern Is Movement's latest album is one of those things that's starting (sadly) to be a relative rarity -- a winsome avant-pop album with rock roots that actually is a treat instead of an overfrosted wedding cake. The fact that the opening "Bird" starts off sounding like a sample from some dreamscape '60s kids show but is in fact a full original is a wonderful treat; one gets the
sense that the two-man band actually wants to keep people guessing from the start. Throughout All Together that feeling of a soundtrack to an unsettled but still welcoming Technicolor world continues, part Joe Meek concept album and part funhouse ride. It's probably no surprise that Andrew Thiboldeaux's main credit is "beauty" rather than "vocals," as there's a real sense of that quality throughout -- not in a twee way as often understood, but almost in that breathlessly rich sense Mercury Rev last conjured up on See You on the Other Side. (Though in amusing contrast, bandmate Chris Ward is credited as "beast."Perhaps unsurprisingly some of the least involving moments occur when his work is toned down or kept well in the background.) The layering swell of keyboards and tones on "Peach Trees" is one prime moment, while the kettle drums and starburst twinkles on "Sound of Your Voice," not to mention the horn fanfares (mock or not), all add to the joy.

Rasputina - Melora a la Basilica

1. Clowns

 2. American Girl 

3. Wicked Dickie 

4. I Want To Marry A Lighthouse Keeper 

5. Rose K. 

6. Why Don’t You Do Right 

7. Rusty The Skatemaker 

8. Green Finch / Johanna 

9. Girl Lunar Explorer 

10. Soon Forget 

11. Identity Tokens

Daniel and Melora made a live recording in a behemoth of a defunct glue factory: "Melora a la Basilica - a collection of old favorites and cool covers and very similar to the live recitals they gave earlier this year. This limited numbered edition of 1,000 comes encased in a metal tin with a numbered certificate and glorious 8-panel insert of liner notes and more and is only available from the Merch Shoppe while supplies last...www.musictoday.com

Antony and The Johnsons - The Crying Light

1. Her Eyes Are Underneath The Ground
2.Epilepsy is Dancing
3. One Dove
4. Kiss My Name
5. The Crying Light
6. Another World
7.Daylight and the Sun
8. Aeon
9. Dust and Water
10. Everglade