Math Rock / Indie Rock / Everyone High-Fiving Everyone
Fang Island seems to be having such a good time playing their eclectic brand of math-rock that it's hard not to wonder if they aren't, you know, fucking with us. These dudes have the rare ability to make fun music without pandering, probably because fun rarely sounds this musically unique. Completely lacking in the hipster irony you'd expect since pop-punk died, Fang Island is as packed full of delicious post-rock textures as it is whiplash inducing riffage. 2010 was a year of fantastic summer albums, and Fang Island's little burst of relentless, guitar-driven optimism should be on everyone's playlist when warmer weather arrives. Or really, when you just want to pretend.
Folk / Singer-Songwriter / Blues
It's not important that Sweden's Kristian Matsson happens to sound like a very famous folk musician. Pretty much every review of The Wild Hunt mentions it, but Matsson deserves all the recognition he gets for his own ample song-writing talents. And really, it's not much more than obvious talent and a no-bullshit approach to folk that makes The Wild Hunt such a standout album. Matsson is a master guitar player, and his songwriting is tight, lyrical and concise. Confident, affecting, and yet very catchy. There are few flourishes to the album, but it doesn't need them — Matsson's voice carries these blues, while his feverish fretwork provides the momentum.
Dark Metal / Atmospheric Folk / Progressive
I had incredibly high hopes for Marrow of the Spirit — possibly higher than for any album in the last year or two. Really, I was certain that any new Agalloch would take the Album of the Year spot, regardless what year it was released. So for Marrow of the Spirit to land this low is actually a bit of a shock, though I may very well be undervaluing it at the moment. Agalloch's albums are always unique and slow to unfold, each with its own defined personality; quintessential "growers." This is a fantastic hour of music, full of haunting textured guitars and powerful, earnest soundscapes, though Agalloch's songwriting seems a bit less focused than on 2006's Ashes Against the Grain. Possibly on purpose, since that feeling of openness and sprawl allows Marrow of the Spirit to avoid the claustrophobia of true black metal, even as the band occasionally dips into their bleaker roots. It's a harsher, icer sound that mostly lacks the warmth of their last two albums, but still finds moments of serenity, redemption, and plenty of atmosphere, making this an album one might easily get lost in on a cold winter night. Hell, even NPR loved it.
7. Foreign Tapes (by) Parades
Indie Rock / Math Rock / Pop
If you like Broken Social Scene's experimental-indie, jittery pop-rock aesthetic, but think they're a little too sprawling and "anything goes" to make a coherent album, then Foreign Tapes is just what you need. This haunted summer album manages to hold on to a consistent tone throughout, though that's not to say that Parades doesn't reach to new and strange places. Track to track, they throw dark, Zeppelin-ish riffs alongside intoxicating drum crescendos and frantically pounding electronics, male / female duet vocals, math-like guitar leads and blaring horns. It's a strange but fluid menagerie, and shows a personality stronger than any I've heard in indie rock for a long time.
6. The Fear Is Excruciating, But Therein Lies the Answer (by) Red SparowesSometimes a band just needs a few albums to get it right. That's clearly the case with Red Sparowes, who had never particularly impressed me before 2010. With this, their third album, not much has changed on the surface — they just finally nailed it. Songs are less meandering, more focused on melody, and Red Sparowes manages to give each track personality without losing the journey of the album as a whole. Take "Giving Birth To Imagined Saviors," which features one of the best melodies I've heard in a post-rock song in years, or album-closer "As Each End Looms and Subsides," which has perhaps the best climax. This is the rare case where I'm glad the band didn't try something more experimental, because everything falls into place so flawlessly.
Sludge Metal / Psychedelic / Progressive
Kylesa may be one of the densest, heaviest metal bands out there, but somehow these Georgian guys and gal have managed to become one of the most accessible too. On Spiral Shadow, their sound takes one giant evolutionary step into progressive metal. If the Melvins and Built To Spill decided, for some (awesome) reason, to form a super-band, it would sound like this. On first listen, it might seem as if the music is leaner, relying more on atmospherics and psychedelia, but it's more likely that Kylesa just learned how to cram their hundred influences into every moment of riffage. Psychedelic guitars spiral and bounce back and forth; everything else rumbles along with that good-old buzzsaw crunchiness. Aided by more forward male / female dual vocals, songs like "Don't Look Back" sound like they could have been radio hits in the early nineties. It all makes for more opportunities to air-guitar (and double air-drum) than ever.
Metal / Punk / Black'n'Roll
When I first laid eyes on that amazing John Baizley album cover, I figured I was in store for something good, but beyond the Baroness' Stamp of Approval I had no idea what to expect. Certainly not an Object Lesson in how metal can be unironic, unrestrained, and fun. If Converge gave you the chance to figure out just what the hell was going on before you got knocked out, it'd be this: black'n'roll, punk metal, blackened punk with a dose of sludge. You know how sometimes you're listening to a band that has so much energy, you can't help but appreciate how vibrant and exciting the world can be, and you just want to run up to the nearest person and punch them in the face? That's this.
3. Dust Lane (by) Yann Tiersen
"French," as a genre tag? Yes. I maintain that a few countries are their own genre — somehow, through whatever instruments become standard and whatever cultural associations happen over time, some countries just have a vibe. The same way you can listen to gritty slide-guitar and instantly conjure images of the southern states of America, something about France has created a tone unique in the world of music. Yann Tiersen is of course no newcomer — most would probably know him as the composer of the Amelie soundtrack, something which is very, very French. Tiersen is known for his quirky, folky neo-classical compositions, but Dust Lane shouldn't be taken as anything other than an indie-rock album. And it's an odd album, to be sure, just not in the way Tiersen's fans may be used to. Every song features vocals, though most are not exactly singing — Tiersen's voice mixes with that of a female guest in a series of echoey, monotone monologues that somehow fit these songs perfectly. The mood is dense and yet spectral, the songwriting nearly impossible to pin down for style. Many indie bands sound like they're throwing a dozen instruments at you just because they can, but Tiersen never shows off; he's just using the right tool for the job, whatever it is he's doing. A combination of things that are entirely familiar in-and-of themselves, yet produce a sound unlike anything else out there.
2. Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées (by) Les Discrets
If you've been following the underground French music scene over the last few years, you may have witnessed a rare event: the birth of a genre. It started with Neige, of Alcest, who realized that shoegaze is basically reverse black-metal — and with that wistful French aesthetic and a good dose of folk drizzled on top, you have a style that can't be described with any existing genre tag. Now, a few years later, Neige's buddy Fursy Teyssier has formed Les Discrets and pushed the music further away from its black metal undertones and deeper into some strange folk / post-punk fantasyland. Some have started calling the scene "blackgaze," and it's as fitting as anything else. There's a sense of darkness and mourning to Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées, the tone a Grimm's Fairy Tale would have if converted into music. It's dense, too, but that brings us to the shoegaze, the thick, eerie post-punk sound. That the lyrics are all in French only adds to the atmosphere, as Fursy's voice drifts through songs like a dense but small fog, sometimes joining a female vocalist to brighten the atmosphere without abandoning melancholy. The album occasionally seems hurried to deliver, but when Fursy takes time to slow the narrative and open up each piece, Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées displays some of the most beautiful, surreal sounds I've ever heard.
1. Gifts From Enola (by) Gifts From Enola
Post-Hardcore / Post-Rock / Progressive
When I reviewed last year's phenomenal From Fathoms, I spent some time trying to figure out just what makes Gifts From Enola so memorable and fresh, for what seems at first like standard guitar-driven post-rock. But by now, it's obvious that post-rock was a red herring. Surprise! Gifts From Enola is actually an instrumental post-hardcore band that happens to have a love for post-rock atmospherics. While From Fathoms remains my favorite of their albums — it's more sprawling and more of an adventure, and I happen to like every detour it takes — the Gifts guys wisely acknowledged their sudden identity-acceptance with this self-titled. The meandering post-rock subtleties of their very early material is mostly gone, replaced by confident, denser songwriting and nuclear stockpiles of energy. Vastly improved production values help showcase that unbridled hardcore adrenaline, but these songs would still sound relentless if Justin Bieber's backup band covered them. This album could hurt you. Drums are pushed way up in the mix, thudding and propulsive as a cannonade; each hit sounds like something died as a result. Every bass line sounds something you'd pay money to ride. The guitars drive it all to a breakneck pace, and remain some of the most versatile in any scene, instrumental or otherwise. Nothing is outright super heavy — there are no breakdowns like in last year's monstrous "Trieste" — but only because the songs move too fast, mixing grittiness with serenity, and often at the same time. Take Alagoas, which has quickly become one of my favorite songs of all time (and probably would have been my Album of the Year even if they'd released it as a single.) The song is a perfect summary of everything Gifts From Enola does so brilliantly, without being too flashy about it. I can't think another post-rock or post-metal band that's able to conjure as many fantastic riffs as these guys, and still spin that guitar-driven density into something that's also multi-layered, suggestively textured and fully coherent. For every shift and switch-up, the music never loses focus, and Gifts' personality is clearer than ever before. It may not be their most ambitious album, or even a perfect one, but this is unquestionably their defining album. Gifts From Enola's music has a remarkable vitality, the ability to sound fresh and interesting even after dozens and dozens of repeated plays. An achievement like that takes more than creative genre-bending, or even passion. There's no equation I can think of to give a record such energy — but whatever it is, Gifts From Enola has it.
When I reviewed last year's phenomenal From Fathoms, I spent some time trying to figure out just what makes Gifts From Enola so memorable and fresh, for what seems at first like standard guitar-driven post-rock. But by now, it's obvious that post-rock was a red herring. Surprise! Gifts From Enola is actually an instrumental post-hardcore band that happens to have a love for post-rock atmospherics. While From Fathoms remains my favorite of their albums — it's more sprawling and more of an adventure, and I happen to like every detour it takes — the Gifts guys wisely acknowledged their sudden identity-acceptance with this self-titled. The meandering post-rock subtleties of their very early material is mostly gone, replaced by confident, denser songwriting and nuclear stockpiles of energy. Vastly improved production values help showcase that unbridled hardcore adrenaline, but these songs would still sound relentless if Justin Bieber's backup band covered them. This album could hurt you. Drums are pushed way up in the mix, thudding and propulsive as a cannonade; each hit sounds like something died as a result. Every bass line sounds something you'd pay money to ride. The guitars drive it all to a breakneck pace, and remain some of the most versatile in any scene, instrumental or otherwise. Nothing is outright super heavy — there are no breakdowns like in last year's monstrous "Trieste" — but only because the songs move too fast, mixing grittiness with serenity, and often at the same time. Take Alagoas, which has quickly become one of my favorite songs of all time (and probably would have been my Album of the Year even if they'd released it as a single.) The song is a perfect summary of everything Gifts From Enola does so brilliantly, without being too flashy about it. I can't think another post-rock or post-metal band that's able to conjure as many fantastic riffs as these guys, and still spin that guitar-driven density into something that's also multi-layered, suggestively textured and fully coherent. For every shift and switch-up, the music never loses focus, and Gifts' personality is clearer than ever before. It may not be their most ambitious album, or even a perfect one, but this is unquestionably their defining album. Gifts From Enola's music has a remarkable vitality, the ability to sound fresh and interesting even after dozens and dozens of repeated plays. An achievement like that takes more than creative genre-bending, or even passion. There's no equation I can think of to give a record such energy — but whatever it is, Gifts From Enola has it.
