I don’t know why this is always so surprising. You should get good at your job after forty years, but that somehow rarely happens in the music industry. For The Feelies, it might be a sense of mortality that’s compelling them to write such good music. Or maybe it’s just the lo-fi acoustic guitar vibe that brings out the best in them.

Either way, it doesn’t matter when the music is this good. The album is largely acoustic, and that’s great for The Feelies — it puts the focus on their songwriting, and not on their abilities as musicians. The instrumentation and the lyrics are front and centre, and almost feel like easy listening.

There’s a quality here that’s unsurprising for a band with their experience. Any great band from The Feelies’ era has to put out great acoustic rock. It’s a requirement. And here, whether it’s on the mellow album opener “In Between” or sing-alongs like “Stay the Course”, the band is staking a claim.

As the album goes on, it picks up a lot of steam. “Gone, Gone, Gone” is significantly faster than “In Between”. The final track, when the band reprises “In Between” again, is a fascinating case study of how a track can fall apart. “In Between (Reprise)” builds up until it self-destructs into a wall of electric distortions and noise.

For a band apparently writing music about their own mortality, that should perhaps be unsurprising. As time goes on, they increasingly run out of it, and the album has an increased sense of urgency by its final track.

But truth be told, I don’t think there’s a grand statement here about life or death. I don’t want to read into it. That being said, increasing the momentum in the back half of the record is a great — and unusual — way to maintain interest. And it makes each subsequent listen that much more rewarding.

It’s easy to recommend The Feelies’ latest album. In Between is brilliantly paced and written. It’s all killer and no filler, and fans of the band — and lovers of indie rock — would be remiss to miss it.

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That makes Snowdonia a slightly difficult affair.

In 2015, Thomas Feteke, Surfer Blood’s guitarist, left Surfer Blood after being diagnosed with a rare form of stomach cancer. Snowdonia is the band’s first release since his death, and the only one in Surfer Blood’s career thus far to be written without any input from him.

To complicate matters even further, longtime bass guitarist Kevin Williams left the band in October last year to “pursue other opportunities” (I haven’t heard what he’s up to yet).

That left only two members of the original group: singer John Paul Pitts and drummer Tyler Schwarz. The band brought in an old friend of theirs from high school, Lindsey Mills, to replace Williams on bass. Mike McCleary has the even-more-difficult job of filling in for Thomas Feteke.

So Snowdonia is very much a record with roots in loss, starring a band in transition.

Sometimes, this is obvious. There’s new ground broken on Snowdonia that has little in common with Surfer Blood’s roots. Tracks like “Six Flags in F or G” are more experimental than anything the band has done before. (And you can tell they’re a direct result of Feteke’s death: Pitts describes what he feels as “parasitic grief” on the track.)

If anything, tracks like these make it clear that the band is going through a phase where everybody has to get to know each other again. Things don’t necessarily gel the way they used to.

But on occasion, they do gel very well. “Frozen” is one of the best indie songs I’ve heard in a while, with an astoundingly catchy riff and melody that reminds me of their output circa 2010. But unlike that year’s Astro Coast, Snowdonia feels less focused and less refined. Tracks like “Instant Doppelgängers” and “Taking Care of Eddy” feel like vintage Surfer Blood, even while they tread new ground, but they don’t hit below the belt the same way that Astro Coast did (and does).

All that being said, Snowdonia is an impressive record because it feels like lightning in a bottle. Few bands are willing to be this openly vulnerable with their audiences, opening up the most difficult chapters in their lives for all to see. It might not go down as a classic, but Snowdonia is better than anybody had any right to expect. It’s a fun record, with some great ideas and new directions for the band.

And as a case study of bands in transition, it’s hard to beat.

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If that’s true, it’s only slightly true.

There are tracks throughout Life Without Sound that pummel as hard as anything in Cloud Nothings’ catalogue, with production quality that slays and unbridled aggression that captures much of what Cloud Nothings has become known for. Tracks like “Darkened Rings” or “Strange Year” carry much of the craziness of albums like Here and Nowhere Else.

In other words, this isn’t exactly the sort of record you’d want to meditate to.

That being said, there are new sounds on Life Without Sound. The band is more tuneful than ever before. The album opener, “Up to the Surface”, carries a piano in its intro and builds through a nearly pop-punk introduction. “Internal World” and “Enter Entirely” take their influence from bands like Weezer (and even some classic rock).

For Cloud Nothings, this is par for the course. Cloud Nothings’ trademark is our inability to know what an album is going to sound like upon release, and Life Without Sound is no different.

That’s not to say that Cloud Nothings is making music that sounds unlike themselves. They’re not making pop music, after all. But they’re embracing a method of songwriting that sounds less rushed and more tuneful. It’s a step in a new direction, but not necessarily a commercial one.

For the first time, Cloud Nothings just sounds optimistic.

Well, as optimistic as Cloud Nothings can sound.

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Near to the Wild Heart of Life isn’t like that.

It turns out Celebration Rock, one of my go-to records over the past half a decade, is a product of its time. Maybe it’s the Obama era, or simply a product of the band’s youth, but its fun-loving nature isn’t replicated on Near to the Wild Heart of Life.

Wild Heart sounds like the post-hangover record to Celebration Rock’s blissful joy. That’s not to say it’s a sad record — far from it, really. But it feels like Japandroids looked at Celebration Rock and decided they needed to grow up a little bit.

In some respects, the band sounds a little less energetic than before. “Mature” is an appropriate word, but it carries unfortunately negative connotations. The changes on Wild Heart are almost all for the better.

In many ways, songs like “North East South West” are among the best the band has made. It’s dynamic without losing its forward motion and energy. “True Love and a Free Life of Free Will” is a slow song, and it consequently speaks a totally different musical language than anything Japandroids made in the past. It’s a surprising direction for Japandroids to pursue after this many years of gun-blazing rock, but it’s a direction they’re surprisingly comfortable in.

You could call Celebration Rock a youthful record and Wild Heart an adult one, or at least a record influenced by adulthood. But that would be missing the big picture.

And the big picture is this: Japandroids use Near to the Wild Heart of Life as a transitionary record. They reflect on whether they’ve been, and carefully consider where they’d like to go. “In a Body Like a Grave” sees the band reflect on the hometowns they’re from, what they sacrificed to get where they are now, and what it feels like to look back even as they look forward. It ends the record on a high note, but leaves us wanting more.

There are energetic moments on Wild Heart reminiscent of the band’s past, but now Japandroids looks to those moments as sentimental throwbacks. But thankfully, in the process of diversifying their sound, Japandroids’ music has become more nuanced and subtle. They’re a better band, even if they’re a different one now.

Near to the Wild Heart of Life is less of a party. More of a thought. And as Japandroids shift from a celebration in 2012 to introspection in 2017, so too does the world.

Main photo by Leigh Righton.

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Thankfully, I was completely undersold. Dan Rico’s debut record is a bit of a grower, but it’s an album that demands your repeated attention. Endless Love is garage rock at its purest.

What stands out to me, more than anything else, is the way Rico bridges the gap between his pop influences and his 70s punk influences. Endless Love is filled with garage rock and lo-fi punk influences that make Dan Rico so much more than a Prince sound-alike.

In fact, comparing Rico to Prince feels wrong. Rico is mining some of the best sounds of the 70s — even elements of Endless Love’s production are very old-fashioned — but he’s writing music for the dopamine-driven A.D.D. generation. There are only three tracks on the record longer than three minutes, and the longest track is three minutes and five seconds long. The songs are more like staccato-style thoughts, delivered quickly and sincerely.

These quick songs are reminiscent of Rico’s punk influences. “Kinda Wanna”, which clocks in at a minute and forty-five seconds, or “Wasted Youth” (two minutes and fifty-one seconds) could be played at a skatepark. And it’s these tracks that, for me, are the most memorable on the record. They come in quick, short bursts, like excited proclamations and high energy capos to what came before. Some of these songs, like “On a Tear”, are so reminiscent of the slower Misfits stuff that I did a double take.

Not every track is blatantly punk or anything like that. There are plenty of in-between tracks, like “Endless Love” (the title track, obviously). It’s one of the best tracks on the record, but it’s not punk, and it’s not pop. It’s just this in-between old-school rock thing, delivered with Rico’s kind-of shrill voice.

Then there are tracks like “After All”, which do feel tremendously like pop music and lose the edge that Dan Rico otherwise has. The two styles are nearly jarring to hear side by side, and keep me from recommending Dan Rico for just anybody.

Because not everybody can get into Dan Rico. If it’s not clear, Endless Love is a hodgepodge serving a niche. But if you fall into the niche of people who miss ’70s rock, which I often do, you’ll likely find a soft spot for this glorious oddball in your heart. And in your vinyl collection.

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But somehow, despite being reminiscent of indie darlings like Dirty Projectors, The Lemon Twigs have made an album that’s approachable despite its quirks. “I Wanna Prove to You” is one of my favourite songs of 2016; it’s an anthemic originality with an incredibly sing-along chorus. I took a road trip over Christmas, and there and back, my wife and I found ourselves hollering along with the chorus. (My brother-in-law and his girlfriend, understandably, thought we were slightly odd.)

Then there’s the majesty of “These Words” and the Beatles-esque simplicity of the piano-driven “How Lucky Am I?”. “Hi + Lo” has one of the most crowd-worthy choruses I’ve heard since Rah Rah’s “Art & a Wife”. The twenty-year-old version of me in college would have proudly proclaimed Do Hollywood as one of the best records of the post-Arcade Fire indie rock movement.

All that aside, what we’re left with here is a record that’s hard to make sense of. The duo puts music together in, shall we say, interesting ways. I’m often reminded of The Beatles while I listen to The Lemon Twigs — not because they sound similar, but because The Lemon Twigs have borrowed so much from the songwriting language of The Beatles without aping their actual sound.

As a result, The Lemon Twigs have a truly original record on their hands, and a unique sound that will serve them well for (hopefully) many albums to come. Miraculously, it just so happens that The Lemon Twigs have the ability to back up their inventiveness with great songwriting.

I couldn’t recommend Do Hollywood more if I wanted to. This is one of 2016’s hidden gems.

Photo by Brian W. Ferry.

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With Scenes of the Tourist, Wall picks his guitar less frequently than he has in the past. Most of the songs heavily feature additional instruments — like the piano, or the electronic sounds of a keyboard.

Wall told me that the vision for Scenes of the Tourist began to crystallize when he moved in to a Brooklyn house with a piano and four experimental jazz/classical musicians. The new style suits Wall’s voice perfectly. As Wharfer, Wall has always had a unique voice among DIY folks groups. Reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, but without the seemingly pre-eminent age that Cohen’s voice came with.

But the new group expands what Wharfer’s voice is capable of by expanding the soundstage. Standout tracks like “Rye Wish” and “The Suitcase” have wider horizons than any of Wharfer’s previous material. The additions create a magical, ethereal quality there’s no way Wall could have created on his own.

Occasionally, some moments are laid back and simpler. “In the Old Magnolia Trees” has a guitar-focused tune, but even it turns into something more spacey by the end. The piano-focused tracks, like “Breeze (Since I Was Born)”, “Blue Lewis”, and “The Wild” all carry the same simplicity of previous Wharfer tracks, but the piano gives Wall’s voice a classical quality.

Nearly every track on the album is fantastic. It’s always an impressive feat when an artist is able to transition from one sound to another. With Scenes of the Tourist, Kyle Wall takes Wharfer in a direction that feels more ethereal and textural than he did previously. But he does all that without sacrificing his vision or his personality. As a result, while Scenes is a bigger record than Wharfer’s ever made, it still feels incredibly intimate and authentic.

I haven’t been able to stop listening to Scenes of the Tourist, an indie record that kickstarts 2017 in grandiose fashion.

Photo above by Justin Camerer.

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Led Zeppelin recorded in mansions, but today’s rock progenitors are recording their music in barns.

But you can’t tell that Oliver Perry, otherwise known as D.D Dumbo, recorded his debut by a stable. There isn’t a single whinny anywhere on the record, and he’s not making country music.

What’s he making? I suspect only Perry knows.

D.Dumbo is hard to define, and harder still to contextualize. Songs like “Satan”, which is about a UFO landing and the aliens among them (who are unaware of our own concept of Satan), completely defy our expectations for songwriting. Partly inspired by video game music, and largely inspired by alt-rock prog-rock geniuses like Radiohead, D.Dumbo’s debut is hard to predict.

This isn’t just about the music, either. In case you haven’t gathered, the lyrics are equally strange. Perry is writing about the modern-day “paranoid androids” of our future, about the end of the world and the death of religious tradition. And if you asked him, he might tell you the future is a dystopian utopia — an unpredictable cacophony. That’s how I’d describe his vision of where we’re going. It’s also how I’d describe his music.

Take the really weird songs, like “King Franco Picasso”, which has an industrial beat and an Alt-J like flow from verse to chorus and bridge. I don’t really even know how to describe his music, although “alternative” seems like an appropriate enough label.

I’m a particularly huge fan of “The Day I First Found God”, which reminds me of Radiohead and U2 and modern worship music all at the same time. (It could easily be argued that U2 is modern worship music, so there’s that.)

It blows me away that this is D.Dumbo’s debut record. Musically, his ideas are fully fleshed — if bizarre — and lyrically, he’s got the whole world as his oyster. Utopia Defeated is one of the best albums I’ve heard this year, and certainly among the best debuts I’ve heard this year. I’m eager to hear where he goes next, but I’m also eager to listen to Utopia Defeated again.

There’s depth to every track on this record. That means the album isn’t easy to absorb on first go, but it’s worth repeated listens. It rewards them. If you want to be surprised by an album, and you want something you can sink your teeth into, look no further than D.Dumbo’s Utopia Defeated.

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That opening chorus is the thesis statement that explains why Dan Mangan’s debut, Nice, Nice, Very Nice still works seven years later. It’s a shame we don’t hear a lot of music like this anymore. It’s a shame people don’t make a lot of this anymore.

It’s hard to find a Canadian who isn’t into Dan Mangan. Last year, he had another breakout record with Blacksmith called Club Meds. But Nice, Nice, Very Nice is the one that started it all.

I found myself re-listening to it this week when Apple Music claimed the album was “new”. That was giggle-worthy, but I revisited the record anyway. And it’s worth another listen. It’s a great reminder of how far Dan Mangan has come, but also how great of a songwriter Mangan is.

The record has aged surprisingly well, although I think the fun tracks that garnered recognition in 2009 (like “Robots” are less interesting than the more personal tracks. I love “Road Regrets” (the afore-mentioned opening track) and “You Silly Git” or “Tina’s Glorious Comeback” (among others) because of their personal lyrics.

But none of the tracks are weak. It’s just an impeccable album from start to finish. Circumstances are totally different, but it reminds me in spirit of Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago: an inauspicious debut that nobody could have predicted would go this far.

Nobody’s going to give me an award for writing about how great Nice, Nice, Very Nice is in 2016. But it’s worth revisiting. And if you’ve never heard of it before, it’s not too late to listen to it the first time. Dan Mangan’s debut full-length record remains the beautiful album you remember it as.

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And I Had A Dram That You Were Mine is a heck of a record. Leithauser’s vocal performance is practically unhinged, as intimate as it is performative. He has the intensity of an evangelical pastor on the bridge of “Sick as a Dog”. While his voice might be an acquired taste for some (see “1000 Times”), Leithauser’s performance is among the best in indie music this year.

The music itself is excellent too. Vampire Weekend will miss Batmanglij on their new record — it’s clear from I Had A Dream That You Were Mine that he’s a large part of their creative force. (According to Vampire Weekend’s lead vocalist Ezra Koenig, Rostam will still be contributing to their upcoming record — but who knows how much of it, or in what in capacity.)

It’s easy to compare I Had A Dream That You Were Mine to Vampire Weekend. Not unlike Rostam’s former band, there are no rules here. No two tracks are the same, often shifting from one genre to another (sometimes in a single song). “In a Black Out” feels like a flamenco-influenced pop piece, but “Rough Going (I Don’t Let Up”) pairs ’50s doo-wop with an indie sing-along chorus.

“A 1000 Times” shares the same genes as Vampire Weekend’s “Obvious Bicycle”, but it’s got the urgency and intensity of a Walkmen song. “The Bride’s Dad” has all the intensity of a Bob Dylan song. “The Morning Stars” has the musicality of Vampire Weekend, but the energy of a Walkmen song — but still sounds completely different from anything else on the record.

To be doubly clear: there are no rules here.

You can’t classify Leithauser + Rostam’s debut. That’s likely the point. Both musicians have something to prove. As an album, I Had A Dream That You Were Mine is a statement of creativity. These men want to be known not for their bands, but for their creative abilities.

Like every record from The Walkmen and Vampire Weekend, I Had A Dream That You Were Mine is special. It’s oozing with creativity. Its songwriting is impeccable. And its performances are top-notch. There’s nary a bad track. I Had A Dream That You Were Mine is a rare treat, and one of the year’s best.

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