Take “Hard Liquor”, the opening track. It’s more energetic than anything was on Tremors, with a beat and chorus that get stuck on your head for days. (I also love the “tremor” beat at the beginning of the track; it’s an acknowledgement of where SOHN is coming from even while he’s revealing where he’s going).

“Conrad”, on the other hand, melds this energy with a blues and soul rhythm that captures the style du jour without betraying SOHN’s sensibilities. That reveals a trend throughout the album: while SOHN’s electronic sound is always more soothing and restrained than some of his contemporaries, he’s not afraid to embrace trends.

At the same time, though, not everything here is trendy. “Proof” sounds like old-school Justin Timberlake melded with some of Radiohead’s ambitious stylings, a sound that certainly won’t be popular with many. Similarly, “Falling” feels like the most percussive track on Rennen. It reminds me so much of what Radiohead was doing with In Rainbows, or what Atticus Ross and Trent Reznor were playing with on The Social Network soundtrack.

For me, these tracks are the ones where SOHN eschews trends and embraces what he loves. They are, without a doubt, the best tracks on the record for my taste. But that’s not to say the rest of the record is bad; arguably, the presence of catchy and mainstream tracks like “Hard Liquor” make the experimentation of “Falling” so much sweeter.

The album’s pacing is impeccable. If there’s one thing that SOHN’s inarguably gotten better at, it’s pacing his record. It was hard to listen to Tremors on a loop. Each track was good, but the record’s overall pacing was fatiguing. With Rennen, that’s not the case.
I know many will disagree — and a lot of other critics already have — but I think Rennen is, taken as a whole, a better record than Tremors. It’s more accessible and has a stronger pacing, and SOHN is able to maintain his impeccable production and style even while he embraces more mainstream sounds.

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But somehow, despite being reminiscent of indie darlings like Dirty Projectors, The Lemon Twigs have made an album that’s approachable despite its quirks. “I Wanna Prove to You” is one of my favourite songs of 2016; it’s an anthemic originality with an incredibly sing-along chorus. I took a road trip over Christmas, and there and back, my wife and I found ourselves hollering along with the chorus. (My brother-in-law and his girlfriend, understandably, thought we were slightly odd.)

Then there’s the majesty of “These Words” and the Beatles-esque simplicity of the piano-driven “How Lucky Am I?”. “Hi + Lo” has one of the most crowd-worthy choruses I’ve heard since Rah Rah’s “Art & a Wife”. The twenty-year-old version of me in college would have proudly proclaimed Do Hollywood as one of the best records of the post-Arcade Fire indie rock movement.

All that aside, what we’re left with here is a record that’s hard to make sense of. The duo puts music together in, shall we say, interesting ways. I’m often reminded of The Beatles while I listen to The Lemon Twigs — not because they sound similar, but because The Lemon Twigs have borrowed so much from the songwriting language of The Beatles without aping their actual sound.

As a result, The Lemon Twigs have a truly original record on their hands, and a unique sound that will serve them well for (hopefully) many albums to come. Miraculously, it just so happens that The Lemon Twigs have the ability to back up their inventiveness with great songwriting.

I couldn’t recommend Do Hollywood more if I wanted to. This is one of 2016’s hidden gems.

Photo by Brian W. Ferry.

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Led Zeppelin recorded in mansions, but today’s rock progenitors are recording their music in barns.

But you can’t tell that Oliver Perry, otherwise known as D.D Dumbo, recorded his debut by a stable. There isn’t a single whinny anywhere on the record, and he’s not making country music.

What’s he making? I suspect only Perry knows.

D.Dumbo is hard to define, and harder still to contextualize. Songs like “Satan”, which is about a UFO landing and the aliens among them (who are unaware of our own concept of Satan), completely defy our expectations for songwriting. Partly inspired by video game music, and largely inspired by alt-rock prog-rock geniuses like Radiohead, D.Dumbo’s debut is hard to predict.

This isn’t just about the music, either. In case you haven’t gathered, the lyrics are equally strange. Perry is writing about the modern-day “paranoid androids” of our future, about the end of the world and the death of religious tradition. And if you asked him, he might tell you the future is a dystopian utopia — an unpredictable cacophony. That’s how I’d describe his vision of where we’re going. It’s also how I’d describe his music.

Take the really weird songs, like “King Franco Picasso”, which has an industrial beat and an Alt-J like flow from verse to chorus and bridge. I don’t really even know how to describe his music, although “alternative” seems like an appropriate enough label.

I’m a particularly huge fan of “The Day I First Found God”, which reminds me of Radiohead and U2 and modern worship music all at the same time. (It could easily be argued that U2 is modern worship music, so there’s that.)

It blows me away that this is D.Dumbo’s debut record. Musically, his ideas are fully fleshed — if bizarre — and lyrically, he’s got the whole world as his oyster. Utopia Defeated is one of the best albums I’ve heard this year, and certainly among the best debuts I’ve heard this year. I’m eager to hear where he goes next, but I’m also eager to listen to Utopia Defeated again.

There’s depth to every track on this record. That means the album isn’t easy to absorb on first go, but it’s worth repeated listens. It rewards them. If you want to be surprised by an album, and you want something you can sink your teeth into, look no further than D.Dumbo’s Utopia Defeated.

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The album was put together by Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National for charity. Each sale of the record goes towards funding HIV and AIDs awareness and research. It’s a good cause, but as far as I’m concerned, any reason is a good reason to re-visit the Dead’s catalogue.

Some of the tracks deviate from the originals in significant ways. Vijay Iver’s version of King Solomon’s Marbles, for example, renders the song completely on piano instead of the band’s traditional guitar work. The result feels like a hybrid of old-time jazz with some of Rey’s theme from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which was surprising and wonderful.

Other tracks stick closer to the script. And We Bid You Goodnight feels as powerful as ever (save its final live performance, which is thankfully available on Youtube). It’s a tremendous track, and I’m glad that Sam Amidon knew he had a good thing.

Other tracks surprise, in both good and bad ways: Mumford & Sons strip Friend of the Devil of its usual controversy and make it mass-audience friendly (which is a typical Mumford move). Each track from The National feels like a taste of heaven. The War on Drugs turn in a performance on Touch of Grey that could be described as “expected,” but I’d rather call it “effective.”

The whole album reads like a “who’s who” of indie, and some of the genre’s less well-known artists put out the best tracks. In particular, I love Courtney Barnett’s take on New Speedway Boogie and Perfume Genius & Sharon Van Etten & Friends’ work on To Lay Me Down.

Not all of the album is perfect: there’s five and a half hours of music here, so your mileage may vary. A few tracks had me hovering over the skip button. But at least an hour of the album is impeccable, and at least three hours of it is very good. Those sound like bad batting odds, but the variety of genre work here is so huge that it would be impossible to satisfy with any other track.

That wide variety could be a turn off for some Grateful Dead fans, though. After all, the band was always a guitar group. Hearing other takes on these tracks can sometimes feel like sacrilege. Other times, the self-seriousness of the record drags it down like a weight.

But yet the album feels more powerful than not. How many rock artists could stand up to this level of scrutiny and re-interpretation? The only other artist I think you could pull this off with is Bob Dylan. Day of the Dead is this rare treat that’s a reminder of the past, like a thank-you letter for it. It’s also a look towards the future.

All that being said, I think Day of the Dead’s power lies entirely in the Dead’s work. Hearing these artists re-interpret these tracks and re-contextualize them for their own purposes is fascinating, and often rewarding, but its emotional power lies entirely in the reminder that music can bring us together so clearly. It’s a celebration of The Grateful Dead, but it feels like a celebration of the power of rock music. And it’s a complete and utter joy.

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So Boucher put Grimes on hold for a little while to come up with new material. When the material did flow, it really flowed: there were over 100 songs written for Art Angels, most of which I don’t think we’ll ever hear — and Boucher has made it clear that these tracks are all part of Grimes records we wouldn’t be interested in anyway.

The result of all this writing, re-writing, and experimentation is Art Angels: a celebration of pop set against Grimes’ hallmark sunny sounds and weirdness. The opening three tracks are worth listening to as examples: an instrumental opener that’s simply bizarre leads into the radio-friendly California before the whole thing explodes into the decidedly not-for-radio Scream.

Those three tracks serve as a wonderful synopsis of the record: pop tracks like Belly of the Beat sit against oddities like Kill V. Maim (which might be the record’s best track), often dwelling in some sort of strange tension that makes the entire record feel oddly balanced in its leanings.

Despite these seemingly opposing directions — one experimental, and one radio-friendly — Grimes is able to hold it all together with uncompromising focus and unbridled imagination. Ultimately, the album feels like it’s two steps ahead of everybody else: pop music that’s laser-focused on experimenting with form and style, often to the point of flying off the tracks, all while remaining accessible.

It’s a miracle that these songs are accessible at all, though. Grimes isn’t writing love songs: on Kill V. Maim, she sings “I’m only a man; I do what I can,” words that feel completely defiant to the male-driven institution that is pop music. Throughout the record, Grimes practically screams for her freedom as an artist, experimenting with post-electronic noises and genre-pushing ideas that are more like middle fingers than love letters.

The consequence of all this is that it feels like Boucher is entirely avoiding anything personal with Grimes. There’s a sense of detachment throughout the record: it’s massively ambitious, but it’s also clearly a performance. Boucher isn’t involved on as personal of a level. While the vision is entirely hers, the world feels like a meticulously crafted production of her Grimes alter ego.

It begs the question: can pop music, in its truest form, be more personal? Or does it require detachment? Is Grimes answering the question, or has Boucher merely discovered that Grimes is at the unique intersection of performance and experimentation that allows her to drag a genre forward at the expense of herself?

Regardless of the answer, Art Angels is one of 2015’s strongest records, and a glimpse into the future of pop in an age where anything is possible.

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On Half Free, Remy’s first release on the 4AD label, she sings about suicide, father/daughter relationships, broken homes, failing marriages, and disparaging family members (in no particular order). The album’s title becomes particularly ironic, quickly, as Remy jokes on the phone in a spoken interlude about how she’s glad she wasn’t “one of those sons that turns into a fascist dictator” but instead just “another woman with no self-esteem.”

While the album doesn’t necessarily come off as political, its comments about womanhood and family are particularly timely — and extremely liberal. As Remy struggles with finding her place, she speaks for women everywhere on the way.

That’s not to say that the record is entirely depressing: musically, it has a consistent, jangly bounce to it. Damn That Valley and Sed Knife are great examples of the sort of thing I suspect U.S. Girls will become famous for: beautiful alt-pop with venomous undertones.

What Half Free really reminds me of is Gone Girl, the 2014 David Fincher movie, or even Best Picture winner American Beauty. Thematically, both similarly examine the home life dream that has come to symbolize so much of the hope people find in North America’s suburbs. And both find the dream to be left wanting, revealing that beneath that facade, the dream is becoming a nightmare of broken homes and disrupted families.

The difference between them is that with U.S. Girls, Meghan Remy is revealing the brokenness from a place of intimacy. While Gone Girl and Beauty can be shocking, Half Free feels like a personal statement. In many ways, the album is more powerful as a result.

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For one, Berninger sounds like he’s actually in a good mood (most of the time). Or at least he’s not in the pit of despair. And the music reflects this. And unlike his baritone, Leonard Cohen-like voice might suggest, *this totally freaking works*. Actually, *Return to the Moon* might be the most surprisingly good record I’ve heard all year. This is some great stuff.

If it has a flaw, it’s that Berninger and Knopf let their foot off the gas a bit about midway through and Berninger sticks his head in the bin of sorrow again. Not to deride whatever he’s going through — I don’t mean it that way — but the rest of *Moon* is so delightfully subversive that sounding even a little bit like The National later on is like taking a few steps back from your own joke. No matter how funny it was, it makes it seem like an accident.

And I’m really hoping *Return to the Moon* isn’t an accident — especially not its glorious oh-my-gosh-what-wonderfulness-am-I-listening-to first half. Because I want more music like this in my world.

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Clearly influenced by their more dream-pop contemporaries, Fading Frontier is a step or two closer towards Beach House while still retaining the dynamics that made Deerhunter work before. But now, with the additional songwriting skills that come with both experimentation and experience, Deerhunter are putting those dynamics to better work.

From the opening track, it’s clear that Fading Frontier is a better record than what’s come before. It’s got more structure, better hooks, and more memorable melodies. This is a better Deerhunter in every way, and it’d be a shame if you missed it.

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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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A ton of songs on here are worth repeat listens — check out Real Thing, which has one of the best choruses going. There are some odd influences going on here — folk, hip hop, and electronic music all sort of intermingle together on occasion — often just sounding that way because of Merrill’s intonation when she sings.

Sink-O is another totally oddball, but fascinating track. Wait for a Minute is my favourite track on the record — just beautiful, lethargic music perfect for a lazy Saturday. Rocking Chair gets my award for weirdest song of the year.

Ultimately, tUnE-yArDs doesn’t care what you think. It’s a record from a musician who doesn’t care about your expectations, and has little to no respect for the traditional musical requirements of cohesion of listenability. nikki nack is a playful, eccentric record that’s willing to have fun by refusing to play along with the program.

nikki nack is wildly inventive, and tUnE-yArDs makes it look easy. Like the most creative work, it’s bursting with the joy of experimentation. nikki nack should absolutely be the first thing you listen to this week. (Water Fountain is the first single.)

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