Harriet is a pop record, but its superficiality belies what’s happening underneath. Part of this is because the songwriting is simply excellent. It’s at once a cheerful pop record: I’m sure that Harriet, like virtually every other band from L.A., can trace some inspiration to The Beach Boys.

But it’s so much more than that. There are even little moments of jazzy inspiration interspersed throughout. And while it’s no doubt a modern pop record, there’s something about its production that makes it sound like American Appetite was recorded on a bunch of old analogue tools.

It’s a diverse record that sounds like indie rock, but also alternative pop. The vocal work is fantastic, but the band really comes together around some unique ideas and somehow makes them sound cohesive.

Long-time readers of Unsung Sundays might feel like some of this record sounds oddly familiar to Nickel Creek’s A Dotted Line though, particularly from a production standpoint. It turns out both records shared the same producer, Tony Berg. American Appetite was also produced in part by Sean O’Brian, who’s known for his work with The National and Jeff Bridges.

All of that is to say that Harriet is a band with a diverse background and a wide range of influences, all of which are clearly recognizable in American Appetite. There have been some whisperings that this record is an early contender for Album of the Year. While it might be a little early to talk about that yet, colour me impressed by Harriet. American Appetite can sit on repeat for a few months.

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Odd spelling aside, the second thing you’ll notice is that you can’t place where this music is coming from. Sounding simultaneously like some sort of trip hop experiment and oddly African in its influence, Petite Noir can’t be pigeon-holed into a genre.

Petite Noir is one man from South Africa: Yannick Iluga, who handles all the vocals, music, and production on this debut record. He’s in his mid-twenties, but even now, his music sounds like a definitive take on a genre he calls “Darkwave”, which is like New Wave music put through an African vibe.

His voice sounds soulful, but it’s not soul music. He has loads of influence from music all across the board, but I can’t figure out if he’s de-constructing all of it for some sort of rhetorical thesis, or if he’s building upon their foundations in an attempt to do something new. His music is both sparse and intricate. It’s a stunning, stirring debut reminding you that if you’re willing to look hard enough, truly new music is out there.

Despite all of Petite Noir’s influences — Pitchfork cites his influences as everything from Kanye West to Senses Fail and U2 — Yannick sounds like somebody who’s wholly internalized everything he loves and made something new with it. In today’s musical climate, that’s rare.

At the end of the day, I’m still left with the question of what to call it. Instead of trying to narrow Yannick’s music to a single genre, it’s almost safer to give him a broader brush stroke to play with. For now, I’m going to call Petite Noir experimental pop. Now I’ll just spend the next couple years waiting for pop music to catch up with Yannick’s vision of the future.

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With New View, Eleanor strives to free herself of the indie rock title that has followed her since her genre-defying work in The Fiery Furnaces. And in all honesty, the result is a record that’s sort of boring.

All of that brings me back to Widow City. After being disappointed by New View, it was easy to go back to The Fiery Furnaces. Although fans will forever argue about which Fiery Furnaces record is the best, I think a safe argument can be made that Widow City is their most rock-influenced. Distorted guitars are everywhere in the album, which was unusual for the band at that time.

Widow City is also the most Bowie-like of their records. It’s inventive in ways that I like to image Bowie would have loved, and since his recent passing, music that reminds me of Bowie has been in heavy rotation. Widow City is positively eclectic, jumping all over the place, unsure of the mask that The Fiery Furnaces wants to wear. And it’s wonderfully Bowie-like in its refusal to be stamped as a single, definable thing.

It’s also an incredibly intricate album. Almost every track starts mid-bar, making it impossible to listen to just a single track. You lose all sense of context. The album didn’t have to be laid out that way; each song does feel sonically different and texturally unique. It’s a very clear choice to separate the tracks that way, making it a unique statement in a time when the future of the album was unclear given the state of the single.

All of that adds up to an unusual album, even for The Fiery Furnaces. It’s the sort of music that I wish Eleanor and her brother Matthew were still releasing.

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Normally, sharing that sort of information is unnecessary for an album review, but in the case of White Bear, that’s a little different. That’s because White Bear sounds shockingly like a stadium-ready Rolling Stones record. And that’s not a bad thing.

Unlike their first album, The Temperance Movement really dials up the distortion on this record and lets it rip. Almost every track is filled with some sort of gnarly guitar riff. The band sounds like a more sincere, definitely-more-earnest version of Airborne. And the blues rock sound is still intact.

More than once, the band reminded me of Aerosmith. When the band steps out of the post-party, coffee-ridden chorus of Oh Lorraine and digs into the verse, vocalist Phil Campbell sounds like a possessed Steven Tyler. The blues rock riffs that Aerosmith and Rolling Stones frequently shared are alive and well in Battle Lines.

The Temperance Movement is a little more, well, modern, than their throwbacks though. On Modern Massacre, the band lets lose into a tune that would have sounded positively other-worldly forty years ago.

For the record, though, it’s a lot more than the music that’s similar. The guitar tones sound so similar to some of The Temperance Movement’s idols that it’s practically chilling. Every instrument just sounds undeniably — perhaps unapologetically — British (which is awesome, by the way).

None of this is to say that The Temperance Movement sounds like nothing more than a copycat. At the very least, they’re an earnest and sincere band who have almost accidentally followed the same route as bands like Rolling Stones and AC/DC: They got their start playing small and dirty pubs and bars, and eventually landed on a stadium tour. And laid-back blues rock doesn’t work in stadiums; you have to play louder rock and roll. So this is a very natural step for the band; it’s a logical progression.

This is what separates The Temperance Movement from many of their retro-sounding peers. They have a respect for the musicians that came before, they love that music, and the similarities in sounds are all a product of the environment they’re in. In other words, they’re not trying to be throwback for the sake of a buck (unlike their colleagues). They’re just doing it naturally.

I only hope they don’t make us wait another three years for their next record.

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The band tries to avoid being locked down as R&B, saying they’d prefer to be called pop. And with all the synths and beats overtop of their music, along with the generous production value of the record, it sounds like that category might be a better fit for them anyway.

But despite the polish of the record, Wet still remains incredibly raw emotionally. These songs are intimate in a way that pop records actively avoid: singer Kelly Zutrau invites the listener into a world of heartbreak for the entire runtime. Each song is about what sounds like one horrible relationship, leading Clash Music to thank the man who broke her heart.

And it’s true that Wet may have just released the definitive breakup record, but for those of us who aren’t going through an emotionally scarring loss or heartbreak, it might be a bit much for many of us. And Wet’s biggest downfall is that they don’t have any upbeat songs that are a little more, well, radio-friendly.

Despite that fatal flaw, though, Wet is an interesting record for its level of candidness. It’s rare that a record captures an artist at this vulnerable of a moment, and it will prove to be an interesting time capsule when Wet produces a (hopefully more diverse) sophomore follow-up.

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