Jasmina Maschina - Alphabet Dream Noise

1. Scott Free
2. Noise is Noise and Feelings Are Feelings
3. Forgotten Wood
4. Sun
5. Retrospective Hallucination
6. The City is Moving Like a Map
7. Crying Dream
8. Invisible Rays
9. Marry Me
10. Community
11. Nina's Feelings

Jasmina Maschina is Australian Jasmine Guffond, and ‘Alphabet Dream Noise’ continues her voyage into shimmering avant pop territory after 2008’s killer ‘The Demolition Series’. Through noisy field recordings, chattering guitars and her own gorgeous vocals we are led on a journey that is neither pop music, rock or drone – and like fellow Aussie Sanso-Xtro she manages to emerge with a sound that defies easy classification. There’s a little bit of Empress, a little bit of Hood, a little smattering of Slowdive, a hint of Stina Nordenstam – but nothing in ‘Alphabet Dream Noise’ sounds nostalgic or retro. Rather this is an album with both feet in the unsettling misery of 2011, and one that isn’t afraid to represent this with music just as woozy as its setting. Gorgeous stuff...www.boomkat.com

Butcher The Bar - For Each A Future Tethered

01. Sign Your Name
02. Bobby
03. Cradle Song
04. Giant
05. Alpha Street West
06. Blood For The Breeze
07. Silk Tilts
08. Sin So Sweet
09. X
10. Cornered To The Cusp
11. Lullaby

Joel Nicholson's first album under the Butcher the Bar moniker since 'Sleep At Your Own Speed' came out three years ago now, and was a triumph of calm, bedroom-produced pop music. Elliott Smith is usually the name that comes to mind when talking about Nicholson's songs, but this time around he sounds invigorated and fresh, and 'For Each a Future Tethered' is a collection of his best songs to date. There is an air of distinct Englishness about his music, and at times when Nicholson loses himself I'm reminded of Nick Drake, which isn't a comparison I'm prepared to bandy about loosely. The songs here feel far more assured than those on his debut, and while there are plenty of fans who will no doubt lament the loss of that bedroom sound, the songs will surely win them over in the end. There is almost an orchestral quality to Nicholson's writing, and while he never goes into Arcade Fire territory, the lilting compositional edge bears favorable comparison to Sufjan Stevens or labelmates Seabear. 'For Each a Future Tethered' is a gorgeous record, and for those of you who revel in unpretentious, summer pop music I can't think of many albums better suited to sitting out on the grass, Clarityn in tow with a pork pie and a glass of Pimm's. Jingle jangle...www.boomkat.com

Jens Lekman - An Argument with Myself EP

1. An Argument With Myself
2. Waiting for Kirsten
3. A Promise
4. New Directions
5. So This Guy At My Office

The first of two forthcoming Jens Lekman releases he promised earlier in the year will arrive on September 20 via Secretly Canadian: An Argument With Myself, a 5-track EP teased as “a little taste of what’s not to come,” featuring cuts that “just didn’t seem to fit the mood of the record” he is working on. Both the title track and “Waiting for Kirsten” — his tune about semi-stalking actress/Lekman fan Kirsten Dunst when she visited Sweden — are live favorites we’ve shared previously at the links above. Check out the tracklist alongside another live take on “Waiting for Kirsten” below and read more about Lekman’s adventures over the past year in this interview that accompanied today’s announcement...www.twentyfourbit.com

Laura Marling - A Creature I Don't Know

01. The Muse
02. I Was Just A Card
03. Don’t Ask Me Why
04. Salinas
05. The Beast
06. Night After Night
07. My Friends
08. Rest In the Bed
09. Sophia
10. All My Rage

Laura Marling proved that her startling debut, Alas I Cannot Swim, was not just a precocious one-off when she followed it with last year's I Speak Because I Can. Both were nominated for the Mercury prize. Now 21, she's about to put out a third album that will confirm she's the sort of artist who only gets better with age. The album has Marling at her warmest and most playful yet, affecting a debonair, half-spoken style over the jazzy piano of "The Muse" or pulling off a mid-song switch to country hoedown on single "Sophia". Not a feat for the faint-hearted, but that's never been a charge you could level at Marling. This could just be a Mercury nomination hat-trick in the making.

She says: "The songs I was writing were a lot more rhythmic and a bit louder. [The material] needed a band feel and I've got a phenomenal drummer who shares my love of punk."...www.guardian.co.uk

Bodies of Water - Twist Again

01. One Hand Loves the Other
02. Triplets
03. Mary, Don't You Weep
04. Open Rhythms
05. Rise Up, Careful
06. Ever With Us
07. Like A Stranger
08. Lights Out Forever
09. New Age Nightmares
10. In Your Thrall Again
11. My Hips Won't Let Me
12. You Know Me So Well

All the recent end-of-the-world predictions have made 1970s Godsploitation flick A Thief in the Nightsuddenly relevant again. Dramatizing a post-Rapture socialist society and featuring a song written by Christian rock wunderkind Larry Norman (unfortunately performed by the awful Fishmarket Combo), the movie is an intriguing artifact from a time when believers didn't flee from popular culture but embraced it as a vehicle for a spiritual mission. It's a sharp contrast to the 80s, when the Satanic Panic scared many Christians away from rock music, and to the 90s, when the Christian rock industry marketed itself as a message-first alternative to secular music.

Bodies of Water, an L.A. outfit whose unison and harmony vocals suggest the enthusiasm of a spirited youth choir, harken back to that open-minded 70s heyday, although thankfully not to the scare tactics of A Thief in the Night. Core couple David and Meredith Metcalf pepper their songs with Biblical imagery, yet remain too enamored with pop music in all its many forms to confine themselves to any one particular genre or approach. That excitement and a sense of boundless possibilities fueled their 2007 debut, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink.

Following a lackluster sophomore album on Secretly Canadian, the Metcalfs channeled a lot of their energy into ABBA-tastic side project Music Go Music. Founding members Kyle Gladden and Jessie Conklin left the group, eventually to be replaced with a revolving roster of friends, acquaintances, and onlookers. Finally, the Metcalfs built a home studio and recorded their third album, Twist Again, which they're releasing on their own Thousand Tongues label. They're also having their first child.Twist Again, then, signals a period of rededication, rebirth, and just plain birth, but its songs sound surprisingly somber and subdued.

In this more restrained setting, Bodies of Water aren't quite as commanding or charming, but they compensate with more confident, nuanced songs that incorporate elements of showtunes, disco, and folk, plus mariachi fanfares and hallelujah choruses. "Ever With Us" juxtaposes barebones doo-wop piano with countrypolitan strings, and the stylistic friction mirrors the domestic drama of the lyrics. Standout "Rise Up, Careful" fits in a lengthy saxophone solo, and the curious pairing with Meredith Metcalf's mournful vocals makes for one of the best and most unexpected moments on the album. On the other hand, "New Age Nightmare" nearly works itself into a frenzied din but backs away. Rather than let the music go wild, Bodies of Water play it safe.

Both Metcalfs remain sharply charismatic performers, but the downcast quality to Meredith's vocals, especially on "Lights Out Forever", is new. The woman who once yelped ecstatically to the back pews now exudes a spiritual melancholy similar to that of her husband's grainy voice. There's a newly ponderous tone to their music, too, which may stem from the lyrics: Twist Again is preoccupied with the conflict between heavenly love and earthly love. Traditionally, love of God ought to supersede romantic and musical love, yet that order is in constant flux from one song to the next, as Bodies of Water indulge some new musical idea or wrap their voices seductively around each other. Even if Twist Again occasionally comes across as less than rapturous, the Metcalfs' conflicts animate these songs, as though they've realized that marriage, music, and God are not only inseparable, but quite possibly all the same thing...www.pitchfork.com

Säkert - På Engelska

01. November
02. Honey
03. Fredrik
04. Can I
05. The Lakes We Skate On
06. The Flu
07. Dancing, Though
08. You'll Be On Your Own
09. It's Going To Lead Up To Something Bad
10. Weak Is The Flesh
11. Quiet

In 2010, we released "Facit", our second album with my band Sakert (Sakert is a band where I've sung in Swedish. I also have a band where I sing in English - Hello Saferide.) We are lucky enough to have super sweet listeners in different countries and some of them wrote me, saying they were google translating "Facit and babelfishing it and asking their grandfather with Norwegian ancestors for translation, and it all turned out very weird

"How sad", I thought, "that I can't just translate the songs Which is when I thought: "Um, why don't I just translate the songs "What if", I thought, "I translate them almost word by word, and it nearly turns into a third language, English words used in a Swedish way So I did, and we decided to record the songs
and turn them into an album. During the process, the translated songs pretty much felt like new to us. Everything seemed different when sung in another language, and
producer/guitar player Henrik Oja found some new sounds for them

About the album, then. Well, "Pa Engelska mostly contains songs from "Facit", but it
also features two tunes from our first album, Skert. The songs are about working too hard, loving too much, talking too little, growing up too slow in the northern parts of Sweden,and about fearing your country's politics in going somewhere where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. They're about crying at a wedding. They feature a lot of sad guitars and folk-ish violins. Every time I go abroad I
meet someone who asks me about the famous Scandinavian melancholia and I guess this
album pretty much embraces that. The songs are simple and sad. In a fun way, hopefully

Sakert is a project based in Umea, Sweden. On tour and on album, we have been: Annika Norlin, Henrik Oja, Daniel Berglund, Mats Hammarstrom, Jakob Nystrom, Lovisa Nystrom, Frida Johansson, and some other people who occasionally help out

We've been nominated to a lot of awards, like the Swedish Grammys, and won a few. We sold a lot of albums and we always try to make people cry when we play. Um, that's about it...www.itsatrap.com

Angus And Julia Stone - Memories Of An Old Friend

01. Private Lawns
02. Babylon
03. Paper Aeroplane
04. Take You Away
05. My Malakai
06. Lonely Hands
07. Little Bird
08. Chocolates And Cigarettes
09. Old Friend
10. Choking
11. Mango Tree
12. Heart Full Of Wine
13. All Of Me

Memories Of An Old Friend is a selection of songs from the original EP’s, B-Sides and so on. 2010 has been an amazing year for Angus & Julia Stone,with stand out performances at Splendour In The Grass,5 ARIA wins including Album Of The Year & Single Of The Year, Platinum Awards for ‘Down The Way’, & sales in excess of 70,000 units in France! In 2011 the journey continues-headlining the BDO, WOMAD & another European tour.

Widowspeak – Widowspeak

01. Puritan
02. Harsh Realm
03. Nightcrawlers
04. In the Pines
05. Limbs
06. Gun Shy
07. Hard Times
08. Fir Coat
09. Half Awake
10. Ghost Boy
11. Brain Freeze (Bonus Track)
12. Burn Out (Bonus Track)

It usually takes years of practice and several albums for bands to reach the crestfallen state Brooklyn trio Widowspeak showcase on their debut. Here, the music's poignant rush came quickly: We're told their debut single "Harsh Realm" was recorded after the band played a total of six shows. The fatalistic croon of singer/songwriter Molly Hamilton has already garnered plenty of Hope Sandoval comparisons. It would be remiss not to mention those here, as Hamilton's phrasing is often nearly identical to her most obvious influence, but there's enough variation in mood and texture to give this project a weight and balance all of its own.

Much of the credit is due to the versatile guitar lines traded between Hamilton and Robert Earl Thomas. At times there's a hollowed-out starkness and foreboding to the playing reminiscent of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western soundtracks ("Puritan"); at others there's a meshing of hippy idealism and influences extracted from bad-vibes garage rock not dissimilar to Love at their peak (see the pleasingly atonal guitar solo that ripples through "Nightcrawlers"). The latter even bears a moody 1950s tenor that sounds like Alex Zhang Hungtai of Dirty Beaches with the filth cleaned out of his fingernails. Anyone looking to wallow in 1990s nostalgia will find much to gorge on, too-- touchstones from that decade come thick and fast. For instance, when Hamilton's not channeling Sandoval, and when the band crawls out of the doldrums into more upbeat territory ("Gun Shy", "Half Awake"), she often resembles Madder Rose singer Mary Lorson.

The skill with which Widowspeak assimilates those parts into alluring song structures is what prevents this from being an exercise in tributary. There's an ache to "Harsh Realm" that's all their own, the central vocal line ("I always think about you") bearing a downplayed creepiness that suggests Hamilton knows a thing or two about the ill effects of obsessive love. The one-two punch of "Gun Shy" and "Hard Times" are where the band hits its peak, the former combining their natural wistfulness with bouts of polished-up Link Wray guitar twang that wouldn't sound out of place on the soundtrack to Tom DiCillo's Johnny Suede. On "Hard Times" they bend everything around a featherlight pop framework that provides a perfectly melancholy backbone to Hamilton's naturally listless demeanor: It has the right amount of sun and shade much of Widowspeak possesses, the lightness of touch in the arrangement preventing the songwriting from toppling over into unpalatable sorrow.

Sometimes they don't get that balance right-- on "Fir Coat" it sounds like the song is racing away from Hamilton, and the closing "Ghost Boy" is built around the kind of Moe Tucker-inspired drumming that feels tired in the wake of legions of Brooklyn bands mining the sound over the past few years. But this is clearly the work of a group still finding its way, hammering out the kinks in public view. There's a potential here that could lead to something with a great deal more gravity. It's to Widowspeak's credit that they do make this first taste a brief peak behind the curtain: Five of the 10 songs don't go over the three-minute mark, and the entire runtime's barely half an hour. The economical use of space makes Widowspeak feel like a chance meeting with a pining stranger, one who spills their guts then vanishes from sight just as they're beginning to make an impression...www.pitchfork.com

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues

01. Montezuma
02. Bedouin Dress
03. Sim Sala Bim
04. Battery Kinzie
05. The Plains / Bitter Dancer
06. Helplessness Blues
07. The Cascades
08. Lorelai
09. Someone You'd Admire
10. The Shrine / An Argument
11. Blue Spotted Tail
12. Grown Ocean

Fleet Foxes' unpretentious, crowd-pleasing directness was the key to their rapid rise. Their Sun Giant EP and self-titled debut LP, both released in 2008, brimmed with inviting melodies, evocative lyrics, and open-armed harmonizing that seemed designed to reach a wide variety of listeners. Their bright folk-rock sound wasn't exactly "cool," but that was sort of the point-- it's familiar in the most pleasing way, lacking conceit or affectation. Their expression of their love for music (and making music) was refreshing three years ago, and that sort of thing never gets old.

But clouds inevitably roll in. On the band's follow-up, Helplessness Blues, the mood is darker and more uncertain, adding shade to their gold-hued sound. The change in tone reflects the tumultuous road Fleet Foxes traveled during the album's creation. In late 2009, Fleet Foxes had an album's worth of songs ready, but the tracks were mostly scrapped before mixing. The arduous creative process took a toll on the group members, particularly singer/songwriter Robin Pecknold, who told Pitchfork at the time, "The last year has been a really trying creative process where I've not been knowing what to write or how to write."

The group's persistence paid off, though: Helplessness Blues is comparatively deeper, more intricate, and more complex, a triumphant follow-up to a blockbuster debut. Working again with producer Phil Ek, they've crafted a cavernous record that allows more room for them to breathe and stretch. The album's longer, episodic cuts contain disquieting shifts in tone. "The Plains/Bitter Dancer", for example, begins as a spindly, psychedelic folk tune reminiscent of some of the Zombies' more introspective moments, and then, after a brief pause, bursts suddenly into the type of gangland chorus Fleet Foxes have practically trademarked by now. Elsewhere, shorter songs seem to end mid-thought; the rollicking tumble of "Battery Kinzie" cuts off suddenly, while "Sim Sala Bim"'s heavy-strummed raga quickly unfurls like broken strings. This battle between tension and serenity is new to the band's repertoire, and it lends the album a compelling uneasiness that starkly contrasts the sunnier disposition of their first two releases.

The group harmonies that flowed from Fleet Foxes are in shorter supply here, employed largely to embellish tracks, allowing Pecknold to take a clearer lead role, both vocally and lyrically. He first emerged as an impressionistic songwriter, but he's since become stronger and more descriptive, conjuring vivid imagery of men striking matches on suitcase latches and penny-laden fountains. Mostly, he spends time working out his own personal puzzles, pondering the big questions of existence and meditating on the dissolution of his five-year relationship during one of Helplessness Blues' more difficult creative periods.

The record reflects his determination to deal with the present while leaving the past behind. At times, Pecknold's voice takes an aggressive tone, as on the eight-minute breakup saga "The Shrine/An Argument"; other times, it cracks slightly, exposing his pain on the bittersweet "Lorelai". But the warmth is there. On the album's most intimate track, "Someone You'd Admire", he contemplates the contradictory impulses to love and to destroy, accompanied by spare harmony and softly strummed guitar.

Pecknold confronts more universal concerns as well, starting with "Montezuma"'s memorable album-opening lines: "So now, I am older/ Than my mother and father/ When they had their daughter/ Now, what does that say about me?" He wrestles throughout the record with his own measurements of success, and whether any of it adds up to anything. He asks questions only to come up with more questions, and they all lead into a sort of resolution on the album's title track, "Helplessness Blues". Here, he retreats from the world into idyllic, pastoral imagery and wishes for a simpler life before trying to come to grips with his newfound renown. "Someday I'll be like the man on the screen," he promises at the end of the song.

Helplessness Blues' analytical and inquisitive nature never tips into self-indulgence. Amidst the chaos, the record showcases the band's expanded range and successful risk-taking, while retaining what so many people fell in love with about the group in the first place. And once again, a strong sense of empathy is at the heart of what makes Fleet Foxes special. Much has been made of American indie's recent obsession with nostalgic escapism, but Robin Pecknold doesn't retreat. He confronts uncertainty while feeling out his own place in the world, which is something a lot of us can relate to...www.pitchfork.com

Iron & Wine - Kiss Each Other Clean

01. Walking Far From Home
02. Me And Lazarus
03. Tree By The River
04. Monkeys Uptown
05. Half Moon
06. Rabbit Will Run
07. Godless Brother In Love
08. Big Burned Hand
09. Glad Man Singing
10. Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me

On 2007's The Shepherd's Dog, Sam Beam reinvented Iron & Wine, building out the whisper-quiet acoustic songs he'd made his name on into a strange and mysterious soundworld, using a full band and mastering the art of multitracking his own voice. It's tempting to think that the hard work was done there-- Beam established a new approach and made a great album in the process-- but Kiss Each Other Clean, the full-band follow-up, is in some ways even more ambitious than its predecessor. He's reaching in a few new directions here, pushing himself hard as a singer, and taking risks, some of which pan out and a few of which don't.

Broadly, Beam at this point is writing by far the most assertive melodies of his career. Not the best, necessarily, but the boldest and most forcefully phrased. Even the song that most clearly ties back to The Shepherd's Dog, album centerpiece "Rabbit Will Run", has a melody that's quite different from anything he's done before. "Rabbit Will Run" is an easy highlight-- the arrangement is fantastically detailed, driven by a heavily layered rhythm track that bubbles with hypnotic thumb piano, and balanced by sections where the rhythm drops out, leaving Beam's voice hovering over a strange mix of sounds that might be a chopped-up pan flute arranged into a loop. The guitar sounds like an old-fashioned modem. It's a weirdly intoxicating mix that exemplifies the imagination Beam brings to bear on his fuller sound-- he's not just putting some drums and bass behind his guitar and voice.

Some of his bolder decisions carry mixed results. Beam brings in a horn section on "Big Burned Hand" and "Your Fake Name Is Good Enough For Me", and it works well on the latter, the album's seven-minute closer. The horns are arranged loosely, responding a bit to the Tinariwen-ish guitar phrase that opens the song and pulling it into territory somewhere near Charles Mingus' "Haitian Fight Song". The horn scrum is nicely offset by Beam's layered, tight self-harmonies on the chorus, and it's also complemented by the ragged lead guitar part. On "Big Burned Hand", though, the honking sax is used as a device to try and make the song funky, and it's not a look Beam's really figured out yet-- it lumbers along for four minutes and is the one song where Beam's risks yield no reward.

The more elemental and important change, though, is how Beam sings these songs. On "Glad Man Singing", his voice is still a soft instrument, but he's really projecting, both on the lead and the backing harmonies he layers in behind himself. On "Me and Lazarus", he reverts to the unique whisper-plus-falsetto layering technique he perfected on The Shepherd's Dog and "Woman King", and as signature sounds go, it's a good one that sounds even more distinct when he contrasts it with the other approaches. There are places on the album where the mix of rhythm and electric piano reminds me of Still Crazy After All These Years-era Paul Simon, a writer whose scope is reminiscent of what Beam is now trying to bring to his work.

Kiss Each Other Clean isn't quite on the level of The Shepherd's Dog in terms of overall unity of vision. Oddly, even with Beam's generally bolder singing, it's also not quite as immediately striking. These songs are generally not the type to grab you right away, but there's enough mystery and melody there to call you back. It's an album that takes its time seeping in, and it's ultimately worth putting in the close listening that reveals its many details and delights...www.pitchfork.com

Other Lives - Tamer Animals

01. Dark Horse
02. As I Lay My Head Down
03. For 12
04. Tamer Animals
05. Folk Songs
06. Weather
07. Old Statues
08. Woodwind
09. Desert
10. Landforms
11. Head East

Tamer Animals, the sophomore release from the Stillwater, Okla., five-piece Other Lives, is meticulously written and arranged and, at times, vividly cinematic. In the wrong hands, this music could feel labored or overstuffed, but thanks to the makeshift orchestra's shaggy ringleader, Jesse Tabish, these wistful Americana-styled tracks (influenced by Tabish favorites Sigur Rós and Godspeed You! Black Emperor) rarely feel forced. Instead of the big studio sound of their self-titled debut, Tamer Animals feels organic and lovingly crafted, a record whose lushness often invites you to simply collapse into it.

Other Lives fits nicely with the pastoral richness of Fleet Foxes (whose influence is felt in the vocal harmony arrangements here) and the elegantly wasted music of Kurt Vile. On "Landforms", crestfallen strings swell with Tabish singing about the "oceans and plains," and you can almost taste the salted air. The dark, hymn-like "Weather" is similarly visual, but prophetic and baleful. "The sun is getting closer to the world," sings Tabish, clearly not talking about soaking up rays.

Tabish has enlisted a group of players that holds these intricate pieces in place. It's not as if the songs here feel heavy or overloaded-- in fact, most of them are positively buoyant, thanks to the richly colored interplay of all the instruments and the spacious production. Nearly every member pulls double and triple duty on cellos, violins, clarinets, keys, trumpets, and drums, and in a live setting, the band constantly shifts and repositions to hit every mark. On record, these professional assets come through even stronger.

Still, Tamer Animals isn't without its flaws, the quality of the vocals chief among them. For something so painstakingly made, it's strange that most vocal takes-- including some of those terrific harmonies-- sound oddly flattened. On an album about leaving behind the things you love, this seems like one element Other Lives should've made more of an effort with, as the pained stoicism in Tabish's voice doesn't always match the grandiosity of the music.

But that grandiosity makes it feel as if Other Lives are coming from a million different directions at once. "Old Statues" has the whispery endlessness of a spaghetti western soundtrack; the string draws nicked from Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely" impart a deeply haunted vibe to the provincial lope of "For 12"; "Woodwind" channels the magical spook of a Grimm fairytale. Even if the emotional intent often feels recycled from other records, Tamer Animals is a record that takes you places....www.pitchfork.com

The Dø - Both Ways Open Jaws

1 Dust It Off
2 Gonna Be Sick!
3 The Wicked & the Blind
4 Too Insistent
5 Bohemian Dances
6 Smash Them All (Night Visitors)
7 Leo Leo
8 B.W.O.J.
9 Slippery Slope
10 The Calendar
11 Was It a Dream?
12 Quake, Moutain, Quake
13 Moon Mermaids
14. Open C (Bonus)
15. No Clue (Bonus)

There was a time where it wasn’t as uncommon for bands to be as mysterious as the French/Finish duo The Dø. jj is the last group I can think of where no one seemed to know much about them and it seemed impossible to discover more. This phenomenon is now surprising, considering the trend to know more about an artist before you actually hear their music than you know about your closest friends (Odd Future, James Blake). The internet has removed international boundaries and made it possible for you to hear the most random-ass garage rock from Tel Aviv or some lo fi recordings that sound like they were made with antiques. This makes us lucky, as some of the most rewarding music experiences come from left field.

But this almost short changes the experience that is The Dø’s Both Ways Open Jaws. It is not fringe music in sound. In fact, it is very much of the moment, sounding like it was cut from the same cloth as Lykke Li and Fever Ray. Yes, they are all Scandinavian acts with female vocals, but the comparison runs deeper, namely to the ability to combine dark and haunting numbers, regional sounds, cutting-edge arrangements and pop magic. Opener “Dust It Off” plays on all of these, layering a melody that sounds as cold as the Northern European climate over spare piano until the song nearly deconstructs on itself.

Of course, this wouldn’t work so well without a couple of key elements. For one, singer Olivia Merilahti’s vocal capabilities are one of the instant appeals of the album. “Gonna Be Sick!” brings out a primal growl in the bridge, “Too Insistent” goes from excellent to perfect when she jumps an octave before the second chorus, and “Slippery Slope” shows a mastery of both rhythm and band leading. Sure, she can sing a slow one, but when the music gets intense, her ability to captivate only grows.

Also key to the success of Both Ways Open Jaws is the songs’ base appeal. “Too Insistent” rides a melody that manages to be overwhelmingly catchy without seeming cheap. The horns and strings that come in the second chorus are the kind of homerun production choices that appear consistently throughout the record. However, “Too Insistent” stands out as being a perfect song on an album full of near-perfect songs.

“Bohemian Dances” is also a killer, building steadily on an ear-worm melody and clog-dancing beat. Listening to the record with headphones reveals a world of textures behind the song, though it can almost seem simple on the first take. The layered vocals and subtle blips and bleeps are the kind of touches that affect the listener without being obvious. It is restraint without being spare, and if there were ever a class to be taught on the subject, Both Ways Open Jaws would be the textbook.

And what is most amazing about this record is how different people’s reactions have seemed to be. People I’ve showed this album to have thrown around the names Grizzly Bear, The Knife, Arcade Fire, Joanna Newsom and Animal Collective just to name a few. The truth is that The Dø doesn’t really sound like anything else going on right now, but is just the next step in the evolution of fantastic musical art. It is just our tendency when we hear something amazing to equate it with other amazing things we have heard. When something this good finds you unexpectedly, really all you can do is play it for as many people as possible and watch it spread. Both Ways Open Jaws will strike you as both new sounding and classic, as both fresh and rooted in tradition. Most importantly, it will strike you as a treasure, and probably, as the best album you have heard in a long time...www.onethirtybpm.com

The War on Drugs - Slave Ambient

01. Best Night
02. Brothers
03. I Was There
04. Your Love Is Calling My Name
05. The Animator
06. Come To The City
07. Come For It
08. It's Your Destiny
09. City Reprise
10. Baby Missiles
11. Original Slave
12. Blackwater

These Philly rockers conjure an ambling drone that conceals real pop hooks 
and allows classic-rock 
colors to seep through. 
Main man Adam Granduciel gets plenty of Dylan comparisons, but Slave Ambient feels like a more back-alley Byrds filtered through a gauzier Spacemen 3 lens. The chugging "Your Love Is Calling My Name" drives that road for six blissful 
minutes. But their best song, "Baby Missiles" -- in 
a different version here 
than on 2010's Future Weather EP -- overlays a synth aura, like '80s-era Springsteen with a splash of Arcade Fire. It's vexing 
in exactly the right way...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 Cassettes - I've Been Gone Far Too Long...

1. I've Been Gone
2. Far Too Long
3. Witchers
4. Australia (bonus track)

What if an itinerant band of folk musicians took a journey in a dirigible and met a tabla player and a theremin artist? If this is your kind of jam, you’re in luck. Just yesterday The Cassettes released the four-song EP I’ve Been Gone Far Too Long… If you know their sound from their first two albums, Writing Analog Letters (2010) and ‘Neath the Pale Moon (2006), you’ll know what to expect: an exploratory fusion of instruments that is the harder edge of live folk, or the acoustic big sister to punk. This EP doesn’t have quite the rocking edge that the last two releases had. Instead it has a more dreamlike quality, like the kind of lush east-meets-west sound that the Beatles developed in the White Album, married to the slow stroll of a cowboy ballad...www.weheardthat.com

Beirut - The Rip Tide

01 A Candle's Fire
02 Santa Fe
03 East Harlem
04 Goshen
05 Payne's Bay
06 The Rip Tide
07 Vagabond
08 The Peacock
09 Port of Call

Zach Condon's been wonderfully stuck in the past since 2006, when he first arrived on the scene armed with a ukulele and dreams of old Europe-- in 2011, though, he and his art suddenly seem especially out of place. In the five years since Gulag Orkestar became a surprise success, the dialog surrounding indie culture has drastically shifted away from flesh-and-blood odysseys like Condon's and toward synth textures and vague electronic sighs. (Arguably, Condon and the current crop of emotionally distanced indie stars share nostalgia for experiences not necessarily known first-hand, but that's another conversation.) What's more, many of his peers are in drastically different places, both aesthetically and commercially, since Beirut's last full-length, 2007's excellent The Flying Club Cup. The National and Arcade Fire have successfully settled into the arena-rocking stage of their respective careers, while Owen Pallett and Sufjan Stevens have embraced idiosyncratic conceptual weirdness-- Stevens especially: Just last week, the pair of Brooklyn shows closing his extraordinary tour behind last year's glitchy, restorative LP The Age of Adz were a complete cosmic blowout, embracing an Etsy-gone-neon ethos and electronic expansiveness alike.

Back in 2009, it seemed like Zach Condon was considering a similar synthetic transformation. The back half of Beirut's mini-LP released that year credited to his Realpeople alias, March of the Zapotec/Holland, suggested a move away from his baroque stylings and toward homespun electronic pop in the vein of the Magnetic Fields circa The House of Tomorrow. Apparently, the experiments were just that, as those sounds are nowhere to be found on Beirut's third proper full-length, The Rip Tide. Instead, the project has turned inward, ditching the frilly drama of The Flying Club Cup for more plaintive, understated arrangements. Condon told The New York Times earlier this year that the relatively stripped-down approach was a response to his feeling like "a dilettante with instruments. For years I was picking up new instruments once a month, and for this I was trying to focus a little more, stick with piano, ukulele and trumpet." You're still going to find a pump organ part or two on this record, but otherwise, The Rip Tide's reliance on the Basic Beirut Food Groups (piano, horns, strings) keep Condon true to his word.

Leading up to The Rip Tide's release, Condon also hinted at the album's "sunny" disposition. I'm not sure if I'm hearing that. The Rip Tide was recorded in upstate New York two winters ago, and although there's a handful of upbeat cuts (notably, the infinite earworm and LP highlight "Santa Fe"), a good part of the album sounds especially soft and melancholy, a possible result of the fact that the winter of 2010 was especially snowy and brutal for the greater New York area. If you prefer Condon's balladeer side, then, this isn't a bad thing at all, especially if you are drawn to his richest, most melodrama-dripping highlights ("The Penalty", "After the Curtain"). Arrangement-wise, The Rip Tide is slightly more complicated than those past glories, with a few moments ("Payne's Bay", the swelling title track) that, at times, recall the wooden psychedelic weirdness of Grizzly Bear. Things never get too strange, though: This is still a Beirut album, so declarative horns and impassioned strumming are frequent visitors.

There's a newfound sense of restraint and stateliness on display here, and it's impressive that within five years and at such a young age, Condon's developed so quickly as an arranger and songwriter. Watching him ease into adulthood (he was 19 when Gulag Orkestar dropped) means we've been able to track the maturation of that rich, golden voice he possesses; On The Rip Tide, it occasionally sounds huskier and, in the case of his slight trembles of "Santa Fe" and "Goshen", a little more unstable. These little cracks in the drywall actually make him seem more human; his voice has always seemed almost too sonorous and perfectly dusty to be real, and hearing him falter (if ever so slightly) is a positive reminder that, not too long ago, this was a kid who, as he told the NYT, "just want[ed] to swig whiskey and drink beer and go onstage and have a ball." Still, he's a commanding presence, as his powerful pipes swing to and fro on the robust album bookends "A Candle's Fire" and "Port of Call". Vocally, The Zach Condon Show is nowhere near cancellation, to a point where the usually distinctive contributing vocals of slow-burning singer/songwriter Sharon Van Etten (who pitches in on "A Candle's Fire" and "Payne's Bay") are smothered and unnoticeable.

Despite Condon's clear development, The Rip Tide is a defiantly small effort-- the shortest LP in Beirut's catalog (nine songs, clocking in at just over 33 minutes), self-released on Condon's own label, Pompeii. As such, it's a record that's easier to slip by unnoticed than Beirut's two other LPs. (The lack of the previously present heavy affectation contributes to this as well.) However, our own Marc Hogan put it best in his recent Playlist item on "East Harlem"-- you get as much out of Condon's creations as you put time into them, and familiarity eventually becomes its own reward. Near the end of the album's beautifully mournful, penultimate cut "The Peacock", Condon repeats this telling admission into the face of fading horns: "He's the only one who knows the words." His antiquated fantasies still very much belong to him, but it's still a joy to peer inside them-- even if the canvases they're displayed on have shrunk ever so slightly...www.pitchfork.com

Bon Iver - Bon Iver

01. Perth
02. Minnesota, WI
03. Holocene
04. Towers
05. Michicant
06. Hinnom, TX
07. Wash.
08. Calgary
09. Lisbon, OH
10. Beth/Rest

The guy who recorded an album alone in the woods. This line might end up on Justin Vernon's tombstone. There's something irresistible about the thought of a bearded dude from small-town Wisconsin retreating, heartbroken, to a cabin to write some songs-- especially when the result is a record that sounds as hushed and introspective as Bon Iver's 2007 debut, For Emma, Forever Ago. These days, Vernon is more likely to poke fun at the image, but it endures because it fulfils a fantasy for us as listeners. Even if we don't care for the outdoors, most of us occasionally want to escape our lives, be alone with our thoughts, and see if we can tap into something true. In a time of easy distraction, the idea of heading into a cabin at the edge of the world to create is alluring. By tying the intimacy of that image to Justin Vernon's music, we're able to take the trip with him.

Since that album's release, Vernon's approach to writing and recording has changed. "I don't find inspiration by just sitting down with a guitar anymore," he recently told Pitchfork. "I wanted to build a sound from scratch and then use that sound to make the song." That difference is clear on Bon Iver. Instead of something that scans as "folk," the music here is more like rustic chamber pop with an experimental edge that makes careful use of arrangement and dynamics. And rather than being tied together by a central theme of loss, Vernon has fully shifted into a more impressionistic mode; these songs are broader and more musically sophisticated than those on For Emma at every turn.

But the thread between this album and its comparatively skeletal predecessor is Vernon's voice, an instrument that feels warm and personal and close regardless of setting. Now that we've heard him singing hooks with Kanye West and taking the lead with Gayngs on songs that touch on R&B and soft rock, the general sphere of Vernon's voice is clear. He simultaneously evokes the grain and expression of soul music along with the mythological echoes of folk. But more importantly, no one else sounds like him. The Beach Boys have been the primary touchstone for layered vocals in indie music for years, but Vernon's timbre comes from somewhere else entirely. Where "Beach Boys harmonies" have a spiritual undercurrent that brings to mind a choirboy's dream of perfection, Vernon sounds like a man who has outgrown such ideas. His voice is earthy and wounded and, despite his astonishing upper register, not something you would describe as "angelic."

"Holocene" contains one of this album's many virtuosic vocal performances. "Part of me, apart from me," Vernon sings early on, and those six words hold a lot. The evocative nature of his diction is apparent even in a simple line like "I was not magnificent." He sounds centered and clear while taking stock and allowing memories to be mixed in with the details of the present. His conflicted vocals trigger a half-dozen feelings all at once before releasing the tension with a refrain that finds the fleeting moment where the world seems right: "I could see for miles, miles, miles."

Vernon posted Bon Iver's lyrics shortly after the album leaked last month, but they're not easy to parse-- the storytelling here is oblique. But there are connections. The song titles reference actual places ("Calgary") and places that sound real, but aren't ("Hinnom, TX", "Michicant"); they're less about geography and more about putting a name to a state of mind that mixes clarity and surrealism. And the deeper you sink into these tracks, the harder it becomes to extract specifics. One recurring element is intoxication-- lines about being drunk or high that come with recounted details. Which makes sense, because the album deals with escape and the struggle to get outside yourself. The narrator takes in what's around him, mixing those thoughts with memories of where he's been. Sometimes the lines have a startling specificity ("Third and Lake it burnt away, the hallway/ Was where we learned to celebrate," on "Holocene") and sometimes they contain words that seem to function more as sound ("fide" or "fane" on "Perth"). Throughout, there's a strong sense of an observer taking things in and processing confusing images, trying to figure out what can be learned.

If you caught Vernon live after For Emma, you gradually saw him putting more and more emphasis on his band, moving Bon Iver from that solitary project into something that felt more like the work of a group. And Bon Iver, with its rich and layered arrangements, extends that development in a striking direction that's both logical and surprising. Blending natural instrumentation supplied by recruited players-- such as string arranger Rob Moose (Antony and the Johnsons, the National, Arcade Fire) and a horn/woodwind section that includes versatile saxophonist Colin Stetson-- with an array of electronic and treated sounds, the album combines varied textures in ways that are ambitious and unusual but often subtle enough to miss on first glance.

At points, Bon Iver draws on the experiments of Volcano Choir, Vernon's side project with the post-rock outfit Collections of Colonies of Bees (members from that group play on the album). Freed from conventional verse/chorus/bridge/chorus structure, the songs become more like tone poems, patient explorations of moods that proceed deliberately but unpredictably. The holistic style is evident on opener "Perth", which builds from total silence into a crashing peak over the course of four short minutes. And there's an uncanny moment on the breathtaking "Michicant", a song in part about childhood, where a bicycle bell rings twice, pulling you deeper into Vernon's reverie. It's a simple, brief effect, but it's indicative of the how the album uses elemental sounds in unexpected ways.

Vernon has taken that voice, and these arrangements, and crafted an album that unfolds like a suite. The structure is flawless right up to its conclusion, "Beth/Rest", which has been much remarked upon for its unabashed and unironic embrace of 80s adult contemporary pop sounds. If you've spent any time in the vicinity of a radio tuned to light rock, you hear the keyboard tone that opens the song and you think Lionel Richie, Richard Marx, and "No One Is to Blame".

It's almost naive of Vernon to think he could pull this off. Yet, heard in context, it stands as one the record's bravest and most deftly executed moments-- not just because it lays bare Vernon's stated admiration for artists like Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Hornsby, but because it's executed to perfection. And while the production attempts to wring something new from a long-maligned sound, the song and voice remain true to Bon Iver as an idea. As a closer, "Beth/Rest" is more about finding comfort and resolution after a musical experience that asked more questions than it answered. The song draws a line in the sand for anyone with a deep investment in cool, and Vernon stands behind it with confidence. His belief in himself and in the power of his music is something that encourages us to transcend labels and preconceptions.

After the closeness and austerity of For Emma, Vernon has given us a knotty record that resists easy interpretation but is no less warm or welcoming. You can feel it even as you don't completely understand it-- a testament to its careful construction and Vernon's belief in the power of music to convey deeper meaning. It's a rare thing for an album to have such a strong sense of what it wants to be. Bon Iver is about flow, from one scene and arrangement and song and memory and word into the next-- each distinct but connected-- all leading to "Beth/Rest". On the way there, the music moves like a river, every bend both unpredictable and inevitable as it carves sound and emotion out of silence...www.pitchfork.com

Sufjan Stevens - The Age Of Adz

01. Futile Devices
02. Too Much
03. Age Of Adz
04. I Walked
05. Now That I'm Older
06. Get Real Get Right
07. Bad Communication
08. Vesuvius
09. All For Myself
10. I Want To Be Well
11. Impossible Soul

With his sixth proper album, Sufjan Stevens does battle with what we've come to expect from a proper Sufjan Stevens album. This time, instead of painstakingly humanizing the locations, historical inhabitants, and trivia of a certain slab of America, he's more concerned with his own state of mind. Banjos are out; moody electronics, deep bass, and drums that burst like geysers are in. The lengthiest song title on his last LP, 2005's Illinois, was 53 words long; here, that same superlative goes to a tune called "I Want to Be Well". He's whispering less, hollering more. And at the climax of The Age of Adz, the devout Christian and poster boy for mannered indie-dude sensitivity shouts, "I'm not fuckin' around!" no less than 16 times. Believe him.

Yet, there is no mistaking this as a work by the Detroit-born, Brooklyn-dwelling overachiever. Trilling flutes, meticulously arranged choirs, and an overarching sense of hugeness are still apparent. The record's last track, "Impossible Soul", is a five-part suite that lasts more than 25 minutes and boasts harps, horns, blips, Auto-Tuned vocals, a twee-dance breakdown, some cheerleader call-and-response, and even a little trad-folk guitar picking, you know, for kicks. That single track bulges with more engaging ideas than most artists could muster in a career, and there's no one else on earth that could've come up with it. Even the record's glitched backdrop isn't entirely unprecedented; Stevens' pre-breakout 2001 instrumental album Enjoy Your Rabbit could be looked back on as a sketchbook for what would become The Age of Adz. So as Stevens' current restlessness fights it out with his past accomplishments, the listener ends up winning.

Once again there's a concept tying everything together, though it's not quite as educational-- or virtuous-- as before. The Age of Adz is a reference to Louisiana artist and self-proclaimed prophet Royal Robertson, whose work appears on the album's cover and liner notes. A paranoid schizophrenic, Robertson translated his anguish through apocalyptic sci-fi posters after his wife left him following nearly 20 years of marriage. His comic-book style pieces-- which have been shown at the Smithsonian, among other museums-- are colorful, vengeful, and crazed. They feature B-movie style robot monsters who spout cartoon captions like, [sic] "I'll distroy much town's of adultress !!WHORE'S!!" Robertson's work is a long way from the cutesy cover of Illinois, and the fact that Stevens chose such an eccentric and hate-prone avatar for inspiration this time is telling.

Because The Age of Adz is a relatively dark affair, with the 35-year-old songwriter sometimes forgoing his child-like naïveté for something more oblique and adult. Considering the triumph of style that was Illinois (and the legions of lesser lights that subsequently turned it into some sort of over-the-top Disney on Ice parody), the change of perspective is welcomed.

The record is book-ended by two quaint, characteristic acoustic passages that find Stevens reconnecting with a past love. "It's been a long long time since I've memorized your face," he starts. This is the Sufjan we know. But, in between that short intro and outro, the album tells the story of a relationship with fantastical zeal. The tale is sordid and a little absurd, filled with betrayal, selfishness, frustration, suicidal thoughts, a raging volcano, and a space ship. "I've lost the will to fight/ I was not made for life," he confesses on the title track, as robo-noises and churchly backups translate Robertson's futuristic drawings into sound.

Across the album, he relives the more harrowing aspects of a deep personal bond, pinging from bitterness ("At least I deserve the respect of a kiss goodbye," he sings over gloriously spare electro-pop on "I Walked"), to confusion ("I thought I was so in love/ Some say it wasn't true," he head-scratches on the hymn-like "Now That I'm Older", a masterclass in modern vocal arrangement), to, um, melodramatic transmogrification (referring to himself in the third person, he inhabits the Rome-burning volcano of "Vesuvius", singing, "Sufjan, the panic inside, the murdering ghost that you cannot ignore"). Surrounding himself with music that expertly balances between over-orchestrated and chaotic, Stevens elevates his pedestrian travails about love and lust into legendary myths in which he's rarely the hero.

Right before The Age of Adz's back-to-earth finale, Sufjan finally overcomes his emotional stupor as a host of voices join him for the singalong, "Boy! We can do much more together!/ It's not so impossible!" And then he shakes out of the grandeur, goes back to the finger picking, and sighs the album's more realistic final line: "Boy! We made such a mess together." It's an ambiguous conclusion that, like the rest of the album, was seemingly in jeopardy of not happening at all. In a Signal to Noise interview last year, Stevens said, "I definitely feel like the album no longer has any real bearing anymore. The physical format itself is obsolete; the CD is obsolete and the LP is kinda nostalgic. I'm wondering, 'What's the value of my work once these forms are obsolete and everyone's just downloading music?'" It's a valid question. But instead of succumbing to trends, Stevens barrels through with another long-form work that requires-- and rewards-- time and devotion. As important questions about music's worth in the age of free continue to swirl around him, Sufjan's still combating instant-gratification culture the best way he knows how...www.pitchfork.com

Orba Squara - The Trouble With Flying

01 Treasure Map
02 Come So Far
03 Picture Perfect (All The Colors)
04 Millionaires
05 Tomorrow
06 New Guitar
07 The Trouble With Flying
09 Too
08 Maybe
10 Tell Me
11 Brand New Day
12 Raining Again
13 Very Very (Snow In June)

To celebrate the June 23rd release of The Trouble With Flying, Orba Squara took to the road on a first ever 10 day road trip across country. The idea was "...to play some new music, meet some new people and, along the way, see what we've been missing." The entire trip has been beautifully documented as a really fantastic web project (the likes of which none of us here at VivaIndieRock have ever seen!). We highly recommend you check it out. Not only will you feel like you are part of the journey, but you will also get to preview all of the tracks on the new record as you explore.

Blackbird Raum - Swidden

1. Valkyrie Horsewhip Reel
2. California/Fetid Adder's Tongue
3. Rubicon Drawn
4. Silent Spring
5. Witches
6. Greymare
7. Story from Strawmouth
8. Woodwose
9. Shot Coplifting
10. Unregistered Firearm/Ravachol in Valhalla/Crom
11. A Rat in My Dream
12. Still Sick (years after the draft)
13. Honey in the Hair
14. Coal
15. Germinal
16. Everyone up to the Wall

Blackbird RAUM returns with a new album that's faster, darker and tighter. Again utilizing the clawhammer banjo, accordion, singing saw and more. the scratchy five part harmonies make good on the bleak promise of their first album, more explicit of an incredibly dim view of world affairs. Subjects ranging from war to ecological collapse and all the bright space in between. RAUM has grown up into something extremely paranoid and in haste. sounds like Leonard Cohen and Nausea team up to start a bluegrass troupe or perhaps the Minutemen go french musette.
Comes with lyrics sheet.

This is their new release, and features lyrics like "Sinking like the sickness says/"sickened while the sinking stays."/Civilization is a train, speeding towards a tunnel/painted on the side of a mountain"...www.littleblackcart.com