I will say this: Saint Cecilia is not only the best record of any sort that Foo Fighters have released since Wasting Light in 2010, it’s also a near-perfect summation of their entire career thus far, with each song representing some aspect of their developing style over the past twenty years nearly perfectly.

And that’s what makes this EP so great: not only is it totally free to download (if you’re still not streaming music like the rest of us), it’s also an incredible listen. For reference, if this wasn’t available to stream, it would be the album I’d purchase this week. I’ve already listened to it about twenty times. My wife loves it, my colleagues love it, and it’s barely had any time off since Monday.

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Soaked in Gold is also unique in that it’s focused a bit more on the riff, albeit a riff surrounded by electronic elements. So it’s a little more familiar for people coming from an indie rock background, but it was clearly put together with a synthesizer.

It’s also focused on letting natural and synthetic instruments breathe and live together organically (quite a mouthful), which puts him into a favourable comparison with Chet Faker again. Altogether, this approach to songwriting mixes and mingles the best of alternative rock with the future of electronic.

The next step for Geoffrey, in my mind, is putting together a band that can make him better. While his music isn’t bad, that element of polish isn’t going to come from meticulously writing to a metronome. Without the ability to run ideas off other people, I get the feeling that Geoffrey is pushing against his own limitations here — and he could greatly benefit from having other band members throw ideas at him.

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With a full voice and an incredible supporting band, Kane is bringing some fire to this genre. There’s a jazzy ensemble going on that sounds just right around the Christmas tree, but Kane is singing about things a little more important than the holidays. This is great stuff.

I had a couple dozen people to the apartment my wife and I share earlier this week, and had this album going on in the background. There were two comments: the first was that this wasn’t the most interesting party music to put on for a bunch of undergrad students, and the second was “Holy smokes, how old did you say this girl was?”

And I think that’s exactly what I’d say about this record: it’s not going to convert people who aren’t fans of R&B or soul music, but everybody who hears this thing is going to be impressed by the raw talent on display. Highly recommended.

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I think Cloves is pulling off the greatest challenge in music: while she’s writing original music as a singer-songwriter, she’s also writing songs that sound like something we’ve always known. That’s not to say that they sound familiar, but to say that these songs feel like they’ve always been within us.

The world’s best songwriters aren’t called such because they made something starkly original — at least, not in my estimation. It’s my belief that we love some musicians because they play songs that we recognize immediately with our hearts, as something we innately know.

I’m drifting off topic, but the blues are powerful because we all know the blues. We’ve all been blue. And it was originally powerful with a black audience because it has roots in slavery. Eventually, as the blues became more mainstream, the genre grew to encompass much more than the black man’s struggles. And eventually, it became the genre of the everyman. And the world’s best blues songs hit us below the belt because we know them, deep down, as our own.

That’s ultimately how XIII makes me feel. I know Cloves is new, and I know that the odds are stacked against her as a traditional singer-songwriter in an era dominated by the Adelles and Taylor Swifts of the world, but it hits me below the belt. I haven’t heard these songs before, but I’ve sang them before in my heart. And that says worlds about how this music makes me feel.

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But there’s also an element of throwback to this. In some ways, Made of Oak is reminding me of their ancestors, like Land of the Loops, with synth moments that build towards crescendos without ever feeling obnoxiously loud or demanding.

At the same time, Made of Oak is at the top of the atmospheric game, competing with Alt-J at their very instrumental best. While Penumbra doesn’t go as far outside the box as something like Arca (Made of Oak sounds like it was still made by a human), the music still has the ability to surprise.

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