Though 2007 was dominated by indie rock albums, the songs that stand out were so much more ambitious than the groups making them initially came across consequenceofsound

Pelle Carlberg – Pamplona involves a choir and members of the Academic Orchestra of Stockholm, even though he apparently runs with the bulls to prove he’s not twee pitchfork

Miracle Fortress – Maybe Lately  a combination of dream-pop and Beach Boys. The vocal “harmonies” are pretty stunning, and while that whole thing is going on, there’s some crazy stuff going on with the guitar part. The dense effects, the arpeggio. It’s kinda spacy. Combine that with the keyboards and you’re definitely getting a dreamy aspect. At the same time, though, the bass is kinda heavy and the drums are kind of big in the mix. Two different directions held together by the brilliant vocals. thisisthatsong

Of Montreal – The Past is a Grotesque Animal A 12-minute meditation on regret with a disco beat? From these guys? Good thing Kevin Barnes and co. know what separates an idle jam from a damn great song, and they pepper Hissing Fauna’s epic centerpiece with enough machinated guitar squalls, namechecks, and detours into the absurd to keep our eyebrows arched throughout. Best of all, this thing builds, and by the time Barnes incites us to “tear the fucking house apart!” we’re right there with him, inches from flinging the headphones through the computer screen or careening the car into oncoming traffic pitchfork

The Long Blondes – Fulwood Babylon (12″ Erol Alkan Mix) this pretty much crystallises everything that’s so appealing about The LBs; the slightly haughty, yet impassioned vocal, the sped up, but underplayed disco beat and the kitchen sink dramatics of the lyrics. What ‘Fulwood Babylon’ has that elevates it above most of The Long Blondes’s repertoire is that lush, Northern Soul-esque piano lick. Erol Alkan, we salute you yermaontoast

Feist – 1234 If this song only brings to mind an unending onslaught of fine consumer products, then please step away from the television and give it a second chance. At the very least, try to appreciate the peculiar timbre of Leslie Feist’s voice– airy but substantial, expressive without resorting to over-emotive shows of force. Maybe take a moment to bask in the song’s charmingly coy regret, and try to enjoy the moment when the band’s restraint gives way to a euphoric torrent of strings and horns. Sure, it’s a bit overplayed, but every so often a song’s beaten into the ground because it totally deserves the exposure pitchfork

Sambassadeur – Final Say Responsible for one of the truly great indie-pop singles of the past decade (Final Say, if you were wondering) lineofbestfit

Butcher Boy – I Could Be In Love With Anyone an album of immense subtlety and depth, the kind of record you can listen to fifty times and still discover hidden treasures on that fifty first spin drownedinsound

Bill Callahan – Sycamore The song seems to be an older man’s words of wisdom passed down in aphorisms to a young friend: “Sycamore got to grow down to grow up.” It’s a song that radiates content without ever sounding the least bit smug or self-satisfied. popmatters

Arcade Fire – Keep The Car Running Repeated calls to “keep the car running” epitomise the urgency of the track, thundering faster than usual with Cure-like basslines and distorted mandolin stabs. nme

M.I.A. – Paper Planes The spine of “Paper Planes” is brilliant: Cranking up the bass on the most mournful track in the Strummer/Jones catalog, tying in an interpolation of the “Rump Shaker” hook with gunshots and cash registers, and dropping it on top of a supple boom-click beat that ringtone rappers would piss themselves for is stunt production at its finest, and instead of describing a no-man’s land with no asylum, Maya’s making paper by scoring immigrants some visas.  pitchfork

LCD Soundsystem – All My Friends about a lot of things– guilt, drugs, the weight of expectation– but mostly, it’s about aging, about how the template for growing older is melting away, and about what decisions we make for ourselves in light of such lowered expectations. This is a song about building a compass, and for Murphy, that journey not only starts with his friends: it ends there, too pitchfork

Jens Lekman – A Postcard to Nina belongs to that rarified pantheon of humorous pop songs that remain funny long after the sixth, seventh, eighth listen– there’s a seemingly endless supply of sweet, tender LOLs to be unraveled from this swooning little ditty. Its plotline (Jens must pose as lesbian Nina’s boyfriend to please/deceive her father) is pure Woody Allen, its attention to detail that of a finely wrought literary short story. And by the lite-funk coda, we’re swept away on a tide of horns and wood block towards a land of universal tolerance and acceptance. pitchfork

Air France – Beach Party bass, summery acoustic guitars, and shaker-stirred percussion waft over warm Caribbean waters, but as with Sincerely Yours label chiefs the Tough Alliance, Air France are also up to some mischief: Those vocals, floating just out of reach, quote Lisa Stanfield’s global 1989 hit “ll Around the World”. Ready for repeat trips, “Beach Party” is a true desert-island record.  pitchfork

Wilco – What Light? Well… who saw this coming? After the brave, counter-instinctive sprawls of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born, the only band you’ll find in the Americana racks worth two shits have gone and done something entirely unexpected. Sky Blue Sky is a collection of songs almost entirely devoid of eccentricity… It’s a traditional, rootsy, songwriterly affair. . . no fuzzed-up electronica, no exercises in ersatz Krautrock and certainly no 15-minute drones. Some considered the previous two albums over-produced, alienatingly so. But the layers of noise on those records seemed to erupt directly from Tweedy’s soul, bringing about a communion between listener and songwriter that few current bands are able to achieve. Here, Wilco have been glossed, coated in FM slime, making it difficult to get anywhere near the emotion that might have inspired the creation of the music… Every song on Sky Blue Sky is good, well composed, highly listenable… But only a philistine could consider the perfection of this record an improvement on the distressed pop of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or the detourned trad of A Ghost Is Born. Wilco were cherishable precisely because they overreached themselves and often fucked up in the process…
And yet… when someone you love does something objectionable, do you dismiss them out of hand? Change the locks, pack up their belongings and throw them on the pavement, without even allowing them the opportunity to make amends? Only if you’re an emotional fascist. And Wilco have remained true to themselves, in their way. Tweedy’s songs are still helplessly beautiful, and his band have caught me off guard, again. Which means I can’t help but love them still planb

The New Pornographers – All The Old Showstoppers doesn’t rock that hard. Essentially, the band sits back and lets all the elements fall into place around them tinymixtapes

The Hermit Crabs – Feel Good Factor a Glasgow band that plays whispery, loving twee-pop. Its lyrics are small-scale and full of whimsy and regret coupled with a wistful hopefulness. The musicians look for clothes “at the charity bin“; they sing odes to “my china girl” (I think this means a figurine rather than a woman from Asia); they worry that their unrequited crushes will come to a depressing fruition popmatters

Black Kids – I’m Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You There’s something weirdly out of time about this song. It was on a self-released EP this year, but I could swear I heard it playing over the credits of some 1980s John Hughes film… The references, like the kinda sloppy playing (hey, it’s a demo), are all over the place. But there’s a thread throughout, and it’s an eternal pop aspiration: to transform insecurity into a joyous, world-conquering sing-along pitchfork

Electrelane – To The East contains a blood-pumping bassline and glittering guitar, but from that fairly ordinary start, the song charges up and out of the room, brought to a boil by a persistent kickdrum and a masterful vocal duet. The accent-less, consonant-less cords of Verity Sussman are in complete opposition to the percussive qualities of the instruments, which makes for one gorgeous and memorable duel of instrument versus voice pitchfork

Those Dancing Days – Hitten Sorry to play the vindictive raincloud to their ‘infectious brand of sunny optimism’ and all, but if Stockholm’s Those Dancing Days are flying the kites, I’m sending the lightning bolts, ‘Hitten’ being a neutered slice of Motown that’s tame and stilted where Camera Obscura or The Concretes occasionally make the heartstrings soar. But don’t let me cloud your judgement, arf arf et cetera. drownedinsound

The Indelicates – Sixteen  a more unsteady, stuttering guitar line this time joined by bongos and handclaps to create a festive sound soon turned on its head by Julia’s corrosive narrative, ironically mourning the underachieving youth scene in typically ambiguous style. It’s the festivity and popness of Sixteen that makes it so ambiguous, and doubly terrific musicomh

The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – This Love is Fucking Right! the invocation of “you’re my sister” before the title is as dark as you want it to be pitchfork

Andrew Bird – Heretics Not one instrument is battling another for the spotlight; everything is presented in near-perfect unison, like a master conductor leaking just the right sounds from his orchestra while avoiding, at great length, any utterance that does not abet the overall product drownedinsound

Low – Murderer I preferred Starbursts when they were Opal Fruits. I hate change. That’s why I love Low. Sure, they’ve been through some personnel changes and aural advances since 1993, but Low’s fragile touchstones endure: gossamer anthems, crawling distortion – measured, down-tempo, harmonic pop… Alan Sparhawk sings like heartbreak. Mimi casts chorales like moonbeams. And of course she retains that brilliant hairdo. That’s Low all over: flicking a kittenish V-sign at change, from keratinous tip to effects-pedalling toe. planb

Voxtrot – Your Biggest Fan The chorus makes me imagine it as a ‘60s radio single, everyone in the country nodding along in their convertibles as it plays on the radio. But there’s also a narrative here; the ”…and she says” part, underscored by piano alone, makes me briefly imagine this as part of a Voxtrot rock opera. Then there’s the part about hate in this world, and those lyrics “we’re pretending now we’re going fifty thousand strong / this one’s a dream so shut your mouth and sing along” which gives a momentary communal vibe. And there’s a songwriting process self-critique following, and at the end a revealing section where the narrator explains that the moment he saw the object of his affection looking tender is the moment she fell in his estimation. All of this is in a solidly crafted song (which sounds nowhere as eclectic as my description might make you imagine), within the classic indie-pop foundation where Voxtrot’s music starts (The Smiths, Belle and Sebastian, etc.). bigtakeover

The Lodger – Kicking Sand Evoking the spirit of Belle and Sebastian, The Sundays and, hallowed-be-thy-name, The Smiths, The Lodger inhabit that peculiarly British world of bedsit indie… it is easy to imagine these three sallow-faced youths ensconced in that bedsit, poetic melancholy wrapped tightly around them as they create their doe-eyed, heart-strafing music. drownedinsound

The Fiery Furnaces – My Egyptian Grammar An illogical maelstrom of mutilated folktales, insidious woodwind and searing strings, it teeters dangerously close to the edge of reason. Maybe it jumps off, but it’ll drag you down too. And Eleanor turns in her sweetest vocals yet, a queen commanding vistas of mad, impossible beauty. planb

Architecture in Helsinki – Heart it Races had a line in its chorus about “made his wife a widow,” but with its throbbing synthesizer bass line, steel drum sounds and a singalong of “boom dah-dee dah-dee dah-dee,” it was too much fun to ponder darker thoughts. nytimes

Los Campesinos! – The International Tweecore Underground as equally unassuming and ridiculous as the title implies, an argument between a twee guy and his punk girlfriend about the relative merits of their scenes as Henry Rollins, Amelia Fletcher and more get large ‘X’s scrawled across their face in permanent marker. “If you knew ten years ago how pretty you’d turn out then you’d never have gotten your ears pierced,” sings Gareth LC at one point, accurately summing up roughly eight years of alt-porn for us drownedinsound

The Aliens – Happy Song If the first minute of insistent jangling and ‘la la las‘ isn’t enough to have you reaching for the whisky and sleeping pills, you might think again after being smacked over the head with a chorus that consists of 1129 mentions of the word ‘happy’ theskinny

The Honeydrips – (Lack of) Love Will Tear Us Apart a staggering monument to gentle loners everywhere pitchfork

The School – All I Wanna Do a smoochy last waltz, ends with a wink and “...let’s go home“, which suggests it is business time popmatters

Lucky Soul – One Kiss Don’t Make A Summer The music sounds expensive, yet was probably done on a shoestring and certainly won’t have a high concept music video. This is great because the vocals are filled with both the synthetic glamour of a Barbie advert and genuine soul when called for planb

Monkey Swallows The Universe – Little Polveir Perhaps the idea of reminiscing about better days in love and affording the occasional glance through the window just in case your beloved should be on their way back to you might seem a little painful – especially set to the gentlest of grooves – but in Johnson they have a saving grace. Tender and warm without being flaky and overemotional, she adds strength to ‘Little Polveir’’s quaint feel, her faintly-forlorn but not overly-dramatic vocals managing to neutralise all but the most doe-eyed of sentiments – though it’s probably not possible to recite the line “we had ‘ba-ba-ba-do-waa’ / you wanted ‘la-da-da-dee la-da-da-dah’” without sounding a little too cute.  drownedinsound

Field Music – A House Is Not A Home Almost a reposte to the Kinks’ Village Green Preservation Society, beneath the warm, nostalgic melodies lies a damning portrait of modern society. theguardian

Laura Marling – New Romantic Explaining away ‘New Romantic’ is in some respects pointless; the lyrics are ridiculous and the sentiment one-dimensional. But that’s how I felt at 17, and I like to think there’s a residual piece of this youth left in me, maybe in all of us – coursing round our skinny frames, that can only be awakened by such overt displays of faux-romantic “first love” drama… If this weird biological connection doesn’t extend to you then your mind’s gone long before your beating heart… As such I cannot downplay her, because that would be to downplay a small piece of me, of us all. So, it’s all brilliant – the subtle hints of Morrissey (“I find it dull where my heart meets my mind”), the grit and blacken’d eyes and melodies that rise, the creaking violins spilling out a world’s worth of grief over one absent, adolescent melodrama… and I’m already out of words and out of time. I cried. drownedinsound

Minisnap – New Broom essentially the Bats without Robert Scott, and replacing him with Marcus Winstanley on guitar.  The Bats are considered by many, myself included, a seminal New Zealand band that put out many great records on Flying Nun beginning in the late 80’s on into the mid 90’s… Minisnap, though sounding like a Scott-less Bats, do stretch out in different directions.  For starters, Woodward casts a more upbeat sunnier disposition with her bright voice, and the band come across a bit more laid back using brushes on the drums and even employing a ukulele-like charango on opener New Broom finestkiss

The Royal We – All The Rage six young idealists who came together in Glasgow in early 2006, drawn by that city’s musical lineage of Orange Juice, Belle And Sebastian, and yes, The Pastels – sound like Jonathan Richman, early Go-Go’s and Aislers Set. Relocated Californian singer Jihae Simmons bounces and sings unashamed like Belinda Carlisle before she went all poolside on us. These are all massive plus points. The backing harmonies are all Shangri-La’s “woo-eee-ooo’s”and sporadic, shouted “all rights”, with a little Ramones “gabba gabba” thrown in. Of course, these are massive plus points. The music is glam on the cheap; some tinny keyboards and over-layered guitars that recall Eighties Edinburgh pop crushes The Fizzbombs and Sixties beach party records and the sort of thing that was prevalent everywhere in 1980 but never ever rehabilitated: female-led power-pop (we’re talking Martha And The Muffins, the first Tourists single, The Passions. . .and a thousand lesser- known acts). And yes, that’s wonderful… This is so pop, it’s genius. But be quick! Catch them now. In December, Jihae is moving back to LA and The Royal We will be no more. . . planb

Richard Hawley – Tonight The Streets Are Ours Gentle songs sang in simple couplets sidestep smarminess, although at points teeter dangerously between heart-wrenching and gut-wrenching. Love songs break out into schmoozy waltzes and conjure images of romance and cigarettes, dark suits and handsome strangers, hurried, secret love affairs, backdrops soaked by lashings of rain. planb

Klaxons – Golden Skans Did new rave really do Klaxons any favors? Sure, it bestowed them the quasi-honor of heading up a temporary movement– a rite of passage for any aspirational British band– but it also meant that a lot of listeners already engaged in a more meaningful intermingling of indie and electronic musics kept a precautionary, hype-safe distance. It’s too bad, because tenuous dance links aside, Klaxons are actually a great band, and “Golden Skans”, with its drippy harmonies and serpentine chorus, was among the best rock singles released all year pitchfork

The Cribs – Mens Needs it succeeds in putting the shine on the band’s scuffed melodicism while retaining much of its bite drownedinsound

MJ Hibbett & The Vibrators – The Lesson of The Smiths the last song ever played on Steve Lamacq’s Evening Session show stereoembersmagazine

The Shins – Phantom Limb a shimmery, summery delight, shot through with a veritable profusion of lovely bits, whether they be Beach Boys-y harmonies, reverb-soaked guitars or the odd tickle of Farfisa organ. Any song whose chorus is simply “Oooh aaah-oooh aaaah-oooh” gets our vote nme

Club 8 – Whatever You Want The faster songs use everyday language to convey social anxiety and existential pangs, countered by sprightly acoustic strums, organs, bongos, shakers, or whistling. pitchfork

Cats on Fire – I Am The White-Mantled King the singer describes his feelings on a broken relationship whilst “Folding bedsheets on my own” and pretending to be “A bedouin leader” who “doesn’t need her”. An arresting and original image, and a break-up song that manages to be uplifting rather than depressing. thelineofbestfit

The National – Slow Show centred on the intimate feelings of a man falling in love with the woman of his dreams while simultaneously worrying that his responsibilities will cause him to lose her. Over guitar, dream-like drones and a twinkling piano, Berninger wonders aloud, “I want to hurry home to you/ Put on a slow dumb show for you/ Crack you up.” Again, it’s about escape, the search for contentment that permeates Boxer: Berninger has described the lyrics “as wanting to get out of some anxiety-filled public situation, where there’s a party or something and you just want to escape and be home, close the doors with someone that you really care about and just be stupid and laugh”. And never have the band captured that sentiment so stunningly theguardian

Radiohead – Reckoner At first innocuous, Reckoner unspools a full house of virtuoso performances engulfed by Godrich’s winter-blanket production. It soothes then soars. theguardian

Tullycraft – Bored To Hear Your Heart Still Breaks Tullycraft continues to craft the best twee anthems. The album comes complete with inside jokes, name dropping, and their usual catchy guitar riffs itmightnotlast

Spoon – The Underdog a feel-good singalong with handclaps, a horn section and an acoustic riff that’s recognizable within seconds. There’s a reason why this is probably Spoon’s best-known song—it’s Britt Daniel & co. at their most playful and fun. pastemagaine

The White Stripes – Icky Thump offers an ominous thud, enlivened by frantic abuse of a primitive synthesizer theguardian

Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings – 100 Days, 100 Nights That the music hits you, and that you only start to contemplate its cultural baggage after getting over the initial punch makes Sharon Jones a contemporary to your Otis Reddings, your Etta James, and your James Browns, not a mere imitator. 100 Days, 100 Nights further proves that not every familiar sound has to be a rip off, that in a historical context, music hasn’t hit a brick wall. tinymixtapes

Iron & Wine – Flightless Bird, American Mouth The Shepherd’s Dog has layers where Our Endless Numbered Days had space. At times, it teeters on the fencing erected between ‘sentimental RomCom music’ and ‘quirky nostalgic love song’, but see how ‘Flightless Bird, American Mouth’ avoids having its pants ripped by heroically transforming itself into a song to drink and get drunk to planb

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – Underwater (You and Me) the singer describes his feelings on a broken relationship whilst “Folding bedsheets on my own” and pretending to be “A bedouin leader” who “doesn’t need her”. An arresting and original image, and a break-up song that manages to be uplifting rather than depressing. pastemagazine

Glasvegas – Daddy’s Gone echoed Kevin Shields were he on good terms with Phil Spector and troubled by the concept of masculinity theguardian

Bearsuit – Foxy Boxer treats bubblegum seriously and produces something with actual whack: for every pleated miniskirt there are distinctively unimpressed yaps of discontent. planb

Cajun Dance Party – The Next Untouchable frantic, frustrated and more than a little Libertines-esque. Much has been made of the assured songwriting and musical maturity displayed by the teen quintet, but as football commentators are apt to say, “if they’re good enough, they’re old enough” drownedinsound

Arctic Monkeys – Fluorescent Adolescent Sure, it’s a bouncing, poppy number of the kind that will make everyone between the ages of four and 40 shake what their parents gave them while the others look on embarrassed, wishing they could join in, but it’s also sharper than a freshly stropped Stanley knife. Take a listen to the lyrics. I mean, it’s not like you could ignore them: “You used to get it in your fishnets/Now you only get it in your nightdress/Discarded all the naughty nights for niceness/Landed in a very common crisis”. It’s a bleedin’ northern kitchen-sink drama worthy of Shelagh Delaney or Alan Bennett. nme

Cold War Kids – Hang Me Out To Dry Man, is this Maroon 5 for indie kids? Piano bashing and the effect of ‘chaos’ via a few voodoo rattle shakes reveals a devastating lack of imagination on the melody line, the deficit hustled behind the calamity of loose playing and heavy bass lines planb

Johnny Flynn – Tickle Me Pink “Pray for the people inside your head, they won’t be there when you’re dead’, he sings. What he’s on about here is anyone’s guess but he clearly means it and the vocals get more powerful towards the tracks climax. diymag

GoodBooks – Passchendaele instead of blaring on about women and sex to plaintive Britpop, the high road is taken here, as the quartet writes about something interesting, like history. drownedinsound

The Go! Team – Doing it Right isn’t only a collection of ridiculous life affirmations for 15-year-old girls, it’s equally infectious for hopelessly optimistic old guys like me drownedinsound

Late of The Pier – Bathroom Gurgle Sure, the kids are alright, but they should really cut the fizzy drinks outta their diets. If they don’t, one day all pop bands will sound likeLate Of The Pier. drownedinsound

The Kissaway Trail – Smother + Evil = Hurt It’s impossible to not comment on the similarity to James Mercer’s mannered falsetto here; and TKT occasionally seem to posses his gift for a flat packed, instant indie classicism as well. The downside is that they also occasionally sound like an IKEA emo band embarking on their own Automatic For The People. planb

Asobi Seksu – Thursday each note the New York outfit delivers reveals very little about the four-piece; each is shadowed behind heaps of ethereality, atmosphere and reverb…. Lead singer Yuki is difficult to understand, in either English or Japanese – she switches in an entirely deliberate fashion – leaving the metaphors peering through these tracks mysterious drownedinsound

Lightspeed Champion – Galaxy of the Lost This is a song that sounds genuinely tired by late nights under the bright neon lights of London town. It’s a lonely relationship confessional, sadly observing the fall of a heavy-drinking ex with a penchant for her daily fill of gin, and the deadening effect drinking has: “I feel better now I’ve seen you, but deep inside my bones feel like timber.” drownedinsound

The Scotland Yard Gospel Choir – Aspidistra candid about his past drug dealing ways in the melodically upbeat come-cleaner “Apisrtada” “I used to buy drugs down at aspidistra/I used to buy drugs, I knew all the police by first name/how are the wife and kids/just hanging out no need to run me” And like many of the songs, a few verses later he unashamedly sings how he’s it at peace with himself about the past. “..It was to many run-ins, to much running away/ and if you ask my now I’d say/I’m not sorry for…buying drugs down at aspidistra.” popmatters

Sky Larkin – Molten doesn’t sound particularly arsed about pleasing you at all, which is brilliant, since please you it almost certainly will, just in a way that doesn’t go waving its ridiculous pouting arse down the high street while everyone looks away embarrassed. drownedinsound

Taken By Trees – Lost and Found Solo debut from former Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman… a  lilting chamber-pop gem worthy of its composer, Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell pitchfork

Loney Dear – Saturday Waits old woollen jumper music, thick, warm, fuzzy and worn. Hand-hewn and passed down, it’s for comfort not style, a real treasure – even if there’s a whiff of seventies MOR that won’t wash out planb

The Finches – Human Like A House Lyrics sing of mix tapes, atmospheric disturbance and distant hometowns… Carolyn has a way of singing a little too closely to the microphone, her carefully enunciated words distorting slightly but this only serves to increase the feeling of intimacy. Often, it feels like the San Francisco duo have set up camp in your living room, so crystal- bright is the sound. planb

Deerhoof – The Perfect Me They’re “deconstructing pop,” which means they’re asking questions. But on Friend Opportunity, Deerhoof work best when they blast right to the answers pitchfork

Comet Gain – Love Without Lies sounds like its ready for a night out and has already had too much gin, a glint of malevolence in its eye 20jazzfunkgreats

BARR – The Song is the Single this track’s not merely “the single,” it’s a justification for BARR’s catalog of occasionally irritating, always puzzling music. pitchfork

The Butterflies of Love – Orbit Around You Their woozy Americana is something that many bands try to achieve and somehow end up sounding just lazy and sloppy for the sake of it. Yet The Butterflies of Love make music for the somnambulist in all of us, and they make it absolutely perfectly musicomh

Trembling Blue Stars – November Starlings with its ringing guitar pattern and perfect bridge, is as good as any Field Mice song pitchfork

Beirut – Elephant Gun from the delicately strummed intro to the lilting horn line at its core to its moonstruck accordion fadeout. And his words– unadorned as always– are especially striking, touching on stagnation, senescence, and, yes, the seasons, again and again. Not bad for a kid pitchfork

Malcolm Middleton – The Rebel On His Own Tonight Roddy Woomble of Scottish four-piece Idlewild wanted to explore the artistic possibilities of collaborations between the literary talents of Scotland’s writing community with a diverse range of musicians, both new and well-established…. Ballads of the Book features songs written by fifteen different lyricists and set to music by eighteen different acts  popmatters

New Young Pony Club – The Get Go This song is quite exciting and is a bit spooky as well. Like a ghost on a unicycle. It takes ages to get to the chorus but a) so did ‘Biology’ and we don’t see you moaning about THAT, b) it is worth the wait because it is things like catchy, brilliant and so on popjustice

The Teenagers – Homecoming three French non-teens with lots of black hair and Morrissey specs, are obsessed with adolescence, with late-night walks (they’ve got a track called Sunset Beach), holding hands and snogging in cinemas. Which is all very romantic and platonic. But then they go and add pervy male voiceovers (and simpering female coos) to their lo-fi drone-pop that together sound like a rap-paedo trying to coax a sylph-like nymph (is there any other kind?) into his car, plus they swear all over their music theguardian

The Clientele – Bookshop Cassanova The Clientele emerge from the haze of suburban light into the fluorescent glare of retail lighting, dressing up a dance groove in a cardigan and thick black frames. pitchfork

Band of Horses – Is there a Ghost? I listen to music for many reasons. These include stretching, challenging, teaching me things I didn’t know before – not stating the bleedin’ obvious. Yeah, get me. Captain Reasonable. Yet it’s the same reasonableness that won’t let the review pass without mentioning that Cease To Begins modern take on The Band’s country twang a /a The Shins or My Morning Jacket is exceptional. planb

Animal Collective – Fireworks It’s a song about self-doubt, distance, and the desire to reclaim that sublime but fleeting moment when everything made sense. “That sacred night where we watched the fireworks” is the place to return to here, and the song paints a vivid picture: The scratchy rhythm pulse and ringing guitars bring to mind open sky; Avey Tare sings loud and clear, like he wants to make sure he’s heard above the din; and then the melody, which sticks in my head like nothing the band has written, tumbles down like a still-glowing ember. Animal Collective made their name by bending familiar music– rustic folk, Beach Boys harmony, swirly psych-rock– into unfamiliar new shapes; with “Fireworks”, they sound weary of abstraction. The goal here is simply to connect, and they succeed mightily. pitchfork

Panda Bear – Bros A pop song in love with the sheer joy of being a pop song, swathed in reverb and in thrall to a simple, insistent melody that only became more beautiful with each passing cycle. It breathed, it shimmered, it flowed, it defied you to dislike it. It was the least cynical thing I’d heard all year planb

1990s – See You At The Lights Sure, I have some problems with this record: ‘Arcade Precinct’ is kind of lame, that ill-conceived Tom Verlaine- wannabe solo in ‘Situation’, the sluggishness of ‘Weed’. That’s kind of it, though. Everything else on here rules in that sort of listen-to-it-a-hundred-times-’til-you-can’t- stand-it-any-longer mode planb

José González – Cycling Trivialities sounds mighty, with a beautiful vocal melody and crashing acoustic guitars prominent until it trails off, seemingly forever, as if he can not bear to stop playing. drownedinsound