At their heart, The O’My’s are a soul band, but they’ve infused it with hip hop, jazz, blues, classic rock, and more. Chicago Style, as a record, is more diverse than most artist’s careers. You can tell just from the band lineup, which includes a trumpeter and a sax player, and their guest list — which includes Chance the Rapper — that The O’My’s aren’t interested in pigeon-holing themselves.

At their best, The O’My’s sounds like a dirtier Alabama Shakes. Compare The Wonder Years (the first track) to Girl It’s Been Fun (the second track). There’s a wider variety of influences than Alabama Shakes’ music, but they share a similar soul. There’s a falsetto in The O’My’s music that doesn’t sound too dissimilar to Brittany Howard’s vocal range, and both bands share a fascination with 70s-era psychedelic rock.

At the same time, The O’My’s are very much in their own realm: their music really does sound like Chicago, making the album title very apt. Its a laid-back fusion of the modern hip hop that Chicago has become known for and the old-school R&B that it was known for back in the day.

There’s a revival happening right now in Chicago with its music scene, and I’d love to see The O’My’s becoming the leaders of that movement. When you hear their music, you’ll just know: they get it.

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That being said, when they take their feet off the gas and slow down a little bit, they don’t have the same Tom Petty influence that the Foo do. Whether or not that’s a good thing will depend on how much you like the quieter Foo songs. I like The Men more when they’re rocking out, but their quiet songs aren’t bad — they’re just not as memorable or high quality.

Ultimately, what makes the record so interesting is that’s a band trying something new. It’s rare to capture the moments of musical birth on tape, and thanks to their background in fuzzy rock music production, something about their experimentation sounds incredibly organic.

But that all being said, their music is incredibly good when they turn up the distortion. And I absolutely love the simple album art, which is somehow riveting. I can’t figure out why I like it so much. Maybe it’s the colours.

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Black Violin is a couple of guys rapping with violins. It’s that simple. It’s also as awesome as it sounds. Where a lot of hip hop feels predictably tuned to the drop of a beat, Black Violin feels tuned to the violin solo. If there was ever going to be a Mumford & Sons in hip hop, Black Violin might be the closest thing to it right now.

That’s both good and bad: it’s good because these guys are an outrageous talent, with huge ideas and a clear mission to change the faces of the genres they love. But it’s bad because as often as these guys kill it with their violins, they turn back to the pop choruses that ruin so much potentially great hip hop.

So while this record is wicked, killer, totally awesome, it’s also a slight disappointment, because much like Mumford, these guys could be much more if they wanted to be. There’s so much raw talent on display here, just waiting to be mined.

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These guys opened for The Killers, and they’re actually a really good band that deserves to be headlining some big tours themselves. There are subtle overtones of U2 sprinkled throughout Unnecessary Maps, and the songs are made for big stadiums and uplifting crowd cheers. Listen to Salt Lake City and Prometheus. These are huge tracks that would sound amazing in a stadium. Prometheus could have fit in on one of those old teen dramas that a lot of my friends were watching in high school (think The OC), but it also stands on its own as great driving music and fantastically loud rock and roll.

If you’re not hearing the Bono and U2 influence, please put on Glacial Places and just close your eyes. Honestly, if they layered the guitar work with a little more delay and reverb, we’d have a band that could be an honest-to-goodness possible successor to U2. And frankly, we kind of need one. Bonus points to this British band for calling a song Keep Calm and Carry On. If I wanted any one song to catch on with the radio, it’d probably be Holy Wars. This one’s worth checking out.

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Oh Emily is as fun a post-breakup song as you could ever hear, and At Last has all the charm of a modern romance (it really picks up in the middle or so). Say When is filled with smart songwriting and sensibilities, and a great piano line married to a catchy beat. (Coincidentally, you might have noticed Generationals’ Heza also has a track called Say When. Heza is also reviewed in this issue. I did not plan this.)

The album takes a turn halfway through, with Dead suddenly becoming very quiet, but it really resonates. Something about the shift in tone really works. Adulthood is sad, but true: “From adulthood, no one survives.” But it’s said with such poppy exuberance that it makes me want to dance. All For Love is bouncy and inventive without straying too far from a recognizable formula.

Everybody Knows would have been a sold album closer on its own, but Jukebox the Ghost’s choice to end the album with The Spiritual stuns me. It’s so different from everything else on the record, and so immediately somber, that it’s striking. It’s visceral in its immediacy. It’s reminiscent of Queen’s ballads, and there’s a couple notes where I suddenly feel like I’m listening to Freddie Mercury.

When the final track is done, and the silence enveloped me, I’m left sitting in awe. Safe Travels is one of the most cohesive and complete albums I’ve heard all year.

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On first blush, you might confuse Two Door Cinema Club with indie pop bands like Phoenix. I’m not sure I like the comparison. While these bands all certainly share some influence, Two Door Cinema Club is uniquely groovy, with a certain “je ne sais quoi” that the other bands don’t have. At times, Two Door Cinema Club doesn’t have the same pure pop thrills of Phoenix — or even some of their contemporaries. But what they do have is a certain charm that the others can’t lay claim to.

Sun is one of those catchy tunes that grabs you and doesn’t let go the moment it starts. And despite their shiny pop exterior, songs like Next Year and Sleep Alone are actually pretty sad reflections on being away from home for too long.

I liked Two Door Cinema Club’s last record, Tourist History, but Beacon reveals stunning musical growth and maturity. (Also, they combine influences like Dexter and The Big Lebowski in the video for Handshake, the newest single from the album. The song isn’t my favourite, but the video is just bizarre enough to earn its own special mention.)

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Songs like Would That Not Be Nice and Like Ice Cream have some fantastic riffs. Would That Not Be Nice is the best rock riff I’ve heard since U2’s Vertigo. The album’s got a lot more than pure rock and roll going for it though, and gems like Baby Get Worse and Civilian Stripes make the record well worth looking into. And it’s rare to get a more subdued opening track than My Love is Real.

I think what makes Divine Fits work so well together on their debut album is a love for the Rolling Stones. I’ll be the first to admit that Divine Fits isn’t inventing something new on their debut. If anything, the record feels like it belongs in a vintage past that we’ve long since left behind.

But that vintage sound is played through the stylings of Spoon and Wolf Parade, two groups who have a decidedly modern take on what old-school should sound like. So A Thing Called Divine Fits doesn’t sound old and it doesn’t sound new. It just sounds good.

In rock music, there aren’t enough records that just sound good any more. A Thing Called Divine Fits is one of them.

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