The first minute and a half sounds nearly Hitchcockian, in a sort of terrifying way, where the all-saxophone jazz ensemble brings out all the discordant stops. The second half is the deconstruction of its first, where everything the first half completes is undone and left blowing in the wind, powerless after a single saxophone innocently renders it into fearless noise.

To put it simply, Tokyo-chutei-iki doesn’t care about what your preconceptions are about jazz. They forge their own paths on The Last Baritonik, with a playful nature that captures the improv the genre is known for. The band is made up of thirteen saxophone players (although I think they had ten at one point), with no other supporting elements.

The opening track is as joyful as jazz gets: “One Hundred Fingers” is a celebration of the genre, a cheerful burst of solos that’s the musical equivalent of a menagerie. It doesn’t take long to understand the fascination of what could easily be a novelty act: saxophones are both musical and rhythmic, capable of carrying a melody and a beat. And because they carry such a wide tone of sounds, saxophones are also easily able to be distinguishable from one another when the need occurs.

Saxophones also, of course, lend a visceral and playful nature to the music. “The Room of Iron Frame” dodges back and forth between noises that frighten and noises that play in an intoxicating mix that feels like multiple musical set pieces in a jazz opera. It’s thoroughly unconventional and surprising, never settling to be comfortable or comparable to anything we’re already intimately familiar with.

This level of ingenuity speaks to what makes Tokyo-chutei-iki so important to jazz as a genre right now: they might understand where the genre has been (and I’d argue their reliance on saxophones makes that clear), but their astute understanding of classical composition and disregard for jazz practice makes them more jazz-like than most of their contemporaries.

Jazz has shed its original clothing to become less married to specific time signatures or dances and more married to experimentation as art. And The Last Baritonik is definitely that. Tracks like “It is Soroso Spring”, complete with Japanese vocal work, feel like they belong in a post-modern opera.

When a single track is clearly influenced by Baroque-period classical, Miles Davis, and The Beatles, you know you’ve stumbled onto a sound that is inherently unique.

The Last Baritonik is a complete surprise and utterly imbibes jazz’s experimental soul. Tokyo-chutei-iki are, without a doubt, one of the genre’s most important flag-bearers right now.

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All of that makes The King of Limbs makes it hard to recommend to casual fans of the band. It lacks most of what made them successful, often becoming twitchy. Like most Radiohead records, people were confused by it — particularly the (still hilarious) video for Lotus Flower. But some now consider the video, the song, and the surrounding record a classic.

I’ve long thought The King of Limbs to be Radiohead’s quirkiest record, the one that always felt the most uncomfortable for them to make. It’s an album based largely on rhythm, almost entirely removing the melody from the lyrics in favour of the loop. Some people would jokingly (or maybe not jokingly, I’m not sure) suggest TKOL is everything the band warned us about with OK Computer.

Despite all the issues with it, it’s a charming record. Radiohead had become much better at jazz-like moments like this. Bloom’s erratic drumbeat is at once as hard to follow as it is Miles Davis-like. Morning Mr. Magpie follows a similarly difficult rhythm, this time using guitars as a punctuation points for the loop. Thom Yorke doesn’t choose to blend in with instrumentation, but to use his voice as a way to elevate the music and give it a sense of direction.

The album’s best tracks are the quieter, more introspective moments. Give up the Ghost is one of Radiohead’s best tracks, excelling with a (comparatively) minimalistic soundscape, drenching Yorke’s voice in reverb and delay to give it maximum impact.

Amnesiac, Radiohead’s followup to Kid A, featured Humphrey Lyttelton on one track. Johnny Greenwood (Radiohead’s not-so-secret songwriting weapon) admitted in an interview with Spanish newspaper Mondosonoro, “we realized we couldn’t play jazz. You know, we’ve always been a band of great ambition with limited playing abilities.” This is why they had to bring in an expert.

I’ve always thought that bothered Radiohead. That’s not to insult their musicianship; the folks in the band are genuinely incredibly talented. But it’s difficult to admit your weak areas without wanting to improve them. I think The King of Limbs is their way of writing a jazz record in the style of Radiohead. Naturally, their focus is on the beat, and on the polyrhythms and the madness of the Miles Davis records they so frequently talk about adoring.

In that sense, The King of Limbs feels remarkable, special even. It’s a record that completely defies what everybody thinks Radiohead should do, ditching guitars and melody almost entirely. While they had proved to everybody they weren’t just a rock band, The King of Limbs is undisputed proof that they can do anything they want and do it well. Maybe it’s coming from a place of unease or unrest, and maybe it’s coming from a desire to continue to push the limits. I have no doubt that it’s all of those things and many more.

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This record is brimming with all sorts of different ideas and wild verses. It’s also going to be a love it or hate it kind of thing. The vocals are a little out there, and the layered electronics make this feel like some kind of musical zoo. This might be a “poppy” approach from Gang Gang Dance, but that’s sort of like saying elephants sometimes tread softly. This is still an inventive, unusual, not-entirely-approachable record.

And I think that’s a great thing, for the record. I love music like this. Gang Gang Dance are unafraid to experiment, unafraid to try new things, and generally kicking all sorts of butt and taking names while they do it. That’s the best way to make music, and the only reason to do it these days.

In a world where all the sounds have already been made, Gang Gang Dance are offering some unique interpretations of a few of them. And that’s worth the price of admission.

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Their final record is complicated by the departure of their bassist, and the suicide of frontman Luke Jenner’s mother. (In fact, much of the record is clearly about her passing.) Perhaps as a result of the increasing messiness of the personal lives of the band members, In the Grace of Your Love is much more precise than their previous work.

Producer Phillipe Zdar greatly helped with getting that level of precision on record. He agreed to come on board shortly after finishing production work on Phoenix’s masterpiece, Wolfgang Amadeus. His skill as a producer is evident, and from stories told later, it seems he got every bit of emotion out of the band for the record. The finished result is an amazing ride from start to end.

While it’s a departure from their other work, In the Grace of Your Love is a special record that captures a particularly delicate moment in the life of both its band members and the band itself.

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Most of the album is filled with songs that are either stupidly catchy like Meth Lab, or slower ballads like Step Outside. The standout tracks are admittedly the catchy rockers — the first four tracks are all great at this. The vocal riff in Blackjack Moon and the backbeat (and chorus) of Low Fuel Drug Run are particularly memorable.

My favourite slow song on the record is Mind of My Own. The album loses a little steam in its second half, not because it gets boring, but because this formula is better suited to slower records. That being said, the closing track, Let the 7Horse Run, is spectacular. So weird, so catchy, and ultimately one of the coolest vocal riffs and harmonies I’ve heard in years. Highly recommended.

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Great. Now that you’re back, let me ask you a question. Why haven’t you heard of The Submarines before? I already know your answer: you don’t know. And neither do I.

If you think that The Submarines might only have one good song, I challenge you to listen to Fire, which is only the second track on the album after Shoelaces, and tell me it’s not good. That’s pretty much how this record goes. The whole thing, from top to bottom, is a joy.

I’d love to write about every track on this album, but that would be unspeakably cruel to you as a reader. You’ve got to hear a few of these though. The Sun Shines at Night has one of those catchy choruses where everybody shouts instead of singing, and it works really well. It’s a great song about falling in love. I don’t mean that in a cheesy, overly-sentimental way. It’s just fun. But my favourite track comes right after that.

Listen to Birds. This song is so catchy that I could fall asleep and wake up to it without a problem. When they sing, “What if everything’s alright?”, I feel like I’m being pick up off the ground. It is alright. That’s everything I ever want to hear. If you want to listen to one track from this one and then move on, make it that one.

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The Barr Brothers have released an album that does all of those things. I can’t explain what their music does to me. It’s tremendously powerful. Beggar In The Morning transfixes me. Old Mythologies captures the same sort of vibe that most of the songs from the Juno soundtrack managed to get. It’s cute, but magical. Give the Devil Back His Heart is just an example of the band showing off: The Barr Brothers can do a lot more than folk. These guys can be pure rock and roll. There’s an element of Zeppelin here, but it gets even stronger in The Devil’s Harp. Now that’s a Zeppelin-inspired rock song. You don’t even have to listen to Zeppelin to recognize it. But if you want to talk about rock music should sound, go no further than Lord, I Just Can’t Keep From Crying. Wow. That’s how you do a rock and roll song. The Barr Brothers are simply phenomenal. This is one of the best undiscovered gems of 2011.

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Stars and Satellites is as sorrowful as you could expect a major-key guitar-picked song to be. “My head has always been so much older than my shoulders can believe,” Dan sings. And as he does, it sounds like he speaks for an entire generation.

She’s a Drug is beautiful, with a simple piano progression carrying it along. Credit Valley is a great example of the album’s slow build: Dan takes his time slowly making Leave Your Love into a folk piece de resistance.

New Street Name brings in a banjo, which weren’t back in vogue yet at the time of the album’s release. Leave Your Love is an unusually back-loaded release though. Lorne Park and Emily are highlights, but the album’s title track closes everything so beautifully that it’s hard not to throw the disc on repeat during a muggy summer afternoon. This is one of the most beautiful folk albums you’ll ever hear.

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