It’s easy to see 2005 as noughties indie’s last hurrah – a year packed with so much good stuff the genre could never be the same, splintering into orchestral pop, synth-pop and watered-down indie hangovers like Scouting for Girls nme

Antony & the Johnsons – Hope There’s Someone Sounds like both a revival and a quiet, unself-conscious elegy for that long-lost bohemia, which was eventually decimated by AIDS, drugs, gentrification, and, perhaps, its own success. All that time between then and now hasn’t dated the sentiment, though: even 20 years late, it carries the same impact as Susan Sontag’s abstracted short story “The Way We Live Today” and Tony Kushner’s play Angels in America.

That’s a weighty burden for one song, but “Hope There’s Someone” shoulders it gracefully. The words and hymnlike melodies are simple and straightforward, as is Antony’s soft piano. The only sign of other musicians comes on that ghostly final section, which at first sounds like uninvited psychedelia but actually evokes a soul let loose from a body. Whether it’s ascending to the heavens or simply dissipating into the ether is the song’s woeful mystery, and it hangs with the unhappy heaviness of a question mark that even that short, hopeful closing coda can’t alleviate. More than anything else, the song is a memento mori, a reminder to all of us, regardless of sexuality or geography, to fear the end but embrace the mystery, to hold our loved ones a little longer pitchfork

Voxtrot – The Start of Something the sort of band that deserve to sink like a crate full of Terris LPs after a release as strong as the Raised By Wolves EP… As soon as the lead track kicks off – and kick off pretty sharply it does too – there’s something undoubtedly arresting about them, with the playful basslines, fawning lyrics… Supporting track ‘The Start Of Something’ goes even further in attempting to revive the C86 scene, only with vocals reminiscent in places of both Stuart from Belle & Sebastian and Stephen from The Smiths… For a band that flick so effortlessly between moody types of music and musical types of mood, they’ve already accomplished it exceptionally well. Let’s hope there’s plenty more to look out for. drownedinsound

The New Pornographers – The Bleeding Heart Show one of those songs that you listen to just to get to the ending, because that ending is so transcendent. medialoper

The Spinto Band – Oh Mandy From the opening strums of mandolin, it was clear that “Oh, Mandy” was a rush of pop perfection consequenceofsound

Love Is All – Felt Tip Moving from an icy, preening strut to a rallying clairon call, “Felt Tip” shows off Love Is All’s preternatural knack for crafting the bittersweet, combining dejected, melancholy sentiment with an impossibly hopeful delivery. From the slight echo on the bass to the bed of maracas and pick scrapes during the lugubrious verses to the heavily-accented female singer urging hip kids to “step right on the beat” before the tempo shift in the chorus, “Felt Tip” is a near-perfect amalgamation of lo-fi production styles that’s an embarrassment of rich detail pitchfork

The Futureheads – Hounds of Love Twenty years ago, the hounds of love were in the trees, and Kate Bush stumbled wide-eyed through a Tim Burton backlot while her Walkman played “In the Air Tonight”. Flash forward to recent times, and the Futureheads are in their garage-rage confusing the pursuer with the pursued. These chaps hit the ground running with their steady-cam, stabbing at the titular beasts with their guitar picks and hate-it-or-love-it harmonies. If these boys don’t know what’s good for them, it’s because they’re too busy being gloriously obnoxious to bother with being scared. pitchfork

Maxïmo Park – Apply Some Pressure doesn’t gorge until the bridge, when stomach staples pop and singer Paul Smith loses everything. No appetite management can stop metastasis. But besides insidious, the hooks were also among the most understated of the year. Only permitted a two-figure stab, the guitars are resourceful, letting tumbling drums round the sharp edges. Smith wailed bolder than his stage dress, then the histrionic blokes trundled onto some adjacent set. Straight eighths? No matter, by that point we were starving. Frantic bass, shoulder-charging guitar, geysers of harmony, carnival organ whipped cream– no less would have sufficed. pitchfork

Franz Ferdinand – Do You Want Too I’ve realized this track might be great– mostly because it does no wrong. That’s not to discredit the song’s partysnark/nerd quotient (“I love your friends, they’re all so arty“) or Franz’s impossible dual citizenship here, at once above the scene (“You’re so lucky…“) and slyly entrenched in it (“Your famous friend, well I blew him before ya”). But like, say, the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” or Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel”, “Want To” works a gassier floor than all that Bravery/Killers/Brave Killery stuff because Franz aspire to more than moving bodies– they want, among other things, to make somebody love them pitchfork

The Blood Arm – Do I Have Your Attention? what the ‘Arm most hint towards is Julian Casablancas and co. at their most riotously, slurringly drunk. Which possibly doesn’t sound great, but it certainly has its moments. Those moments are none-more apparent than halfway through this EP on ‘Do I Have Your Attention‘; a ramshacklingly ace tune of non-descript bohemian observation drownedinsound

The Clientele – Since K Got Over Me moves the Clientele out of the hazy suburban light and into the Technicolor sunshine, lifting its guitar hook from the Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me” and breaking out the tambourine. It’s a deceptive move, though, because the lyrics offer one of the most vivid and accurate pictures of a breakup yet offered in this young century. Alasdair MacLean trudges down some lonely sidewalk in Battersea with his hands shoved in his pockets and the collar of his mac pulled up around his face, talking through it to himself. “I don’t think I’ll be happy anymore/ I guess I closed that door,” he sings on the wonderfully short-sighted refrain as he thumbs through regret, anger, and confusion. It’s a pitch-perfect blend of nostalgia and dejection, painting emotions and environmental details in impressionistic strokes pitchfork

Vashti Bunyan – Lately Apparently time stopped for Vashti Bunyan in her three-decade stretch between albums– Lookaftering sounds like it could have been issued right after 1970’s Just Another Diamond Day. But that’s because both albums exist out of time, in a place without genre or era. Of course, there are twinges of Nick Drake in Bunyan’s sound, but her fine ribbon of a voice unfurls across the bed of guitars, recorders, glockenspiels, and Joanna Newsom’s harp, and the results aren’t really like anything– folk or otherwise pitchfork

CocoRosie – South 2nd Do you know the chime that those jewellery boxes make when their lids are lifted to reveal a pirouetting ballerina and all your sparkling jewels? It’s with a similar sound and a similar partially veiled magic that the Cassady sisters commence Noah’s Ark… It seems as though CocoRosie could exist anywhere. Noah’s Ark plays like a letter addressed to the sisters themselves; it’s almost selfish in its self-envelopment, ignorant to the world outside, and therefore a perfect and oblivious escape. planb

Devendra Banhart – Santa Maria de Feira ‘Cripple Crow’ is way too much, in a way we don’t get given often enough these days. Take it all in at one sitting and you’ll end up bloated. But little and often? It’s a cut-and-come-again treat. nme

Spoon – I Turn My Camera On Frontman Britt Daniel struts in the foreground, flaunting his double-tracked Princesetto like handcuffs or a feather boa while shaming Sir Jagger’s “Emotional Rescue” register-climb. There’s violence in Spoon’s sex, though. Guitars jag like irrepressible memories, a throbbing bassline represses its incipient pelvic thrust, end-of-the-world noises swirl from side to side, and eventually Daniel’s grim lyrics come into focus: “I turn my feelings off/ Y’ made me untouchable for life/ And you wasn’t polite.” Passions sublimated, desires conflicted, “I Turn My Camera On” savors tension while threatening climax pitchfork

LCD Soundsystem – Daft Punk is Playing at my House All cowbell, synth, and thump-thump, “Daft Punk” sounds like the theme song to some unwritten cartoon, detailing the misadventures of house party-hosts nationwide. Goofy and undeniable, the track is at its best when at its most familiar: Sarah’s girlfriend is working the door, everyone dragged over their PA, 15 cases wait, and the furniture is stacked neatly in the garage. James Murphy’s pedigree may be screaming NYC, but “Daft Punk Is Playing at My House” is pure suburban bliss, all cars-on-lawns, neighbors on the phone with cops, puke in the shrubbery, and sweaty, red-cup holding bodies, arms raised, crowding the living room dance floor pitchfork

Half Man Half Biscuit – Joy Division Oven Gloves In the same way that the best parts of Viz magazine are pretty indecipherable to anyone who has never tried to cure a hangover with a Gregg’s steak bake, Half Man Half Biscuit will only make sense to you on a repeatedly enjoyable level if, for instance, you understand the line “I’m being sued by the firm More O’Ferrall“. Trivia-laden music for trivia laden minds: ie, the British. stylusmagazine

The Lucksmiths – Now I’m Even Further Away a 21st Century remedy to those whose adolescence was spent listening to Morrissey and Marr without ever getting over the initial anguish of their more heartbreaking fables drownedinsound

British Sea Power – Be Gone while it’s familiar musical and lyrical territory, there’s a distinct movement towards the other end of line marked ‘important yet individual’. And individual they remain; hark at the way that ‘Be Gone‘ shakes and quakes as singer Yan magestically uses the phrase “I love your iridesecent sheen“. Who else? Quite? drownedinsound

The Broken Family Band – John Belushi people might miss the quality of Adams’s writing is because he is funny. On the Broken Family Band album Welcome Home, Loser (their best, though Adams disagrees; he thinks it’s Hello, Love) he sings one moment about living with a satanist (“This house, well, the sun would come in nearly every day/Now the drapes and the altar and the pentagram get in the way”), and the next, on the wonderful John Belushi, about simply having had enough, and needing to stop (“I don’t feel like freaking out with your friends / They’re nice enough people, but the good times have to end / And I warned you that the slow time was coming soon/Tonight I’m laying down in a smoky darkened room”) theguardian

Sufjan Stevens – John Wayne Gacy Jr The album’s most straightforward song is also its most profoundly disturbing. Its subject is Illinois’s infamous “Killer Clown”, so called because he dressed as a clown for fundraisers and children’s parties, and sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 teenage boys in the 70s. Stevens takes us through Gacy’s childhood, his local popularity, and his violent crimes then, as if unwittingly recoiling from the horror of it all, he draws out a languished, falsetto “oh my God”. The most shocking moment comes when he empathises with Gacy. “And in my best behaviour,” he concedes at the song’s close, “I am really just like him / Look beneath the floorboards / For the secrets I have hid.” The song, he says, is “a remark about potential more than anything else. We’re all capable of what he did.” theguardian

Sufjan Stevens – The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts one of the most interestingly-composed songs on Illinois, and possibly one of Sufjan’s most interestingly-composed songs overall. It has an angelic chorus, brass instruments, quiet, contemplative sections, propelling loud guitars… what more could you ask for? pastemagazine

Electrelane – Gone Darker Axes is a filmic, spacious experience -frenzied piano riffs mutate into teasing experimentation, merge into thunderous metal guitar and primal drumming, and back again into a garage-style instrumental break. Guitars threaten to break loose, and playfully lead each other on, as they do with all the best jazz improvisations. Yet never once does the album break down or falter. It’s too driven for that.
Axes gives the lie to the more poppy route Electrelane turned to with last year’s The Power Out. Instead, nods are given in the direction of Neu!, the Gallic visions of film sound-sculptor Jean-Claude Vannier; also, the math rock trickery of Prekop and O’Rourke. Electrelane have too much of a garage rock grounding, however, to forget the primary purpose of their music is to entertain.
The centrepiece is ‘Gone Darker’, a seven-minute epic that serves as both travelogue and adventure. From the distant boat sounds at the song’s start, through Susman’s squealing sax and Mia Clarke’s menacing guitar, the song builds to a crescendo of wordless recrimination and movement, until disintegrating in a chilling denouement. planb

Scout Niblett – Fuck Treasure Island She thrives and unravels all over this… Produced by alt overlord Steve Albini and impinged by the hurtling sticks and riffs of Jason Kourkounis and Chris Saligoe, Neptune is a stirring, faux-coiffured medley of wigged-up love-ins and loved-up wigouts. If Scout Niblett’s songs were a comic strip they’d be Peanuts: shy, wry, philosophical, self-obsessed, childlike – quaint, bare endeavours whose simple wiles belie acute wit and poignant style. planb

Art Brut – Emily Kane written for Eddie Argos’ real-life first girlfriend, Emily Kane’s song is, in typical Art Brut style, hilariously honest– although unusually for Argos, its details are intentionally vague: The ripple effect of his first love is intricately drawn, the girl herself is not. It’s funny ’cause it’s true: The first often sets the template by which every subsequent romance is drawn, and time does nothing but make those clumsy, naïve kisses seem more ideal. But it’s great because Argos doesn’t know how to portray the simplest emotions as anything less than epic, and by the end of the song untamed beasts stomp around souls, torches are aflame, something resembling a theremin starts whistling away, and Ms. Kane’s unexceptional moniker has been alchemized into an anthem for lost innocence pitchfork

Adam Green – Emily Despite maturing musically, he still has the sense of humour of a porn-obsessed 1 3-year-old: there’s much talk of “cocks”, women with odd gynaecological problems and lots of drugs. If your mate did it, it would be about as funny as breaking your foot, but when Adam does it, it’s like a thousand Converse-clad angels pouring honey in your ears. planb

Jeffrey Lewis – Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror rambling urban-bohemian fantasia, an L-train-riding Lewis asks Bonnie “Prince” or a sunglass-clad doppelganger whether e-mail interviews and polite critical notices merit turning our dreams into hobbies– i.e., “Is it worth being an artist or an indie rock star, or are you better off without it?”– and receives his admittedly lame, possibly sexist answer only after getting violently fucked, Palace-style. pitchfork

The Mountain Goats – This Year popmatters

Brakes – Ring a Ding Ding compressed indie-rock down to its essential parts on underrated debut ‘Give Blood’. ‘Ring a Ding Ding’ packs in all the euphoria and melancholy you expect of the genre with its 97-second whirlwind of awesomeness, leaving you clinging to lyrics like “Dance dance dance to the monkey macaroni/I had to get out, boy, it was making me horny” as if they were treasured love letters. nme

Arcade Fire – Wake Up a universal call-to-action, a bid from Win Butler and co. that’s too fun to pass up. There’s something unspeakably joyous about “Wake Up.” With its group harmonies, buzzing guitar chords and meandering piano parts, the song sounds like the kind of adventure that everyone wants to be a part of pastemagazine

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah – The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth gleefully nudge the bounds of good rockness on this self-released debut, daring you to dislike their froggy Violent Femmes vox and childish instrumentation, their carnie-barking intros and endlessly incanted finales, their bizarre but inscrutable lyrics and, of course, their unignorable, instamockable moniker. Easy to lose amid all that (and the Bowie sightings) is the melodic pop songwriting justifying the band’s quirks…. It’s a record about rebirth: moving to the city, finding a new face, falling in love, and picking up the pieces– clapping your hands and saying, finally, wtf pitchfork

Sigur Ros – Hoppipolla Yesterday I skipped through self-indulgent rambling outros; today, quivering tightropes of violin guide me between songs. Yesterday I resisted the too-catchy strings and piano pop of ‘Hoppipolla’; today I cave, swoon and sing. planb

Animal Collective – Grass nearly everyone who’s heard “Grass” agrees that it sounds like something sweet and benign, spliced and scrambled until its prettiness twists into something vaguely grotesque. Punctuated by vocal squawks and thundering rhythms, “Grass” is as infectious as anything on the pop charts, and lots more fun to scream along with pitchfork

Camera Obscura – I Love My Jean the words to ‘I Love My Jean’ and the third track on this single ‘A Red Red Rose’ were actually written almost three centuries ago by Robert Burns. Still Camera Obscura have done an impeccable job at creating a cover version of something that’s never actually been covered in this sense of the word before drownedinsound

Hello Saferide – My Best Friend Maybe it’s because Sweden never had a Margaret Thatcher to tell them there was no such thing as society. Maybe something got lost in translation. Anyway, while transatlantic pop wallows in egocentric selfishness, Hello Saferide communicates the value of friendship and community. When you see Hello Saferide’s multi-racial, mixed-sex band it doesn’t feel studied, it feels like an education by missionaries from a far better place. Their social-democrat utopia may not really exist but it’s nice to pretend it might stylusmagazine

Sambassadeur – Between The Lines to accuse Sambassadeur of feigning some soft-centred nostalgia trip would be unjust, as the winsome ‘Between The Lines’, characterised by  Anna Persson’s dusky vocals which range somewhere between Petula Clark circa ’66 and Bilinda Butcher in the middle of ’86, shines like a glitter crested nebula in the midnight sky. drownedinsound

Bloc Party – So Here We Are After ‘Helicopter’’s distillation of the perfect indie tune a year earlier, ‘So Here We Are’ was a perfect single choice. Rather than trying to match it, like the not-quite-as-good ‘Banquet’, it revealed a new, melancholy side to the group nme

Arctic Monkeys – Mardy Bum surely no teenager can have experienced the years of stale relationship despair that is so brilliantly observed on Mardy Bum, which is what makes the turn of phrase so astonishing. Virtually every lyric here is a winner: “that silent-disappointment face” is instantly comically familiar, likewise the whole “you say I don’t care, of course I do, I clearly do!” interchange. And then the pay-off line, “you’re all argumentative and you’ve got the face on” is a pure exercise in generating wistful smiles ­– the imagery could’ve come straight from a Mike Leigh movie, but to articulate it so concisely takes real skill. What doesn’t take any skill is the Arctic’s one-dimensional, unsubtle music, but that can be forgiven when it’s a vehicle for such sharp wit. thedecade

The Long Blondes – Separated By Motorways Sheffield Sex City! If T’Monkeys sleazy tales of Leadmill life seem set to make voyeurs of us all in 2006, then The Long Blondes are here to provide a little, um, detachment. Polished to under-produced perfection by uber-twiddler Paul Epworth, ‘Separated’ sees Kate Blonde hitching her way from despair to nowhere, sighing, “Two lonely girls go on the run” amidst the crackle of analogue. Yet this isn’t the search for arcadia, instead it’s, “Blue skies and pylons to Suffolk/A1/A14”. A steely northern response to the romanticism of ‘Albion’. nme

Babyshambles – Albion What do we want from our heroes? These ‘people’ we invest our lives in? Love? Sex? Fame? Drugs? Bullshit. What we want is music. And a whole-hearted acknowledgement that we are here. Whether you like it or not … Mr. Lennon, Mr. Pop, Mr. Lydon, Miss. Smith, Mr. Richards etc: your music has brought us to this place. You have responsibilities. Ingest as many substances as you like. Fuck as many pretty girls and boys as you can handle. Tell everyone around you to piss off and destroy as many tourbuses, hotels and venues as you wish. We (sort of) expect it. But if you start screwing with us Mr Songwriter – remember us?, the people that buy your records and come to your gigs, the people that wake up with your songs in their head, the people that care so much about your music they begin to live through it – if you even think about messing with us, by god, we’ll hunt you down like a dawg. Or even worse, forget you ever existed. So Mr. Doherty – drug addled star, walking disaster, the persistent no-show, the sweet lost boy and the evil, maniacal waster. Now’s your chance to prove us wrong, show us that all the superficial bullshit has been worth taking, all the disappointments have been part of the plan and all this doe-eyed derangement isn’t just facilitating the rot. Give us some music worth remembering!

Goddamn it! It’s the Batman theme! Not it’s not…yes – there it is again! And wait…that’s not Kate…it is! Kate Moss is singing! The not-so happy couple make their entrance on ‘Down In Albion’s first track, ‘La Belle Et La Bete’ and it’s horrible – really horrible….I really wanted this to be a great record. I wanted to find something. Something gracious, something mysterious, something intoxicating… Alas, taking up the reins and continuing to stride through these sixteen tracks of bad reggae, shambolic punk flalings and that now oh-so infuriating Doherty voice (which incidentally, is so out of tune throughout this record, it leaves the realm of the free and unique, and ends up stuck in a wobbly chimney overlooking Bethnal Green – bird shit included) we begin to realise he’s done it again. It’s disappointment after disappointment folks…. But it is ‘Albion’ – supposedly Doherty’s very first composition and tellingly a tune revived from his days with The Libertines – that stands towering above the rest. It’s a rather beautiful acoustic paean to this olde isle, in which Doherty’s past charisma and enthusiasm comes flooding back: “Talk over gin in teacups /And leaves on the lawn/ Violence at bus stops / And a pale thin girl with eyes forlorn”. Here is the Doherty that needs to be heard…But it is a very fleeting glimpse on a record that will turn his followers heads away in shame and wholeheartedly confirm his enemies vitriol. So if you really care Mr. Doherty, you’re going to have to do a lot better than this. drownedinsound

Yeti – Never Lose Your Sense Of Wonder So the saga of the ex-Libertines rolls on. One remains missing, one is filling out nicely and smoking fags while lying in a hot tub on a yacht in the south of France, one sits at the back of the Borderline greeting a gentle torrent of fans. And one – John Hassall – is right up front, centre-stage, playing songs that, 43 years ago in Hamburg, would have been traded with four mop-topped lads for pills and ciggies…. At the back, Carl Barât remains in his seat, the queue just as long. But tonight belongs to John. And Paul. And the other ones. nme

Razorlight – Somewhere Else a very serviceable string-drenched ballad where Borrell extorts his desire of “I wish I could be somewhere else” over a slice of ego-friendly sampled roaring crowd drownedinsound

Of Montreal – The Party’s Crashing Us “Oh, well, we made love like a pair of black wizards!” Barnes sings midway through “The Party’s Crashing Us.” The line floats over a funky synth intro riff, proving once again that he’s the king of inserting weird inside jokes into a song that’s actually intensely serious. This time, Barnes sings about his relationship with Nina Grøttland as their relationship hits new heights. “And all those ugly days / That made us so sick / They are just fossils now,” wails Barnes; “The Party’s Crashing Us” is an optimistic song, written just after his relationship would be turned upside down with the birth of his daughter Alabee. Confusion and emotional chaos would dominate much of Barnes’ lyrics after The Sunlandic Twins, but for one of the last times, he’s in a happy place filled with partying, sex and dancing pastemagazine

Broken Social Scene – Ibi Dreams of Pavement (A Better Half) breaks in with a woozy, five-alarm guitar– a warning call for the track’s off-key surrealism and pile-on distortion. Like the shaky ascent of a homemade rocketship, the song constantly teeters on cataclysmic oblivion; shards of chords slip away and grind against each other as the track embarks. Buried between the static and the void, mumbled vocals are folded in before the brass enters and elevates the endeavor to fist-pumping, room-on-fire glory pitchfork

Smog – The Well positively jaunty with Bill Callahan offering the refrain “I watched that drip but it would not drop” in the midst of a down-home story about, well, a well. drownedinsound

The National – Mr November the moment the album’s suppressed worry and frustrations are released in an explosion of serrated guitar and propulsive drums. “I WON’T FUCK US OVER! I’M MR. NOVEMBER!” Berninger screams. “I used to be carried in the arms of cheerleaders!” he declares. By the time it has finished you feel like the band has given everything, strained every sinew and torn themselves apart theguardian

Low – Death of a Salesman shows Sparhawk in an unfamiliar solo acoustic setting, a party piece that maintains a wry charm from beginning to end drownedinsound

The Boy Least Likely To – Paper Cuts Brian Wilson acid-laced soda-Pop planb

Stars – Reunion “Reunion”‘s chorus is so bathetic it’s entrancing: “All I want is one more chance,” sings Torquil Campbell, “to be young and wild and free.” Rather than a second refrain, they give us a spry guitar lick that could make its chorus and secede if it wished. pitchfork

Stephen Malkmus – Freeze the Saints bathetic in the most charming way pitchfork

Silver Jews – I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You a proper Nashville studio and a dozen-plus performers presented an opportunity, at least for a walking paradox like Berman, to be more intimate than ever. Berman had struggled horribly since releasing Bright Flight in 2001, and he brought that narrative (and all the country-rock polish a Drag City guy could afford) to “I’m Getting Back Into Getting Back Into You.” It’s a gripping bid for redemption: “Baby, won’t you take this magnet/Maybe put my picture back on the fridge,” Berman begins. Although the sound is sunny, and his wordplay light, there’s a crushing gravity in the smallness of his requests. pitchfork

Laura Cantrell – Bees Possibly not the candidate for the ‘favourite album of your life’ but a breezy gust to blow away those dusty country preconceptions. musicomh

M Ward – Hi Fi he’s made the ultimate non-bootleg bootleg album. Transistor Radio plays out like a compilation made by a friend, one you rediscover so often until it takes on your own stories… Because he knows that music over airwaves is the most complex, simple, elegant, messy equation most of us have ever known; he knows that it’s morse code for love. You’ll get burned, he warns, “if you don’t know where your love is at“. Mine – right now- is right here planb

Broadcast – Corporeal Old synths buzzing and humming, vintage drum machines ticking time, Trish Keenan’s voice swimming in old-fashioned reverb: The sounds could be otherworldly, but their raw bite– and the big, empty room they’re coming out of– make it all feel like that “other world” is just the basement next door ptichfork

Ladytron – Destroy Everything You Touch the track’s intro– comprised of some lightweight synth noodling quickly stomped out by a canyon-wide squall of guitars and distorted Korgs– served as a tidy illustrative snapshot of just how quantumly they’ve leapt. So quantumly, in fact, that next time I see a picture of them, with their karate pantsuit streetwear and Astroboy haircuts, I’ll pass over the scorn normally reserved for bands whose records aren’t nearly as stylish as their promo shots. pitchfork

Sebastien Tellier – La Ritournelle a mesmeric masterpiece. NME described it as ‘basically Unfinished Symphony part two’ – and who am I to argue? Its synthesis of rolling piano, epic string sections, lofty vocals, and Tony Allen’s drums are a potent force, capable of alleviating one from the mundane and into a wistful dream like state. drownedinsound

Teenage Fanclub – It’s All In My Mind For their first album on legendary indie label Merge Records, TFC traveled to Chicago to record with John McEntire, best known as the drummer of Tortoise and The Sea and Cake. McEntire’s light touch as a producer can be heard throughout Man-Made, especially on its opening track, “It’s All In My Mind,” a Norman Blake song with a strong, steady rhythm and a simple vocal melody. Those two components come together to create one of the most hypnotizing tunes in the Teenage Fanclub catalog, and the psychedelic guitar solo is the icing on the cake pastemagazine

The Go-Betweens – Finding You This is the third album since the deadpan romantic songwriting team of Forster and McLennan decided they were far better paired together than apart – and reformed Melody Maker critics’ favourite band of the Eighties. The songwriting is as keen and crisp as ever, the pacing exquisite: a shade of violin or acoustic guitar here, a carefully repeated phrase there… At the age of 23, these Australians sounded bowed by the weight of nostalgia for pasts they’d never experienced. Two decades on, and half a life behind them, they’re just hitting their stride. planb

Guillemots – Trains to Brazil All swing drums, horn crescendos, and vocal gallantry, “Trains to Brazil” was the Guillemots’ first single and the most stirring encapsulation of the unabashed romanticism of their Through the Cliffs EP. Singer Fyfe Dangerfield turns his eye toward the seemingly intractable conflicts of society: the title refers to Jean Charles de Menezes, who was killed after he was mistaken for a suicide bomber in the aftermath of the London train bombings. But being the obvious idealist that he is, Fyfe concludes, with a largely jazz-trained backing band playing ADD R&B behind him, that we’re all lucky to be alive pitchfork

The Fiery Furnaces – Here Comes The Summer okay, so I don’t really hate you if you don’t like it, but if there’s no room in your heart for rock music this giddily adventurous, I do have a little bit of pity pitchfork

Acid Casuals – Bowl Me Over cooing doo-wop romance like a stoned sentimentalist’s take on “Something 4 the Weekend”– still SFA’s most immediate tune… Acid Casuals count Super Furry Animals keyboardist Cian Ciárán among their member pitchfork

Brendan Benson – The Pledge fails to disappoint. We have Benson’s impeccable production and precise mastery of everything from synthesizer to harmonica as he plays every instrument on the album. Most of all, the lyrics and melodies on Alternative are Benson’s best yet…it all sticks with you more than a mental image of Queen Elizabeth II naked planb

The White Stripes – My Doorbell a song that was even jauntier and more brain-burrowing than “Hotel Yorba,” its endless loop chorus morphing into mantra by the fadeout… Plus, he pulled off that nifty pop trick of using an upbeat melody to hide decidedly less jubilant lyrics stereogum

Doves – Snowden Sometimes you get a melody so evocative it does all the heavy lifting for the song around it. That’s how it went with “Snowden,” one of the key tracks from Doves’ third outing. That long keening intro situated the anthemic power of Doves’ earlier moments within the more human context of Some Cities. It also is an effective embodiment of the emotional spectrum of Doves’ music. On one level, you can hear that melancholy, that yearning. On another, its upward swoop feels like cresting a hill and surveying new lands before you. This was often the band’s power: It wasn’t all lachrymose, but instead existed in that enigmatic place in which notes can inhabit the emotion you need in that specific moment. stereogum

King Creosote – Marguerita Red while young types may initially disdain some of these songs as the stuff of Mojo coverdiscs, the velvety melodies may still have them reaching for it during their 2am comedowns. It’s not a record that will change your life but in the more reflective moments of closers ‘678’ and ‘Marguerita Red’ you may find that, at times, it complements it perfectly drownedinsound

Lavender Diamond – You Broke My Heart Operatic and mesmerizing, Stark retains her seamless and clear soprano. But the heavy instrumental accompaniment and song’s subject provide fuel for boundless one-upmanship pitchfork

Wolf Parade – Shine a Light apt fodder for house parties and road trips pitchfork

Kaiser Chiefs – Modern Way 12 good, old-fashioned, anthemic indie rock songs that made up their debut album and filled dancefloors at indie clubs everywhere nme

The Magic Numbers – Forever Lost a jangly feelgood hit of the summer which manages to be sweet without being marshmallow, brimming with sensitivity but never likely to corner you at three o’clock in the morning and start dribbling on about old girlfriends. nme

Sleater-Kinney – Jumpers With every explosive chorus and ratcheted-up bridge, Sleater-Kinney extend an empathetic hand out to the track’s lead character, who’s standing atop the Golden Gate Bridge, preparing to leap. But S-K aren’t passing judgement; from the narration’s perspective, they appear to be closing their eyes and counting to four as they brace for impact spin

M83 – Don’t Save Us From The Flames it’s Gonzales’ conviction to the absurd that makes this hot purple dawn blaze so brightly. The meticulously grand instrumentation is shot into a super-melodramatic space rife with broken brains and disembodied voices. Unafraid to bring the bracing sounds and stories in his head into beatific being, Gonzales believes in his earth-on-fire visions so vividly that even the most outlandish charades gain an extraordinary credence pitchfork

Architecture in Helsinki – Do The Whirlwind effortlessly build a song from a simple electro beat to a brassy peak Beulah would be jealous of– and, oh yeah, use some sitar and psychedelic acapella while they’re at it pitchfork

Clor – Love + Pain A fizzy, Devo-esque delight, ‘Love + Pain’ was part of the new angular revolution – standing alongside Franz Ferdinand and The Rakes’ own jittery post-punk, but not getting nearly as much acclaim. nme

The Fall – I Can Hear The Grass Grow among my favorite nuggets from the UK’s late-60s psychedelic explosion, a brilliantly arranged song that married trippy lyrics and harmonies to a brawling mod rave-up. Smith and his latest lineup naturally strip away all of those elements when they tackle the song in the middle of Fall Heads Roll, their 80th or 90th album. By the time they’re done with it, the poor song is lying in a little broken heap, laid out by Smith’s singing-not-singing and the band’s frantic evisceration of the original’s complex, multi-part arrangement. It’s not an improvement, but it’s different, and the Fall have undeniably made it their own. pitchfork

Eels – Things The Grandchildren Should Know Blinking Lights shambles along, intermittently rewarding, to its sweet finale, “Things The Grandchildren Should Know,” where Everett reconciles with the world at large in all its majesty and misery. The song fades gradually, and for the first time since Electro-Shock Blues, an Eels record has left a mark. music.avclub

Bright Eyes – First Day Of My Life This record was made to be loved, to be obsessed over by some but remembered by everybody, to get scratched and worn out through constant rotation in a sorority living room or your first studio apartment or your mom’s old radio, to capture Conor Oberst for the first time with more polish than spit, but still getting him deeply under your skin pitchfork

The Decemberists – This Sporting Life As the bullies, jocks, and corporate thugs grew ever more powerful this year, the Decemberists marched onward in their quest to make the world safe for pansies. Armed with the grandest melodies, swankiest arrangements, and silliest costumes of their career, Colin Meloy and his merry gentlemen and women delivered an album that could be adored far beyond the drama club pitchfork

Ben Folds – Landed a catchy sigh of post-breakup relief pitchfork

Maths and Physics Club – Movie Ending Romance There is something oddly mystical about the light indie-pop common to Matinee Records. Whether it be the lost sounds of yesterday—a progression of how the world might sound without the heavy American influence of the past quarter century, or summer pop with supporting accented vocals from the distant lands of Europe, Australia and South America. fensepost

Andrew Bird – A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left “You’re what happens when two substances collide,” Andrew Bird sings on one of the standout tracks on the new The Mysterious Production Of Eggs. But a stab of rationality undercuts the joyousness with the next line: “And by all accounts you really should’ve died.” By Bird’s reckoning, life’s a miracle. It’s just not always the good kind of miracle. music.avclub

The Embassy – It Pays To Belong At the moment, we seem to be in a position where location has once again become a defining genre for different groups of bands – Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors and St Vincent don’t sound particularly similar, yet snuggle cosily next to one another for defining how it feels to be young, avant garde and making cerebral, complex pop in NYC, and over the past couple of years it’s seemed as though the same is true of Gothenburg. The Embassy don’t sound like their labelmates – they’re far more shy than The Tough Alliance and not as eloquently grandiose as Jens Lekman – or their hometown brethren The Knife, El Perro Del Mar or Wildbirds and Peacedrums – but the exuberance present in all their respective records conjures an enviable picture of minted life in the sou’westerly Swedish city. So much of this album is just pure ecstasy that Rough Guides should consider adopting it as their guide to the city – the sunny xylophone ting and winsome violins of ‘It Pays To Belong’ to walk the cobbled streets of Haga, the old town. thelineofbestfit

Field Music – You’re So Pretty a sparkling construct of whirring guitars, eccentric percussion, windmill-tilting bass, and Andrew Moore’s piano embellishments. pitchfork

The Wedding Present – I’m From Further North Than You the Weddoes’ self-deprecation (they once brought out an official t-shirt baldy stating ‘All The Songs Sound The Same’) and sheer power of albums such as Seamonsters and Bizarro always set them apart from more run of the mill groups. When Gedge broke up the band to start Cinerama, he seemed more settled: a more poppy element was brought into the music and he actually seemed – gasp – happy.

Cinerama started off very different to the Wedding Present, with John Barry style melodies and string sections. However, over the course of their three albums, the crunching guitars and dark songwriting crept back in until the band’s last album Torino was virtually indistinguishable from Gedge’s old group.

Now, nine years after the last album Saturnalia, it’s come full circle and Gedge has reclaimed the Wedding Present name – when you hear that his 14 year relationship has recently broken up, you can guess what’s coming. Just one listen to Take Fountain will reassure you that although the years may have passed, age has not mellowed David Gedge: nobody writes about relationship break-ups quite like him.

I’m From Further North Than You … is one of the best things he’s ever done, a funny bittersweet tale of a relationship gone wrong, involving red bikinis and weird pornography which had memorable days, “but just not very many”. musicomh

Malcolm Middleton – Break My Heart ” You ‘re gonna break my heart, I know it, ” carouses Arab Strap’s Malcolm Middleton on his second solo album’s upbeat opener, before joyfully resuming, “But if you don ‘t/You ‘re gonna break my run of unhappiness/And destroy my career “. Which poses a moral dilemma: do we bid our protagonist a long, happy love life and stick with our lot? Or do we wish upon him devastation: sorely bereft of babe, but bursting with the lavish pop on display here? planb

The Faintest Ideas – Nosebleeders on the Track It’s one of those songs that makes me wish I played guitar; there’s just something about those super-fast downstrokes that make me wanna be up on stage with a guitar doing the same thing. If the jangle alone isn’t enough to grab you, the song is full of catchy lines about being nerdy and ugly: “It’s no picnic, but we don’t have the looks / We compensate that by reading books.” It’s quick, concise, and full of energy: The perfect pop song! skatterbrain

The Chalets – Theme From The Chalets From the opening shifty electro disco rampart of ‘Theme From Chalets’ (about making a bad post-club party choice)… The Chalets’ happy-go-lucky punk rock is the aural equivalent of a funfair. With the added bonus of not making you vomit if you go on it too many times. planb

Richard Hawley – The Ocean It swoops, it soars and, if we think back to times before beef-slapping and box-thumping, it could be a Scott Walker classic. clashmusic

Martha Wainwright – Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole came up with an effective way of dealing with having a singer-songwriter father who substituted looking after his family by writing about them in songs. She proved that those who live by the pen will die by the pen, and wrote a song about him called Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole. “For most of my childhood Loudon [Wainwright III] talked to me in song, which is a bit of a shitty thing to do,” says Wainwright, who only started writing songs after becoming peeved at the amount of attention her brother Rufus was getting. “Especially as he always makes himself come across as funny and charming while the rest of us seem like whining victims, and we can’t tell our side of the story. As a result he has a daughter who smokes and drinks too much and writes songs with titles like Bloody Mother Fucking Asshole.” theguardian

Deerhoof – Spirit Ditties of No Tone It’s not in Deerhoof’s DNA to be a pop band; their strange amalgam of octopus drumming, lyrical manga, and Siamese-twin acrobat guitars is far too unwieldy to be conveniently packed into mass-digestible form. Luckily, nobody bothered to tell them about this limitation, and as a result The Runners Four gives us 20 different misses at conventional songwriting, silly attempts at traditionalism that go fascinatingly awry in every way possible pitchfork

Tapes ‘n Tapes – Insistor simply staggering, for all of its talk of being badgers (read the lyrics and allow your brain to boggle to the band’s surreal imagery) drownedinsound

Christine Fellows – Vertebrae Paper Anniversary consists largely of Fellows’ own tape loops and found-sound samples, which Fellows layers in ever-shifting combinations underneath her electronic and acoustic keyboards, accordion, and percussion. Cello, mandolin, vibes, violin… in between the atmospheric instrumentals and interludes, proper songs like “Vertebrae” and “Double Takes” are among Fellows’ strongest efforts. allmusic

Calexico / Iron & Wine – 16, Maybe Less Iron & Wine’s Beam and Calexico’s Joey Burns sound heavenly harmonizing with each other, especially when guest vocalist Natalie Wyants joins them. Neither is an exceptional vocalist on his own, both occasionally lapsing to a whisper, but those hushed, gently melodic cords singing in unison make magic. pitchfork

Crystal Stilts – Converging in the Quiet Realizing that songs like “Converging in the Quiet” were put to tape in 2004 and 2005, it’s also possible to detect the subtle influence of more modern indie goth purveyors like Interpol and the Rapture, who were both enjoying peaks in recognition around that time. allmusic

Wir Sind Helden – Nur ein Wort Sophomore albums are notoriously difficult… the first single’s funky swing is infectious (“Gekommen um Zu Bleiben” — “Come to Stay”), as is the  Nena-ish rock song “Nur ein Wort” (“Only one Word”). allmusic

Jeremy Warmsley – 5 Verses brilliant storytelling – a vignette of a relationship “started as a lie” drownedinsound

The Pernice Brothers – The Saddest Quo Pernice Brothers make impossibly catchy and pretty music cloaked in ache. Discover‘s “Saddest Quo” typifies the approach, with its stately country-rock structure, swoony melody, and Pernice’s witty self-examination, full of optimism for the kind of person he could be and bitter understanding of the kind of person he is. It’s too sunny-sounding a song to be truly despairing, yet its frustration doesn’t sound like a put-on music.avclub

The Cribs – Hey Scenesters features good ol’ staccato Telecaster angular-ass guitars, a danceable beat, and a shout-along hook, not to mention an echo-drenched vocal counter-melody for maximum catchiness. Singer Ryan Jarman doesn’t try too hard, of course, lest the band reveal some trace of passion or ability pitchfork

Editors – Munich Never before have doom and gloom sounded so surprisingly uplifting and hopeful nme

Four Tet – Smile Around The Face Some things will irreversibly warp your perception forever. There’s no returning to uncaring naivety once you’ve caught your parents screwing. Similarly, Four Tet once demolished all faith in folktronica with a live set that had most onlookers bawling, “He’s just fucking playing his fucking songs straight through his fucking laptop” planb

The Finches – The Road off-kilter paean to wanderlust popmatters

Envelopes – It is The Law engagingly ruffled structure, new sections constantly dropping in and fading out, recurring motifs and picked lead sections. Basslines evolve around crunching guitars, and the squelching synth lines draw happy crayon shapes over everything drownedinsound

CSS – Meeting Paris Hilton One of my favorite songs of yours is “Meeting Paris Hilton.” Have you actually met Paris Hilton?

Yeah, we did. We met her at Coachella in 2007. Her security guard came to us. It was just moments before we went onstage. Then she came by and said hi. And then she said [imitating Paris Hilton], “Oh yes, I think I say bitch a lot.” You know, with that L.A. voice. “Oh my god, totally. Bitch [laughs].”

So she’s a fan of the song you wrote about her. 

Yeah, but she was sweet. She was never a bitch seattleweekly

The Charade – Monday Morning This Swedish trio makes light, pretty jangle pop… the Charade whip up an airy froth of utterly predictable but utterly delightful music to make your summer days shine a little brighter. allmusic

Misty’s Big Adventure – The Story of Love They make screwy jazz orchestration seem like a playschool ditty, screwed-up love seem like it’s the most natural thing on the planet. They have a dancer named Erotic Volvo. They catapult us to the moon, the stars and the floating meteorite matter in between. And they make us believe that everything’s going to be alright. planb

Engineers – Home Like a hand-crafted platinum eagle-monster streaking the sky crying elegiac symphonies to cathedrals crushed flat nme

Micah P Hinson – The Dreams You Left Behind Micah P Hinson is 105. Sure, he claims to be a 22-year-old Texan troubadour who just happens to sing like a bourbon-scorched grandpa, but this is the direct result of pact he made with a black witch back in the days of The Alamo. Hinson is a formidable master of forceful song-craft and forlorn delivery… and it’s a welcome reminder that Micah P Hinson is a unique virtuoso: the wisest, rustiest pop immortal on the bloc planb