There's one thing you should know: Christ is with me right now.

Do you get sick of listening to me talk about the musicians who are insanely important to me? I’m sure you are. Get on with the review already! I can hear you screaming when I write about Radiohead, The Mountain Goats, or Neutral Milk Hotel. We get it, you have feelings! One of my very favorite Silver Jews lyrics is incredibly simple: “All my favorite singers couldn’t sing.” It holds true for the man singing it (David Berman), but it also holds true for a lot of the people I adore in music. Jeff Mangum, John Darnielle, Bjork, and Scott Walker? Tom Waits? They sound like they didn’t know what singing was before they started doing it, and then found out later that there’s a way to do it. And god bless them, I love that about them. But of all of the singers I know of that I can honestly say have influenced the way I do things, I’d say Craig Finn has done the most damage, for better or worse.

Craig Finn has almost never been a “singer,” so much as a “guy with a guitar who sing-talks through drunken stories.” It wasn’t until I first heard Boys And Girls In America that I realized that you don’t necessarily have to have the best singing voice, or even a singing voice at all, to convey the message you want to get across. Could you imagine some guy with a clear, lilting singing voice pulling off songs like “The Cattle and the Creeping Things?” What about “Positive Jam?” Of course not. His sound has always been as much of a part of the sound of his bands (it goes way back to the days of Lifter Puller, when his stories were actually seedier and more warped) as Tad Kubler’s guitar tone, and it almost feels ridiculous to picture it any other way. But what happens when, instead of taking the Craig Finn out of the Hold Steady, but you take the Hold Steady out of the Craig Finn?

The first few seconds of “Apollo Bay” sound like a late-period Iron & Wine cut, pumped with bluesy, warbling tinge. It could almost be Sam Beam waiting to chime in like an angel, but instead, it’s the nasally cadence of Mr. Finn, with a little bit of half-tone poetry. It’s a strange start to the album, but it sets the pace insanely quickly: Clear Heart Full Eyes is going to be an incredibly varied affair. And that really isn’t the worst thing.

One of the most interesting things to notice, on first listen, is that if you didn’t know it, you’d never think the aforementioned seedy stories were ever part of Finn’s day job. It’s imperative that I drive that point home: if you’re really just looking for a Hold Steady detour that’s a Hold Steady record (but without the rest of the band), you’re not in the right place whatsoever. Finn is 40-years-old now, and it’s pretty possible that his whiling ways have caught up with him, and made him incredibly sad. It’s a bouncy, breezy affair on the surface, but listening to songs like “When No One’s Around,” (in which he calls out every big-talker who boasts the exploits of what happened when nobody was looking) it’s clear that he’s getting a little sick of things around him. This leads to a surprisingly fully-realized record, not from a man who has something to prove (or new ideas to try out), but from a man who has nothing to prove. All the killer parties and massive nights are conspicuously absent, and they’re replaced by an incredibly insular series of songs (yes, even more so than usual). If pressed to sum up the record in a single line, I’d say it comes from record (and possibly career) highlight “Western Pier,” with its strange tale of having to run from your own personal history: “The girls that live in my heart / Keep coming up the boulevard.” “Rented Room” is an ode to cutting yourself off from the world, and really solidifies the difference between this album, and every other record with his stamp on it: it’s the counterbalance to the “woah-oh” themes all over his other works.

Its been two years since the last Hold Steady record, Heaven is Whenever, came out, and one of the questions that comes to mind for me is, where was all of this then? The feelings expressed by Finn on Clear Eyes are almost definitely not new, and would have turned that album into a much different album. Listening to that one, there was a definite lack of something (besides the departure of keyboardist Franz Nicolay), as though everyone involved was holding back. Clear Heart Full Eyes is possibly the best thing Craig Finn has done since Boys and Girls in America, and it would have lead to a beautiful leap forward for his main band. I, for one, hope that these changes made leak out onto the next Hold Steady record. If not, at least we know he’s still capable of beauty.

Then, of course, there are the records that I enjoyed, but not enough to write about, or in the case of a handful, not write about again. In other cases, I enjoyed them a lot, but I didn’t absorb them quite enough to really judge them fairly. The records on this list are the ones that didn’t quite make the cut, but deserved some kind of praise, regardless. It is by no means complete; There are records that I just don’t quite have the words for. These are some of the records I do have words for, though.

The Mountain Goats – All Eternal’s Deck

I’ll be honest with you: I hate writing about The Mountain Goats. I’m not on the same level of fandom as a lot of other fans (as I do not own a cassette of Hot Garden Stomp, nor do I possess the Come, Come to the Sunset Tree EP), but John Darnielle occupies a very special place in my heart. He’s (almost) always been, to me, an untouchable genius, and to bother to discuss his ins and outs is almost insulting. I even tried writing a lengthy review of this record, and found it didn’t quite work. I may still finish it: it’s a record that does deserve a full review.

All Eternal’s Deck is a strangely fulfilling record. It represents a culmination of all of the hard work he’s done with his still-newly-minted band (I say new because he was alone for 3/4 of his career). and is the best they’ve sounded so far. Darnielle’s wordplay and wit are sharp as ever here, and it’s almost awe-inspiring to listen to a musician – any musician – still in their prime after 20 years of prolific songwriting. He may never quite touch the unmistakable beauty of albums like The Sunset Tree and We Shall All Be Healed, but he’s sure going to keep trying.

Circle Takes the Square - Decompositions Vol. I, Chapter 1: Rites of Initiation

I was 13 when Circle Takes the Square’s As The Roots Undo came out. It still stands out in my memory as an unsung masterpiece of Emo, and a tipping point in my own life. Seven years later, listening to that record, it still feels freshly minted, and I start to feel pulled back in time, to a point in time where that record was my life. In the months (and years) leading up to its follow-up, it was easy to wonder: will the next one be as good? To put it mildly, yes.

Rites of Initiation is but a small offering of the bigger picture to come, but they sound as on-their-game as they did back then, as though nothing has changed for them, either. They’ve clearly grown as songwriters and musicians, which is why, once the guitars slog into the picture on “Enter By the Narrow Gate,” you stop wondering if they’ve still got it, and start pumping your fists. Make no mistake: this record is one of the few to make this list that deserves to be on my best-of list, but I’d much rather judge it with the full record (Rites is part of a larger album, which was set to be released in November, but has since been delayed). I guarantee it will be near the top of my list next year.

Death Cab for Cutie – Codes & Keys

You might have noticed the absence of this record from my best-of, and if you know me, were wondering what I was smoking. I’ll be honest with you: since writing my review of Codes & Keys, I’ve listened to it maybe three times.

In hindsight, the lack of relationship-trouble-sticken Ben Gibbard is an absence that mars the record. Death Cab for Cutie have always been the go-to band if you want to feel better about yourself, of if you want someone to be miserable with. But, Gibbard was married – to Zooey Deschanel, no less – during the recording of this record, meaning that he was probably legitimately happy when the record was made. Don’t take this to mean that I only want Death Cab for Cutie records to be maudlin; It’s just that Gibbard hasn’t really ever made a song that wasn’t tinged with slightly bitter sadness, so he’s clearly still new to the process. It’s not a bad record, mind you, it’s just one that feels lacking. Here’s hoping now, since Gibbard has separated from his lovely wife, his band’s next record will be another bitter, splendid affair.

The Roots – Undun

The Roots have always proven to be one of the most exciting, forward-thinking hip-hop groups in the business, and most likely the hardest-working. They pulled a Kanye West this year, in that they decided to release an incredible, flawed, awe-inspiring masterpiece at the very tail end of the year, meaning that you only have so much time to absorb it before putting out the year-end list. Because of this, it missed the list entirely, but don’t take this to mean that it didn’t deserve to be up there. Undun is one of the best Roots records since Phrenology and (in my opinion) Game Theory, both of which are records of incredible depth, and striking beauty. Undun is a concept album, but to get that, you need to dig deep into the meat of it, spread out over multiple listens (a place I haven’t gotten to yet) and endless scrutiny. Most noticed in the last few years that The Roots were getting angrier by the record, and even though that fury shows its head a lot over the course of Undun, it comes off as a product of frustration, rather than anger. This record is the labor of love, and the true mark of a group that has only just gotten started.

Shabazz Palaces – Black Up

I had a chance to see Shabazz Palaces back in September opening for Seattle-hip-hopper Mackelmore, but I didn’t take it. It’s just as well; I had never heard Shabazz before then, and every report of the show said that the venue they played did nothing for their belching-bass and tribal-craziness. Since hearing Black Up for the first time, it has grown on me immensely with every single listen. It’s the anti-Undun, and the likely by-product of listening to Liars too often (spoiler: there’s no such thing as too much Liars). It’s really impossible to tell exactly where Shabazz Palaces are going to go, but it’s more than likely that Black Up will, over time, erode the fabric of what hip-hop means, and alter it forever. It’s innovative and soulful, and you never feel like Ismael Butler’s slightly-psychotic cadence is over-the-top, or missing the mark. Hats off.

Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica

Nostalgia is an incredibly potent drug. We live in a culture obsessed with the art of looking back in time, to a place where we were wanted, despite all of our flaws. It’s not a surprise that the music we make reflects that nostalgia, though some do it in better ways. Daniel Lopatin (aka Oneohtrix Point Never) is easily one of the best people making music that examines the past, and probably one of the most interesting people doing it. Replica is an album that, at first, sounds like Tim Hecker and John Weise teamed up for a record; it’s a quilt made out of fragments and rough sketches. It’s only once you dig deeper that you discover that those fragments are a window into the past itself, showing us a shattered vision of the world we used to know, but have since vacated for a different one. It’s not a record for the faint of heart, and be warned: it will suck you in very quickly.

The Weeknd – Echoes of Silence

The fact that I didn’t dig deep enough into the newest Roots record was my own fault. I could have put forth the effort, but was too absorbed in other things (namely, listening to The Antlers a bunch more). Echoes of Silence, however, doesn’t make the list because the mixtape is, as of this writing, three days old. Weeknd records feel like a special treat to pour over, and Echoes of Silence is by no means an exception: You can tell once “D.D.” explodes into color that this record is something different, especially when you realize the song is a cover of Michael Jackson’s “Dirty Diana.” Unlike Thursday and House of Balloons, two albums which were veiled by fog, this record is encased in a hard shell of swirling beats and buzzing reverb. Clams Casino’s production on the record takes Abel Tesfaye’s typically drugged-up lyricism to a new level of seedy excess, making it almost unlike anything we’ve heard from The Weeknd yet.

So, without further ado, I give you the albums that I found worth hearing in 2011. Like any of my lists, it is by no means complete; I didn’t listen to everything I wanted to this year, nor did I listen to certain albums as much as I had wanted. This is just a representation of the things that I concerned myself with the most in the last 12 months. Enjoy.

Also, P.S.: I always end these things with a long-winded thank you to the people in my life. I’m not going to really bother with that. I’ll make this quick, though: To Kelly, Yousef, Arya, Darren, and Jordan, thank you.

Radiohead – The King of Limbs

Good morning, Mr. Magpie.

One of the best parts about being a crazy-big fan of Radiohead is the month or two that comes after the release of a Radiohead record. You hear so many different things about it, you’d think that there were several different versions of the record floating around, and everyone had heard a different copy. It’s almost like a pretentious game of Telephone. I regret never getting a chance to write about The King of Limbs when it was released, but I want to correct that mistake here. During one of those conversations (with a friend I had run into on Record Store Day), it was put like this: “If you liked OK Computer, you’ll like In Rainbows. If you like Kid A, you’ll like The King of Limbs.” This is a basic – but not far off base – assessment of the rift that the record opened up in the Radiohead fanbase. It was like they had released Lulu. But I’m getting side-tracked. The King of Limbs is quite possibly the most stripped-down record Radiohead has yet produced, which is a sentiment that I’m forced to strip away from In Rainbows, for it now doesn’t deserve it. The album has a lot of depth to it, and though it may not be the strongest of the band’s albums (they can’t all be heartbreaking works of staggering genius, people), it’s still better than a lot of the records we all heard in the last year. The King of Limbs, to me, sounds like the sound of a band that has made three undisputable masterpieces, two simply genius ones, one bore, and one dud (I’ll let you debate which goes where), that just wants to enjoy themselves after 18 years. Why mess with that?

Iron & Wine – Kiss Each Other Clean

Sam Beam and I have always been friends. He has always embedded his music with a strange beauty, like an atheist trying desperately trying to write church music. I’ve never been disappointed by his albums, and Kiss Each Other Clean is by no means the exception. From the first song, “Walking Far From Home,” you know that it’s undeniably an Iron & Wine record: Beam at the center, with the rest of the circle almost indistinguishable from the last time. He delicately reinvents himself every time he comes out, and his experimentation, inexplicably, always works to his advantage. Kiss Each Other Clean is striking in beauty, and will give you goosebumps like every other one of his records. Sometimes, being reliable isn’t a bad thing: he may not have tiptoed past his comfort zone very much since Iron & Wine became a full-on band, but I won’t ever begrudge him that.

Bjork – Biophilia

I conquer claustrophobia.

It’s very possible that we all assumed Bjork was going to save the world with Biophilia, and it’s still possible for her to do so. Biophilia is Bjork’s most grand album in years, and yet it somehow still feels incredibly down to earth. It’s the antithesis of what she was going for with Volta, or for that matter any record she’s done before this one. She has always been a true free-thinker, and Biophilia reassures us that, no matter what she’s doing, she knows full-well where she’s going with it. With this, she reached in every direction, for the sky, for the galaxies outside our own solar system, and for the cells inside our own bodies. It comes off like her attempt to vocalize her amazement that it is truly strange to exist, and to exist as we are. I don’t want to gush too much about the record (just read my review for more of that), but Biophilia may very well be, in the years to come, widely regarded as her most flawless album. Is it? That’s for you to decide.

Drake – Take Care

I'll take care of you.

To me, any End of the Year list for 2011 is going to feel slightly incomplete without the inclusion of Drake. He’s still a new star, and yet he feels like he’s been around for the last decade, just in the background of every R&B wunderkind’s mixtapes and debuts, just waiting to emerge from the darkness, and take his spot among the greats. Take Care comes as a breath of fresh air: it’s an album that was released into a market flooded by artists dwelling on the upsides of excess and fame, and came to ask an important question: What’s the downside? Take Care speaks to us from an alien place, where our own excesses and hang-ups are reflected back at us, and reminds us of a world where people will camp out in parks for weeks on end to bring to attention the fact that our society is slightly off-kilter. It’s not a political message by any means, but it’s a message that rings clear as a bell just the same; for all of the excesses that Drake indulges in during Take Care, you immediately see each and every problem, lain bare in front of you. That’s a pretty impressive statement to make, for a star rising as quickly as Drake.

St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

I've seen America on my back.

It’s really hard to get over how remarkable Annie Clark can be. She’s in the background of a couple of your favorite bands, and once she came to the foreground, she proved that her ability to self-improve as a musician is, at present, unmatched. Each of her records has been better and more breathtaking than the last, and Strange Mercy is no exception. It’s her own ode to the excesses of the lives we lead when we’re not at home, but it does it in a much different way: with violent guitars and incredibly ugly imagery. All of the beauty that covered Actor in ’09 has been boiled away with battery acid, leaving a tragic picture that can be embodied in one simple line: “I’ve had good times with some bad guys I’ve told whole lies with a half smile.” Strange Mercy came out just a little too late for 2011 to be Clark’s year, but if there was one single musician who deserved for it to be, it was her.

EMA – Past Life Martyred Saints

Twenty kisses with the butterfly knife.

It was half impossible to write about a record like Past Life Martyred Saints, especially since everything has already been written by the rest of the blgosphere. So, I’ll condense it down for you, here: Erika M. Anderson (aka EMA) is just now putting out her very first solo album, and somehow, she’s managed to make it sound so assured and fully-realized that you could easily believe this was her fourth album to date. Her voice comes through speakers like a strange clarion call, rising above the din of a thousand women trying to be Leslie Feist, and it’s clear she wants to forge a brand new path, and to hell with whoever wants to copy that. Her songs burrow their way into your skull and lodge themselves there, and yet they never come off as sickly, infectious, or catchy. The record, while rough around the edges, is one of the biggest things I’ve heard from anyone in the last year, and it’s absolutely magnificent. The blogosphere blew up this year because of Anderson, and I regret not getting in on that bandwagon when it came ’round. It took me a few months to hear Saints, but I’m a true believer now.

Tyler, The Creator – Goblin

I'm not a fucking role model.

You could easily argue that Tyler, The Creator will never make a song as untouchable as “Yonkers.” There wasn’t an inch or that song that felt uncomfortable: it was the sound of a genius poking his head in. People are still debating the artistic credibility of the rest of Goblin, but let me ask the naysayers a question: what else were you expecting? A Common record? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but Tyler is an extremely talented rapper, and though his subject matter may sometimes be questionable, he weaves a story together in a way that only his missing comrade Earl Sweatshirt is capable of. “Listen deeper than the lyrics,” he asks us at the end of “Sandwitches,” and this is the best advice you can be given about Goblin: ignore the fact that the imagery is violent. Listen to the stories being told, and how they are put together. “Fish” may be about a fisherman doing unspeakable things, but you can’t deny that it’s a beautiful song. The same goes for “Her,” which is Tyler’s way of explaining that, underneath his rough exterior, he still has feelings, and it still hurts when his love interest gets back together with the guy who’s not good enough for her. It’s entirely possible that he is the Eminem of the open-book-hip-hop generation, why deny him his right to stretch out? Even if you consider Goblin to be a misstep, and a waste of the promise shown on the Bastard mixtape, you can’t deny that it’s the work of a confused boy who has a lot of directions he wants to go. I, personally, see it as a triumph, and I’m willing to ignore its flaws (there are flaws – I just think they’re outweighed by the positives), and I’ll gladly await the release of Wolf next year.

The Antlers – Busts Apart

Put your trust in me.

Okay, no: Burst Apart isn’t the same album that Hospice was. Why would it be? Burst Apart is the less open brother of that album, and though its stories are less personal, they are no less moving. Its sound is incredibly lush, almost humid in production, and the way it plods along comes off as somehow ancient in origin. Its predecessor bore an air of hope, which is strangely absent from this recording: you wouldn’t expect a song called “Putting the Dog to Sleep” to be the most optimistic song on the record, but it is. I can’t tell you what I expect to come next from The Antlers, because after listening to Hospice as many times as I did in the last year, I thought I had them figured out. Burst Apart is the most beautiful of curveballs, and it’s truly a sight to behold. In short: you need to hear this record.

The Decemberists – The King is Dead

Give my best to Springville Hill.

I’m never going to stop loving The Decemberists. When The King is Dead came out, I was a little wary. The Decemberists are a band who have always been reliable for long-form, carefully crafted novels in nine-minute song form, or albums based on Japanese fables. But then I came to respect the fact that, for every “Mariner’s Revenge Song” and “Crane Wife 1 & 2,” there was a “Red Right Ankle,” “Of Angels & Angles,” and “Eli, The Barrow Boy.” What I didn’t realize, initially, was that The King is Dead was simply an album of those short, wonderful songs that took place in between the “California One / Youth And Beauty Brigade”‘s of their records. The record is not as flawless as The Crane Wife or Picaresque was, but to be fair, they deserve a break from being incredibly epic, don’t they? If you want to hate The Decemberists, that’s just fine by me. I can understand finding their over-the-top, hyper-literary style to be too much to bear, but I’m never going to complain about it, and they’ll always occupy a massive space in my heart.

Bright Eyes - The People’s Key

One for you, and one for me.

The People’s Key doesn’t sound like Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, Cassadaga, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning, Fevers & Mirrors, Letting off the Happiness, or Lifted. Really, those albums didn’t sound like each other, either. The People’s Key is a lonely, affected pop record, with its sensibilities warped in the hands of maestro Conor Oberst. It comes across less drunken than he ever has (indeed, the last American tour date in support of the album found Oberst to be completely sober), and it suits him surprisingly well now. It lacks a definite agenda, and it brings to the table a fair few incredibly infectious songs that stand out as some of the best in his songwriting career to date. And, yes, it does have the obligatory “punch-you-in-the-gut-with-sadness” track (here being “Ladder Song,” possibly one of the most beautiful he’s ever written). It’s unmistakably a Bright Eyes record, but it feels ever so slightly different. He’s grown a lot since Letting off the Happiness was released, but then again, he was 18 when that album came out. This is a more assured Conor Oberst, and though it’s rumored to be the last ride for Bright Eyes, I look forward to whatever he does in the future, no matter what name it’s under.

Beastie Boys - Hot Sauce Committee Pt. II

Too many rappers, not enough emcees.

When a band takes a seven-year rest in between record, you start to have a feeling, deep in your gut, that it isn’t going to be that great. To the 5 Boroughs was a heartfelt detour from the normal Beasties formula, but it was regrettably their weakest record. I won’t hold that against them, though. New York is so integral to Beastie Boys, and that was a record that served as an open letter to their wounded limb. Listening to Hot Sauce Committee Pt. II, however, you’d think that record never happened. Even its strange experiments (behold the incredibly infectious reggae detour “Don’t Play No Game I Can’t Win”) feel as good as any Beasties track. They’re the best band that sounds like every line is written in all-caps (I’m serious, think about it), and though I had my doubts, I found myself incredibly impressed by the end result. It’s    the album we won when we fought for our right to party, and it proves that, even though all the members are in their 40s, they can still bring the noise with a lot more passion than just about everyone else around them.

Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

Oh my, what I used to be.

What is there to say that hasn’t been said about Fleet Foxes? As one of the more gorgeous bands of the blog-hype era, Fleet Foxes stand alongside Bon Iver as musicians who really can’t go that far with their trademark sound. Though, as we have seen from both this year, that hasn’t stopped anyone from progressing. Helplessness Blues really isn’t that far removed from where we left the band on Fleet Foxes and the Sun Giant EP, but the sound is a hell of a lot more worldly. They’re still channeling the heart and soul of Americana, but it’s now infused with a wealth of world music. Robin Pecknold, who sounded so assured of himself on songs like “Mykonos” and “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song,” now makes the man on those songs look like a shy 15-year-old boy; he’s confident, and his soaring voice towers over everything in a way that seems ever-so-slightly removed from the man singing back in ’08. They are one of the few bands in the blogosphere that you really can’t argue about: they make pretty, folk-tastic lullabies that can be loved immensely by your kid sister and by your 64-year-old grandmother, and sung loudly on your bike ride home from work. You would think their sound would get slightly tired, but I don’t see it going anywhere, and it’s only going to get stronger.

James Blake – James Blake

There's a limit to your love.

The thing that infuriates me about American fans of Dubstep is that they’re all to accustomed to the machismo and testosterone-fueled dance-partying that is so much a part of what American Dubstep producers make. A man like James Blake won’t sell to those people, because you can’t really dance to him at all: he makes downtempo songs to play during your lovemaking, and adapts Feist songs. He doesn’t wear a stupid mask, or have a terrible haircut. He’s what Randall Munroe would look like if he made beats instead of math comics. James Blake the record has a lot of promise, and though it is woefully stripped down, it can be construed as a good thing: it leaves him a lot of room to evolve and shift gears as he goes along. It remains to be seen if he has an Untrue in him, but I wouldn’t doubt it. Blake has a beautiful soul in it, and though it was made more for bedroom floors than dancefloors, it stands as a triumph of what was originally envisioned for the Dubstep genre. My praise and hats off to Mr. Blake.

The Weeknd – House of Balloons / Thursday

You're the life of the party.

I didn’t have the pleasure of enjoying The Weeknd before we all found out who Abel Tesfaye was. I came late to the party, and missed the persistent hand-wringing and questioning of every nook and cranny of every song. I enjoy this, honestly; I got over that musing when I first heard jj two years ago. Now that the veil has been partially lifted, we see who has made these two impeccable records. House of Balloons doesn’t sound like the work of a young producer, it sounds like the work of a seasoned veteran, and Thursday is exactly the same story. Tesfaye’s production is lush and dreamlike, and it works as a perfect counterbalance to the sinister things buried under his powerful and assured voice. There’s rampant drug use and a couple group-sex sessions, and somehow he composes all of this in such a way that you don’t even bat an eyelash. Tesfaye could very well be the most impressive and promising new artist of the year, and I, for one, am extremely excited to see where he goes with it.

Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Still alive for you, love.

As discussed above with Helplessness Blues, there’s really only so far you can go with folk rock. If you’re Radiohead, you can change your style as you please, but if you’re a decidedly folk band, you have to adapt. It’s like being Tom Hanks in The Terminal: you can go anywhere you please, do whatever you want, but you can’t leave this place. What separates the one-hit-wonders from the true artists is how they adapt within that restraint, and whether or not they grow as an artist whilst staying in the same pot. Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) is the kind of man who can pull that off, and it shows in Bon Iver, Bon Iver: he’s a man who could have easily never released another album after the immense hype that came like a wave following the new-heartbreak masterpiece For Emma, Forever Ago, but he decided to keep going. What followed was a natural progression of his sound, and a solidification of his wonderful craft. It doesn’t feel like it was recorded in a cabin, it feels like it was recorded in the world itself, and that depth makes for fantastic repeat listens. Bon Iver is not a hi-fi recording, and it doesn’t need to be. He’s almost definitely go the money to make a record that sounds impeccable, but it’s possible that he never will. He seems content with keeping his music so insular in fidelity, and it adds to the general aesthetic of the music. If Vernon were to stop now, he would have proven to everyone that he isn’t just “that guy who made a record in his cabin,” and we could all be content with that. It’s clear, though, that he’s not done. Here’s hoping he doesn’t run out of the beauty he’s so good at melting into his records.

Tom Waits – Bad As Me

You're the same kinda bad as me.

It’s possible that Tom Waits doesn’t have a bad record in him. It’s even possible that he doesn’t have a bad song in him. I’m by no means a Tom Waits expert, but as an outsider looking in, I’m thoroughly pleased with Bad As Me. For my money, Waits in the modern era has surpassed Bob Dylan on a side-by-side comparison of solid storytelling chops (I know, I know, don’t question this, I’m merely saying Waits is more consistent), and Bad As Me is proof of that. It shows him at his most demented (the insanely infectious “Hell Broke Luce” showcases him at his most psychotic and unhinged) to woozy and heartfelt (“New Year’s Eve” adapts “Auld Lang Syne” in the best way possible), and everywhere in between, and at no point do his story-weaving abilities waver. Bad As Me is a travelogue of the brawlers, bawlers, and bashers we’re used to in any Waits record, but their lives are now justified, rather than simply examined. Waits is 61 as of this writing, and it’s entirely possible that he may simply keep making music until he expires. What’s clear though is that, maybe, at this point in his life, he feels the need to atone for the sins of his characters, too, before it’s too late. Whatever he’s doing, though, it made for a fantastic listen.

You're cruising with the bad kids in town.

I was probably 14 when I first listened to Pavement. During a wild hunt for lo-fi artists, I was given a very simple recommendation, which I will never forget: “Pavement <3″ So, I went and downloaded the deluxe edition of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (which I, due to my dyslexia, read as Cooked Rain), and put it on before going to bed. And about 15 minutes in, I turned it off and put on The Postal Service’s record again. I just didn’t understand it.

A year later, my computer’s hard drive died. Went kaput. It was gone. All I had to my name, musically, was all of the CDs I’d burned. So, I went through all of them, and found my copy of Cooked Rain, Cooked Rain, and decided to give it one more shot. After a year, my teenage brain had grown just enough that Pavement songs made sense to me, and Cooked Rain never left my CD player for months on end, until I knew the thing front-to-back. As a confused slacker teenager, I took solace in the confused slackerhood of Stephen Malkmus, who’s nonsensical lyrics made for private anthems in my bored and lonely brain. It was part of what made me want to learn to play the guitar (I give most of the credit to The Hold Steady, but that’s not important, really), and what made me realize that not all songs had to make much sense. It also taught me that it was okay to not know where you were going with your life.

I saw Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks on the night that their last album, Real Emotional Trash, was released. If you’ve heard that record, you know that it would be the kind of album Syd Barrett would have released if he was in Pavement: it’s noisy, it wanders constantly, and it makes very little sense, even though its storytelling is very good. It was a mess of an album, and to this day, I still love it immensely. And now, we have Mirror Traffic, which couldn’t be more at odds with Real Emotional Trash. It’s worth noting that, despite the fact that Mirror Traffic is five songs longer than its predecessor, it’s also five minutes shorter. What does that say about the record? Simple: it’s a Pavement record.

Another digression: In the space between Animal Collective’s Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavilion, Noah Lennox (aka Panda Bear) released Person Pitch, an album with such a personality, it bled into the creation of Merriweather Post Pavilion, and it shows. In a move that felt like God was listening, in between Emotional Trash and Mirror Traffic, Pavement reunited. It’s entirely possible that the whirlwind tour supporting this reunion bled its way into the making of this record, but it’s not really something I would complain about: it’s an album full of short, breezy songs that feel crisp and fun, and incredibly Malk-tastic. To borrow a sentiment someone expressed to me: it’s the most Malk-y thing he’s done in years. And I absolutely love it.

From the moment “Tigers” starts, and you hear Malkmus’ air-whipped guitar tone, you can tell that it’s an incredibly different affair. To discuss his lyrics is basically pointless (they surely mean something, but it’s pointless to dissect them), but if the first line doesn’t tell you about the tone of the record, I don’t know what will: “I caught you streaking in your Birkenstocks / A scary thought.” It’s a line that almost feels – dare I say it – cute. And that’s how a lot of Mirror Traffic comes across. Even on “Senator,” which is an attempt at scathing political satire, comes off chipper, even with a chorus like “I know what the senator wants / What the senator wants is a blow job.” It’s gleefully profane, even mixed in with social commentary. Listening to the rest of the record, it’s clear that the album is a labor of fun above all else (gander at the rhyme “Alabaster wino / God speaks through that albino” in “Stick Figures in Love”), which makes its pointless, Pavement-esque lyrics feel worthwhile.

Listening to the album feels like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. It’s a shame that the album didn’t come out at the beginning of summer, rather than the tail end; it’s an album that feels custom-built for summer walks, road trips to the beach, and cookouts with your friends.

To critique the record almost feels beside the point. It’s clear when you listen to it that, above all else, it was released out of a sheer desire to have fun. I came into the record wanting to break it down into points, but sometimes, you just can’t do that. Mirror Traffic is one of those records that feels immune to the typical tricks used to discern the merits of an album. So, I’m just going to tell you this: if you enjoy Pavement, The Jicks, Stephen Malkmus, or guitar music in general, you’re probably going to enjoy Mirror Traffic a lot. It’s your loss if you don’t like it, but if you like any of those things, chances are, you’re going to have a blast. And if you don’t like it, just go listen to Slanted & Enchanted again and call it a day.

Beacons don't fly too high.

Whenever I defend dubstep, I find myself mentioning three people: Four Tet, Burial, and James Blake. Though Four Tet isn’t  ”really” dubstep, he’s on the same level as the rest, and serves as a midway point between what Blake and Burial do: they use their art as an altar where they worship the human voice. It’s clear on Untrue (a milestone of the genre) that William Bevan (aka Burial) is a worshiper of the power of the voice, perhaps more than anyone else in his field.

To me, James Blake stands at the forefront of the genre. He’s currently one of the most prominent producers, and one of the more vocal. Recently, he came out against American producers, and their idea of things. If you’ll bare with me:

“I think the dubstep that has come over to the US, and certain producers– who I can’t even be bothered naming– have definitely hit upon a sort of frat-boy market where there’s this macho-ism being reflected in the sounds and the way the music makes you feel. And to me, that is a million miles away from where dubstep started. It’s a million miles away from the ethos of it. It’s been influenced so much by electro and rave, into who can make the dirtiest, filthiest bass sound, almost like a pissing competition, and that’s not really necessary. And I just think that largely that is not going to appeal to women. I find that whole side of things to be pretty frustrating, because that is a direct misrepresentation of the sound as far as I’m concerned.”

In just a few words (maybe more than a few, but you get the idea), he managed to air a very real complaint with the state of music. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a young kid who “really likes dubstep,” but will mention Skrillex and Deadmau5 first and foremost when talking about the genre. It’s a style fueled mostly by testosterone, with less regard for the sound they are making, but more for the fact that you can dance to it. James Blake the album is not a dancing record, and that’s what makes it special. It was made in a time-honored tradition of making dubstep that was meant for your living room, where you sit, and have a glass of wine with your lover. It’s sensual and mellow, and most decidedly not part of any pissing contest. And that’s part of what makes it beautiful.

Stepping back a moment, I’d be a fool if I didn’t mention the fact that Blake, like Will Bevan, is a voice worshipper. It’s omething that is instantly noticeable when you listen to the record; just a few short moments into Unluck, Blake’s chopped-and-skewed voice comes into the mix, intoning a simple message about the album as a whole: “Treated walls, care for me.” In five words, he manages to speak volumes about his lot in life, and though it’s so small in scope, it says it all perfectly. This simplicity serves as a pseudo-M.O. for James Blake, where it’s okay to let the music and the tone of the song speak for itself, rather than bothering with overdone strings of lyrics. “I Never Learnt to Share,” for instance, builds slowly and tensely off of one single repeated and echoed phrase: “My brother and my sister don’t speak to me, but I don’t blame them.” It’s incredibly simple, and yet you understand what he’s saying completely.

One of the focal points of James Blake is his stark rendition of Feist’s “A Limit to Your Love,” which echoes the slow build of the original, but strips it down entirely until it’s almost nothing but a piano line. He conveys the central point behind Feist’s version of the song, but in keeping with the rest of the record, uses half the words that she does. It’s almost magical how he manages to do it, and he does it on every song here.

Truly, my only complaint about James Blake is that it feels a little too minimalist. Blake’s ability to be the Rachel Ray of R&B (meaning, working with the bare minimum in his arsenal to make something wonderful) is possibly unmatched, but a start-to-finish listen of the album almost feels like walking through an unfinished house. It’s clear that this was his intent, but it’s almost disheartening. Blake is a young man full of promise, and he uses all of it to make albums that feel like they’re half silence. It’s a minor complaint, to be sure; his ability to work with those silences and change the mood of a room entirely is ingenious. It just makes me crave more.

Dubstep from Europe feels at complete odds with what is going on here with the people using the name, it almost feels unfair to use that name. There will always be arguments about what “punk” really means, and the same is true of “goth,” and “indie,” and pretty much any genre that isn’t staunchly defined. However, it seems to me that, no matter what, James Blake is still a lot closer to where dubstep started than anyone else at the forefront of the disagreement. No matter where you stand, and how you feel about what “dubstep” means, I can give you one small piece of advice, one that Blake himself would likely appreciate, for its concise nature: Keep watching this man.

My arms are made of see-through plastic.

Far out in the outer reaches of the overdone end of the “chicks with great voices” genre lies a small, unregarded niche.

At least, it was once unregarded. There was once a time when the figureheads of the “powerful female lead” category stuck out like sore thumbs: Fiona Apple, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Leslie Feist (among others). Then something different took hold, and that classification was overtaken by women who wanted to be just as powerful and affecting, but only knew how to imitate. It’s where we get Sara Bareilles, and Yael Naim, and Lily Allen, and to a lesser extent Lady Gaga. When once you felt like you knew where you stood, now the market is over-saturated, and nobody seems to want to truly grab hold and find their own voice anymore.

Erika M. Anderson (or EMA) sounds a little like each of the aforementioned figureheads, but at the same time exactly nothing like any of them (besides, possibly, Fiona Apple). Really, the only person to compare her to is Conor Oberst, but in the best possible way. Anderson has been around for awhile now (having been part of Gowns before going solo), so it’s no surprise that her voice comes to the forefront of Past Life Martyred Saints from the first moment of “The Grey Ship.” There’s something to be said about Anderson’s ability to come out of the gate so fully formed: even though the fuzzed-out sound signals a rough edge, once you brighten those corners, you find a remarkably solid piece of art. Her handle on the song structure, and how to drill her songs into your head without being invasive, is unrivaled, especially at this point in her career.

That’s one thing I’d like to highlight: for all of the rough edges, 3/4 of Saints is incredibly catchy. There’s a lot of repetition built into the songs here, but it never becomes obnoxious or sickly, nor could it ever be accused of being “infectious.” “Coda” introduces the vaguely nonsensical chanting that flows into “Marked,” an ocean-sized almost love song, where Anderson opines her wish that “every time you touch me left a mark.” These repetitions create a strange atmosphere, almost coming off as credos, rather than lyrics. The persistent chant of “twenty kisses with the butterfly knife” in “Butterfly Knife” is the most gruesome of these, but it adds a strange depth to the song, which is already a stark portrayal of a history of self-abuse: the line’s repetition makes it feel like it (and that which is being sung about) is a ritual. It’s disquieting at times, because it (and a lot of the other lyrics all over the record) makes it feel like a therapy session made musical. It never comes off as angsty or whiny, simply vulnerable, with an attempt at openness.

When I saw EMA perform, she closed her all-too-short set with “California,” and she politely asked the in-house sound-guy to turn up everything as loud as possible without blowing anything out. It demonstrates the power of that song that, despite being cranked to 11, it still functioned as a song. It also shows how well constructed the album is that, though the rest of the album isn’t quite as massive and overblown as that one song, it doesn’t overpower anything, or feel out-of-place. Anderson is incredibly promising, and if she (like the aforementioned Leslie Feist) spawns a nation of imitators, I can’t say I’ll be able to complain. The rest of the singers in the world (male and female alike) could take a lesson in power and confidence from her.

I don't wanna be a cheerleader no more.

One of the things I love most about Annie Clark, aka St. Vincent, is that she’s an incredibly warm person in real life. Her candid, friendly presence in interviews was what actually inspired me to give her (and, strangely, Arrested Development) a second shot. I’ve never regretted doing so; she’s incredibly reliable as an artist, and isn’t shy about explaining the meaning behind her art. She really doesn’t need to, though; on Marry Me and Actor, the stories told were incredibly self-explanatory, and devoid of convoluted metaphors. Is it really hard to interpret a line like “I’m a wife in watercolors / I can wash away?” Of course not. And that’s part of her magic: you could hold a lecture series based on the decoding of any given Bjork record. The same isn’t true of Clark.

Another thing that’s incredibly wonderful about her is that she can reinvent herself as she sees fit, and it never feels unsure or rough. Though I didn’t like it at first, when I first listened to Marry Me, I never thought for a second that it was the work of someone just releasing a solo record, due to the fact that it came out gracefully, and without reservations. Strange Mercy marks the third transformation of Clark, and it’s hard to adjust to at first. There was something lush and gorgeous about Actor, with all of its string swoops and stereo vocals. Those two things are removed completely in favor of an almost claustrophobic, fuzz-driven sound. It’s immediately noticeable: ten seconds in, her overdriven guitar floods the mix, almost boiling away everything else around it. It almost overpowers her pleading: “heal my hurt.” This becomes a common theme for the record, and it even shows on the cover: cries for help are stifled herein.

What makes Strange Mercy remarkable is the fact that, despite feeling much smaller in scope than its predecessors, it’s still one of the most lush albums you’re bound to hear all year. Clark wields her guitar in a way that sounds as though the instrument is being raped, and yet it serves as the perfect counterweight to everything that happens on a typical St. Vincent record: its overblown nature is an odd, and sometimes ugly, reflection of the often despicable things that go on in some of her songs; it almost sounds itchy at times, especially when it slogs alongside the sickly drum machine pounding that amplifies the tension in just about every song.

Three albums on, it seems that she’s become a lot less adept at masking the routine malaise that coated her work thus far. She comes off at vulnerable, even scared in places, which is a drastic change from her incredible stoicism in the face of failing relationships, both romantic or otherwise. At times, it plays like Clark’s idea of a breakup album, like what would might have happened if Blood on the Tracks were made by a sober genius, instead of a drunken one. “I know honest thieves I call family / I’ve seen America with no clothes on,” she recalls on “Cheerleader,” opining the downsides of her profession being her life as an open book. On “Champagne Year,” when she sings, “I make a living telling people what they want to hear / It’s not a killing, but it keeps the cobwebs clear,” it comes across as almost remorseful, and it yearns for a change.

Two years ago, Clark sang an incredibly simple sentiment, and its message still rings true here on Strange Mercy: “save me from what I want.” She’s still noticeably happy in performances and in interviews, but if you didn’t know better, you’d wonder exactly how much of her music is autobiographical. The problem, of course, is that immense pain makes for great art, and even if her pain is fictional, it has made for incredible music. Would she still be so powerful without this desire for strange mercy? I’m inclined to say that, as the years go on, she’ll make everything she touches look effortless.

There are fox fur and feathers all over the suburbs.

The best albums are the ones that slowly pull you in, as though in a trance. It’s hard not to be mesmerized by albums like that: you sit there, quietly transfixed by that which is wrapping itself around your nerves and synapses. At her best, Bjork is  more than capable of this feat, but there are few musicians who really manage it. Scott Walker is one of the small number of men that accomplish this task. These musicians find a way to construct everything to the exact specifications for keeping you glued to your seat, heartily awaiting what’s coming next.

On “Engine in the City,” the first track of Viscera, I sat wondering what I was going to be hearing. And after a few seconds, Hval pops her head in. “I arrived with an electric toothbrush pressed against my clitoris.” As you may know, I’m big on first lines, and as far as first lines go, this is a pretty jarring one. It sets the stage for the strange, sexual tone of Viscera (more on this later). The really unfortunate thing for her is, the way Hval chose to express that tone is, at times, a little off-putting.

I’m going to get the good part out of the way: Jenny Hval has a truly wonderful voice. It’s difficult to really place where it falls in the hierarchy of Women In Music, but if pressed, it would be somewhere between Leslie Feist and Joanna Newsom. That said, her way of articulating is all her own. It’s not unique, it is merely different. But it is different in that it is hypnotic. The way she’s chosen to express herself on Viscera is a gorgeous thing indeed, and if she happens to garner the fame required to “take off,” she’ll likely find a very good home in the spotlight as an immensely talented vocalist.

The bad part is the sexual tones brought up already. Singing about sex can be done in a non-cringeworthy way. It’s even completely possible to sing about it in a way that doesn’t make people bat an eyelash. But the name of the record says it all about it: Viscera. Parked somewhere in between “sex” and “intestines,” you’ll find this word. Clinically, you’ll find this word in your lower abdomen. It’s a gruesome word. And in keeping with that, the lyrics that deal with the subject are done exactly as well as you would expect from a feminist poetry reading. The word “clitoris” comes up more than once: during “Blood Flight,” she sings, “And on the edges of the cunt grew little teeth / The clitoris, that great Sphinx, opened it’s eye / So many blind years, acting Oedipus.” It’s hard to ignore lyrics like this. Later on, on “Golden Locks,” she not-so-coyly discusses her hair slowly turning into piss (I am not kidding) in the night. Just before that, she coos “My heart breaks, and my mouth breaks and opens like a clam” after being told “You need to get laid.” She also sings the phrase “golden showers” several times. I said I’m not joking, right?

Herein lies the problem with Viscera: if you could ignore the lyrics, it would be an extremely engaging album. The songs often feel aimless in length and direction, but given a subject matter more palatable, this would be a good thing, rather than a downside. I feel ridiculous having such a problem with the subject matter here: to say that the album is “minimalist” would be an insult to the word, being an album as close to bare-bones as you can get without falling apart. If you can pull yourself away from how awful some of the songwriting is, you find yourself listening to one of the most beautifully made record of the year.

But that’s not what it’s about, is it? You should be able to overlook clumsy writing (I grew to ignore the lines about semen in Neutral Milk Hotel songs) in the face of beauty, but it’s hard to completely ignore the lyrics altogether. Listening to Viscera, it’s clear that there was a definite intent, and nothing is actually poorly constructed, per se. Make no mistake: this album is striking in beauty. It’s just a little difficult to chew through the gristle to get to the really good parts. That said, I eagerly await another album, which hopefully won’t make me feel like a prude for cringing.

I guess you win some, you lose some, long as the outcome is income.

Somewhere along the line of hip-hop, it became okay to do a couple things: 1) You get to opine the downsides of being ultra-rich, super-famous, and hideously-good-looking, and 2) You get to do it in a really pretty way. The first time I noticed it was Kanye West’s Late Registration, which took his R&B infused glamor-hip-hop, and brought in a layer of sadness over the fact that, no matter how rich, famous, and good-looking you happen to be, you can’t do shit to change the lives of those around you. It was incredibly prominent on “Heard ‘Em Say” and “Roses,” two songs at odds with the massive size of the record that contained them (an album that was still fairly reserved when compared to the albums that came, minus the gloriously minimalist detour 808s & Heartbreak). Kid Cudi took it a step further with his tales of grungy rockstar excesses and drug habits on Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager. It suddenly became cool to question your place in things. There’s something tragic about Take Care, and you know it just by looking at the album’s cover: Drake will always be a man with swagger, but he’s a nigga who goes through real shit, just like everybody else in the game.

One of the first things you notice about Take Care is that it almost never feels overblown. Marvin Gaye is sitting on Drake’s shoulder throughout the record, and it makes for an intensely interesting listen. You know you’re listening to a different breed of hip-hop record when the first line is “How I’m feeling, it doesn’t matter.” “Over My Dead Body” is an undeniably beautiful song, where Drake’s reserved bravado is spilled out over a gentle piano line and a drum loop. It sets the stage effortlessly for the record, which feels incredible in scope, and yet never quite takes off. Even when he delivers the biting hook of “Marvin’s Room,” though he delivers it under his breath (“Fuck that nigga that you love so bad / I know you still think about the times we had”), but it feels almost furious.

Don’t take that as a bad thing. Take Care is an album that could, if it wanted to, be the brightest thing you’ve heard all year, but it never even threatens to. Somehow, even when Nicki Minaj shows up on “Make Me Proud”, she chills the fuck out a few degrees. And she’s Nicki Minaj. ”Make Me Proud” is one of the only tracks on the record where Drake breaks from his sad sack mood to prove that he’s worth the intense hype, and somehow he still exudes an air of coolness. Here, he’s so cool that even The Weeknd feels like a second banana, and Abel Tesfaye is practically sub-zero. It’s almost beautiful. Even Lil’ Wayne, who shows up on “HYFR (Hell Yeah Fuckin’ Right)” rhymes with more passion than he’s exuded on the last three records he’s put out, and it rubs off on the star, who is almost unbeatable in the track.

I feel as though “beautiful” is the  the one-word description for Take Care. There’s something to be had when a fast rising star spends the title track of his insanely-hyped record singing to his ex-girlfriend, and then closing that song out with a Gil-Scott Heron sample. It may be too soon for Drake to come off as “going soft,” but it’s a shade that suits him quite well. “Shot For Me” comes off almost defeated, with him trying desperately to be bitter at a girl who left him. Not many high-profile rappers are this comfortable making a record about the low-points that come with fame (the loneliness, the lack of privacy, the women who are with you because you’re you), but Drake pulls it off effortlessly.

That’s the other word that I could just use over-and-over to describe what Drake’s accomplished here. People will inevitably talk about how the woozy, sad-sack crooning is boring, but if it is, it’s because he’s made it look easy. Take Care is the record that we were promised when the good-but-lackluster Thank Me Later came out last year. Drake is on the fast track to being a major star (he already sorta is, but a bigger star), and if this is what we have to look forward to, I have no problem with his fame.

Is your love worth the nausea it could bring?

I made a firm decision a long time ago (around the time Deerhunter’s Microcastle came out) that Bradford Cox was a filthy, stinking genius. They do still exist in music, and they aren’t all musicians who have been working since the 70s. The current generation of musicians has them: Richard D. James, Thom Yorke, Win Butler, Isaac Brock, Kanye West, Tim Hecker. I’d personally count  Peter Silberman in that list, but that’s just me. The list doesn’t truly matter, to be honest. When I first dug into the meat of Microcastle, I became consumed with the weight of his simple brilliance. I had put some thought into the bands of that decade that were going to be remembered in the next generation, but it was then that I decided that, if Bradford Cox wasn’t remembered, it would be an insult to the medium.

Atlas Sound has always been a side-project that wasn’t too far off base from the original band. Let The Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel and Logos were incredibly reserved records, ones that showcased the brilliant possibilities of being a true “bedroom producer”: it felt like it was truly recorded in a bedroom, and though that aesthetic added to the feel of the records, it wasn’t what they were about. All of the Deerhunter records were on a different wavelength: they did feel agoraphobic, but they felt open at the exact same time. The first to Atlas Sound albums were pure claustrophobia. And that was really beautiful.

Parallax is album three for Cox under the Atlas Sound name, and on first listen, it feels oddly like a solo Deerhunter record. The trademark Atlas-Sound-stream-of-consciousness is there, but there’s something else paired with it: it feels more cohesive. Believe me, this isn’t a bad thing: it stacks up wonderfully against its siblings. Opener “The Shakes” tells a story of an aging star who’s “Found my money and fame / But I found it really late.” It’s a quiet anthem of lonely excess, and it almost comes off as an extremely delicate counterpoint to the point made in MGMT’s “Time To Pretend.”

Even with all of the themes of claustrophobia that Cox sews into his lyrics, it’s hard to take a great deal of warmth from them, especially here on Parallax. It’s one of the best albums of the year to simply swim in, and doing so makes it rewarding to try and discern what he’s singing in any given stanza. It’s a little like Panda Bear’s Tomboy from earlier this year: there are lyrics, but it’s almost beside the point at times. On “Te Amo,” for instance, you can pick out fragments: “When you’re down, you’re always down,” “I’ll pretend you were the only one.” It makes for a dreamlike atmosphere, and rewards repeat listens.

It’s only once you dig in that you discover the delicate film of pain hidden in things. “Is your love worth the nausea it could bring? Is your love worth those you left hurting?” Cox sings on “Modern Aquatic Nightsongs.” There’s a strange malaise in these songs, and queries like those just written are sung like they’re No Big Deal. When he sings “Kick me while I’m down – why don’t you?” on “Praying Man,” he sings it like it’s an actual suggestion, and not a sarcastic one. It’s almost beautiful to hear someone sing from a place of hurt regularly, and yet seem unaffected by it. It makes the atmosphere of the record almost unearthly, and yet even when you do let his words wash ashore, it never loses its gorgeous sheen.

Parallax is the most fully-formed Atlas Sound recording yet, and it’s a great sign. I have yet to be bored or displeased with these records, and though they lend themselves best to sleep and background music at dinner parties, they offer gold to those patient enough to wade in and pick things out, which I highly recommend doing. If nothing else, you just found your new favorite record to take baths to.