The opening track kicks off with a heavy, meaty riff that’s purer gold. At some points, the band sounds like rock-influenced country music of decades past. Don’t reminds me of country rock as much as it reminds me of The Roxettes, complete with a nasty guitar riff in the verse that’s just as heavy as anything Mötley Crüe ever put out.

That style, going back and forth between 80s rock and country twang, is something the sisters seem very comfortable with. The album’s strongest track, When God Closes a Door, perfectly captures the sound of a Wild West bar fight. It’s partially the guitar parts, but it’s also Rebecca Lovell’s brilliant vocal work: she doesn’t sing the obvious melodies, but she notes she hits feel perfect in hindsight. Her singing gives the songs a sense of atmosphere they wouldn’t have previously.

Trouble in Mind is clearly influenced by the Black Keys, with a riff and vocal line that feels like it was lifted from Brothers.

The album’s pacing, which is decidedly front heavy, can prove to be problematic when the Americana tracks from Kin, the band’s previous output, get tagged on to the end. Tracks like Stubborn Love and Jailbreak feel much less energetic than the rockier outings on Reskinned, and instead of looking for a new tracking that would make the new material part of a bigger whole, the label’s taken the easy way out.

Perhaps the new material would have made a better EP. But it begs the questions: is this the last time we’ll get to so clearly contrast two sides of Larkin Poe? What direction are the Lovell sisters taking the band next? If nothing else, Reskinned gets us excited to hear more from Larkin Poe soon.

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None of this happened by accident: Holy Fever, based in Los Angeles, is a sort of indie super-group made up of members of hardcore bands like American Nightmare, The Hope Conspiracy, and The Explosion. In fact, the only band member who isn’t a former hardcore rocker is Samantha Barbera (from the Beginners).

Barbera’s vocal work — whether she’s singing like an indie darling or providing the backing “ohs” and “ahs” of a chorus — are a gorgeous counterpoint to the guttural barking of Todd Cooper’s gruffly shouted lines. The two of them offer counterpoints, keeping the music interesting and energetic. Barbera helps Cooper avoid pummelling the listener into exhaustion, and Cooper helps Barbera from letting the music turn into another indie punk project. (It also helps that the whole record is only 34 minutes long.)

The title track is the closest the band really gets to standard indie rock, complete with a slower bridge and an ending that demands to be sung by the crowd in concert. But they’re at their best when the band is at their least predictable and most fun. The opening track, Duress, has all the magic of a White Stripes track and all the aggression of a Minor Threat track. Find Your Fame has both singers swapping parts like they’re playing hot potato, and it works.

Once in a while, the band elevates it to another level. The mix of indie and post-hardcore works really well on songs that Japandroid wishes they wrote, like Someday — which even includes a harmonica part, despite its shouted chorus.

Thanks to all of this, Holy Fever defies classification. Perhaps it’s easiest to describe them as party rock, music made by a group of people who don’t care what you think and just want to have fun. And The Wreckage is the perfect party punk record.

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That could be the result of the project’s origins. van der Spek’s from South Africa, based in sunny Los Angeles, and reportedly started working under the pseudonym Prism Tats in grunge-y Seattle. In Seattle, as a break from his work as a singer-songwriter, he began to do one-man shows with nothing but his guitar and a drum machine.

The record doesn’t stray far from the same roots. The drum machine obviously doesn’t sound like a full kit, and it lends the record its pop qualities. But Garrett’s work with his guitar lands squarely on the rock spectrum, somewhere between post-punk musing and garage rock riffage. Songs like Death or Fame are particularly well-suited for this blend, which a backing track that keeps the song moving at a steady pace and backing vocal work that feels like Los Angeles.

The opening two tracks, Pacifist Masochist and Creep Out // Freak Out are both magically within both camps as well. Catchy, rock-infused tracks that play delightfully well within the scope of California’s pop air. And it’s funny, because (like almost everybody from Los Angeles) Prism Tats spends most of his time making fun of the L.A. culture. I honestly can’t tell if he’s being sincere or not when he sings “I don’t want to make art, I want to make money.”

Thankfully, his lyrical prowess is not the point of the record. What makes Prism Tats unique is the part of it that is a one-man show: it’s a very singular musical vision from a clearly skilled musician. It’s a novel approach to making music, but one that doesn’t allow for collaboration. Yet if you didn’t know that he was a one-man show, you would assume that he was working with a full band on the music, because it doesn’t suffer despite itself.

And that’s really the miracle of the record. It’s a multi-layered album that doesn’t overstay its welcome, dabbles in a myriad of styles (check out Haunt Me’s sound towards the end of the record), but it’s all from the mind of one man. It should be awful. It should be un-listenable. Frankly, it’s the sort of record that musicians make fun: the solo record where the vocalist carries such an inflated sense of self-importance that he replaces his peers with machines. But with Prism Tats, the experiment actually works! His self-titled debut is a wonderful listen that’s playful, fun, and worth examining.

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So yes, The Range is an electronic musician who samples a lot. He does it with reckless abandon. More importantly, though, is that he’s sampling from the unknowns on YouTube. In all likelihood, these are voices you’re unfamiliar with. You might assume that he’s rapping or singing some of these parts, or that he called some important rapper who’s signed to some important label, but it isn’t so.

Hinton doesn’t select these musicians because he think they’re silly or have no chance of success; the beats he’s crafted around their vocal lines have the utmost respect for their work. He’s elevating their material to another standard, even if they aren’t always at his. I don’t think he’s aware they’re not always at his level of quality; frankly, it’s not important.

Speaking of, the beats that Hinton has put together are impeccable. Tightly crafted, expertly woven together, each track is as good as the one that came before it, and it never feels like Hinton is recycling ideas. In fact, he’s arguably inspired by his samples. Calling the record Potential is perfect: it’s not just the potential of the artists that he’s elevating, but he’s elevated the potential of his own work.

Take Florida, the most popular track from the album: the beat isn’t entirely unfamiliar. You and I have both heard music like this before. Neither are the vocal elements, which I actually thought were sampled from a pop song. But combining them allows the song to be elevated above itself, and it feels much larger in scope than it is — especially since much of the beat is actually a quiet production.

As the album continues, tracks like Falling Out of Phase feel like they’re part of the story: Hinton’s story, the aspiring YouTuber’s story, and our story as listeners. By focusing on unknown singers instead of pop star samples, Hinton has put Potential on another level of cultural conversation. The album becomes about our place, as listeners and the people who sing along, in the context of music and musical history. We are involved in this conversation.

In a weird way, it makes Potential a much better record. It’s more involving as a result, something you want to listen to more closely. It’s a good electronic record, but this ability to get our intention and inform us of our own work and abilities makes it an important one. Potential is about much more than James Hinton. It’s about us.

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And that’s to say nothing of the rest of the album.

Moderat consistently has one foot stepping forward and the other looking back on this record, even with the cover art (clearly drawn on a computer, but only because you can see the pixels that reveal that to be the case). It’s an interesting contrast.

That being said, Moderat has become more of a pop group than ever before with this release: there’s little to no ambient elements of the record, and the group has focused instead on making pop music viewed through the veil of electronic. Some fans will undoubtedly cry foul, but this has been the mission all along (and Moderat has been preparing fans for the change since II).

As a result of the decision to sacrifice ambient tracks and instead focus on vocal-led work, III feels much more emotional than its predecessors. The highs are much higher than they’ve ever been on a Moderat record.

I think the opening tracks are the weakest on the record, and it continues to pick up steam towards its end point. I’m always surprised when an album’s best track is in the latter half of its mid-section, which is why I wanted to draw special attention to Reminder. In reality, though, the whole thing gets really good with Ghostmother, which has an incredible vocal performance that is both hauntingly human and somehow surreally electronic at the same time.

These tracks are the ones where Moderat decided it was now time to play with the notions of what people expect from an electronic record. The final track, Ethereal, is one of the album’s strongest, ambient thanks to its vocal work instead of the instrumentation.

In the 1980s, there was a movement where the last track of the record was reserved as both a summation of what the album was and where the band intended to go next. Intentions would often change later, so the last track was rarely a hint or a warning as it was thought to be, but it always seemed like such a novelty. Ending an album with a promise of what the future might hold always felt bold.

With III, it feels like Moderat is doing the same thing: as the album builds, it’s both a love letter to what came before and the sound of what’s coming from Moderat in the future. IV will be their chance to pull a Zeppelin and blend it all together. Ethereal promises something like that. Given the level of detail Moderat has always put in their music, I have no doubt they’ve thought this through. III is their strongest work yet, and its potential already has me excited for the next collection of work from the group.

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