I live for new bands, for keeping up with music on a ground level, where people are making music and packaging it up themselves, or having friends do it. There are many, many bands making music today by their own means, on their own terms, enough so to be labeled “independent”. But in today’s music-industry climate, where a record contract isn’t as valuable or even necessary as it once was, what does that independence itself mean? What does it tell you about the music?

In 2008, I’ve found myself again gravitating to bands not because I perceive them to be revolutionary, nor because they’re hip, and not even just because they follow a DIY path. I find myself gravitating to bands because of their songs. I find myself once again in awe at the craft of building a pop song, of thinking up a melody, writing some words, and singing them so other people can listen to them obsessively, get to know every second, share them with friends, bring them along on road-trips, put them on during breakfast and lunch and dinner, and linger over them when they should be sleeping. Popmatters

MGMT – Time To Pretend ‘This is our decision, to live fast and die young/We’ve got the vision, now let’s have some fun,‘ sang Andrew VanWyngarden with dreamy insouciance on this satire on – or paean to? – rock’s most shameful excesses. When he wrote the track with Ben Goldwasser in 2004, both were two wide-eyed Wesleyan college kids in Connecticut. As it turns out, Time to Pretend (originally titled The Mantis Sailing Home) proved less the in-joke and more a prophetic heralding of their future. theguardian

The Lodger – The Good Old Days sure to get you moving, no matter what your into. It’s the perfect blend of upbeat indie rock and modern pop music. Austintownhall

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal it remains their perfect, triumphant moment… Just over two minutes long, the song contains every element that would make their Sun Giant EP and self-titled full-length debut so entrancing: the intricate vocal arrangements highlighting their evocative harmonies, the way Sklyer Skjelset’s clean guitar lines shadow Robin Pecknold’s wordless vocals, the Edward Gorey imagery of the lyrics, the heartbeat tattoo of the floor tom

Withered Hand – Religious Songs Not many religious songs contain the line ‘I beat myself off when I sleep on your futon’ but the title track from Withered Hand’s new combines themes of faith, doubt, sex and inexplicably uncomfortable furniture without blinking an eye theskinny

Vampire Weekend – Walcott There’s a reason Vampire Weekend still close almost every set with “Walcott.” Tomson’s steady drumming and Rostam’s frenzied piano make this the band’s most danceable song, the easiest to sing along with alongside tens of thousands of festival-goers in every direction. “Walcott” is also Vampire Weekend’s finest crescendo, slowing things down before going up an octave and screaming the track’s closing vocal lines. Once Ezra’s last verse kicks in, it’s impossible not to shout alongside him, booking it to get on the final train out of Cape Cod tonight. Pastemagazine

The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – Everything With You much more than the sum of its parts and too effortlessly effervescent to be studied. Pure indie-pop to hold close to your heart nme

Los Campesinos! – Knees Deep at ATP probably the first big UK indie band not to have grown up with the NME, Melody Maker, or even the fucking Fly. They sound like the first UK indie band who have grown up reading Pitchfork. What this means is, while this makes them horrid, horrid people to hold a conversation about music with, they’re free from all of the negative influences that British indie is committed to bathing itself in over and over again. Hold on Now, Youngster is an album completely free of The Kinks, completely free of The Clash. Completely free of Weller, or Morrissey, or Gallagher or fucking Suggs.

No, this is a band who have very foreign influences: Pavement, Deerhoof, Architecture in Helsinki. And they take all of those influences, remove any concept of subtlety those bands may have had, and plug up the gaps with glockenspiels played directly into microphone. It works perfectly drownedinsound

Los Campesinos! – We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed A mere five months on and we’ve got album number two from Cardiff’s Los Campesinos! in our hands and ears. But We Are Beautiful… isn’t regurgitated remains, studio-floor leftovers or a swerve in a different direction – instead, it’s the sound of a band with a shedload of energy and ideas getting that vital, cathartic release before fatigue sets in.

Those still bewitched by ‘You! Me! Dancing!’ will fall head over heels for the title track, despite it sulking in the corner like a jilted sister. And in “Absence makes the heart grow fonder / Fondness makes the absence longer” and “You said he had his teeth fixed / I’m gonna break them”, it contains two of the best couplets you’ll hear this year. And there’s also a wonderful terrace chant, making fine use of the ‘F’ word. drownedinsound

Vivian Girls – Where Do You Run To possession is nine-tenths of the law, and when “Where Do You Run To” reaches the chorus, and the song’s rumbling thunder starts sucking face with the girls’ intermingled voices, it becomes pretty clear that these ladies are taking what’s not necessarily theirs, and making it their own pitchfork

The Wedding Present – Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Drunk Around 2007 The Wedding Present started previewing songs live that would eventually end up on the album El Rey. One of which was entitled Don’t Take Me Home Until I’m Very Drunk and featured the lines: “she spoke a line of Holly Golightly’s from Breakfast At Tiffany’s, she said “Don’t take me home until I’m very drunk””. I loved the song and soon after watched the film to spot the line where the gorgeous Audrey Hepburn said this dialogue. Shock, horror. These words were not what she said in the film. What happened next is explained by David Gedge in his Q&A below. Suffice to say for now, that this was the closest I will ever get to co-writing a song with the master. Gedgesongs

Magnetic Fields – Too Drunk To Dream downcast lyrics and upbeat swing. The lyrics: “Sober life is a prison / Shit faced it is a blessing. / Sober nobody wants you / Shit faced they’re all undressing … / Sober you’re old and ugly / Shit faced who needs a mirror.” True that stereogum

Hello Saferide – X Telling Me About The Loss Of Something Dear, At Age 16 Her tales are all small (honest?) stories, with narrative twists and turns – and they have a very direct feel to them. Degarden

Emmy The Great – We Almost Had A Baby Some people just can’t help it. They try to be nice, but they bring out the worst in you. Emma-Lee Moss is one of those people. To use inaccurate and crass gender stereotyping, she’s the kind of delicate, fragile, girlish creature who makes men involuntarily melt into helpless pools of adoration and women involuntarily itch to dash her brains out against the nearest hard surface. Nme

Lightspeed Champion – Everyone I Know Is Listening To Crunk Dev’s displeasure for the pop world is matched by his reliance upon it, marking moments of happiness by watching DVDs of The OC, and going to see Saw III. This juxtaposition is reflected in the desperate earnestness of the music which surrounds his blog-esque poems. Producer Mike Mogis’ Americana orchestrations bubble with life and sweat, with a desire not to reflect the world the author is so sick of by shunning the modern and gimmicky. Clarinets, violins, cellos, pianos, a choir, Emmy The Great’s cut-glass backing vocals and even an electric guitar are here, dappled across the songs with a reserve which deserts him only as ‘Midnight Surprise’ extends into its 10th minute. nme

Portishead – Machine Gun one of the most purely satisfying physical experiences of 2008. I can’t even count the number of times I let it batter me in the car at a volume that will undoubtedly prevent me from being able to hear my grandkids in 50 years. The music (if you can call it that) lives up to its title for sheer mechanistic repetitive punishment, while holed inside the barrage a wounded, despairing Beth Gibbons confesses her spiritual abandonment, the soulless determinism of the beats matching her own feelings of existential futility. Pitchfork

Hot Chip – Ready For The Floor “We were going to give this song to Kylie,” grins ginger synth wizard Joe Goddard, surveying the 3,000 Chip fans in the magnificent Somerset House courtyard. “But it wasn’t good enough.” Cue ‘Ready For The Floor’: the song rejected by the mini pop queen and the most thumping, melodic slab of electro-fun since ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’. Nme

M83 – Kim & Jessie one of those rare albums branded with the 80s tag that, crazily, actually sounded like the 80s. With its apocalyptic electric drum hits, keening synths, icily detached vocals, and volcanic chorus… If you heard this in a John Hughes film, you wouldn’t even flinch pitchfork

Elbow – One Day Like This one of those life-affirming, epic tracks that make you feel invincible pastemagazine

Glasvegas – Geraldine Imagine ‘Total Eclipse Of The Heart’ written by a pisshead with a dead dog and you’re close to the patchwork of tragedy from which this beautiful song is wrought nme

Ballboy – Disney’s Ice Parade Macintyre’s lyrics. “You left your notes on lesbian sex on the fishtank in the hall… it took me all afternoon to read them all”. Is genius too strong a term? That’s ‘Disney’s Ice Parade’ which goes from laugh-out-loud to tragic pathos in a few lines before heading back to hope via almost blind optmism in time for the end of the tune….As a footnote, that Glasvegas album was released the same day as Ships. And was heralded as the best Scottish release ever. To paraphrase Paul McCartney’s Ringo Starr jibe, not even the best Scottish album that week isthismusic

The Wave Pictures – …Strange Fruit For David strongly recommended to anyone who values clever yet realistic words, delivered in an authentic and sincere way. This band is a one-off, a marvellous unique English gem, that deserves elevation to national treasure status thelineofbestfit

Stereolab – Daisy Click Clack Arguably the last burst of pure, unadulterated joy in the groups canon, “Daisy Click Clack” splits the difference between up-jump, juke-joint jangle and the center-piece rollick from an unproduced Julie Andrews musical stereogum

Tilly & The Wall – Beat Control pretty much the definition of a floor filler, indie or otherwise, it taps into a timeless pop aesthetic that it conjures up elements of ‘ABC’ and the great days of disco. It makes it literally impossible not to smile and jig around a bit, even if you’re sitting completely alone in a dimly lit room. Like I am now drownedinsound

Florence + The Machine – Kiss With A Fist probably best not to get into the complexities of the lyrics, and simply rejoice in the birth of a genuine star turning the Kate Nash-y preconceptions of female singer-songwriters on their head with one belligerent, tuneful kick to the teeth. Nme

Spiritualised – Soul On Fire Jason Pierce has long aimed for grandiosity. But, both to his bands’ payoff and detriment, the restless experimenter’s intentions often distract from the song itself, either by layering too many sounds in too small a space or distending the action into tedium. But “Soul on Fire” makes good on magnitude with newfound concision. In four minutes, we get it all: strings that sweep, guitars that snarl, drums that swing, and a choir that drives yet another resplendent Pierce chorus straight into memory. And that the hook’s plea for immortality (“I’ve got a hurricane inside my veins/ And I want to stay forever“) comes from the man who almost died while writing this album only reinforces its majesty. Pitchfork

Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks – Gardenia Real Emotional Trash works better as a whole, an album you can leave on and fall asleep to, then wake up to and spend a decade with theskinny

The Indelicates – New Art For The People the band express themselves with razor-sharp wit, satirical narratives and socially mindful anthems for Britain’s disaffected youth. The fact that it’s unmistakably twee in delivery yet filtered through feedback and snarls makes it all the more beguiling and, most importantly, distinctive. Exclaim

Sexy Kids – Sisters Are Forever I’m not sure about the titular sentiment itself, but confusing lyrics and questionable band names aside, this foursome fit right into the pack of the new wave of acts making lo-fi jangle sexy again exclaim

The School – Let It Slip The School’s second single, the “Let It Slide” EP, contains the results of one of those magical occasions in which a band and their producer effortlessly attain pure pop perfection, buy it, make them famous and then bask in the warm glow this band induce thevpme

Laura Marling – Failure one of the more tongue in cheek Marling numbers, one that doesn’t necessarily grab your attention immediately, but upon repeated listens will grow on you until it’s become one of your old time favourites pop-onion

Mystery Jets – Young Love (feat. Laura Marling) Based around Marling and Blaine Harrison’s wistful tales of a night-stand, it features a fabulous array of edgy, alluring lyrics. Despite Blaine’s amusing recollection: “Is that you on the bus? Is that you on the train? You wrote your number on my hand. And it came off in the rain,” Marling’s seductive and sardonic responses win out, as she croons: “You don’t need eyes to see if someone’s got a heart of glass.” Digitalspy

Noah & The Whale – Give A Little Love yet another gaggle of posh kids from Twickenham, where being in a hip indie band would appear to be the Noughties equivalent of going on a gap year to Thailand to “find yourself”. Independent

The Long Blondes – Century starts off like Enya doing disco, which emphasizes how much the quartet have moved on from the surf rock sounds of their debut clashmusic

Friendly Fires – Paris It’s hard to truly judge the merits of a record that features a cowbell because the king of percussion instruments can make any piece of music sound great. Clashmusic

Those Dancing Days – Run Run Entirely bereft of something close to a care in the world, vocalist Linnea (who incidentally has really, REALLY fantastic hair) rambles on about how she’s just noticed the sky’s actually rather large and actually isn’t that rather nice. Hear that? No maudlin boyfriend drama, no post-ironic ‘scene’ commentary; just a pleasant observation. And while it might normally be hard to share the same enthusiasm for something most of us had gotten over when we were four, she’s just so bloody chirpy about it and the music’s so relentless enforcing it, you can’t help but inanely grin along. Diymag

Love Is All -Wishing Well That most Love Is All songs sound like they were recorded in a tin can is part of the act’s charm; this one, however, could have been laid to tape inside a confetti-loaded firecracker about to go BOOM. And if the lyrics are all desperation, the music is all hope and excitement; we straight up dare you to get that main melody out of your head. Pitchfork

The Walkmen – In The New Year Intimate, intense and beautiful, You & Me demands repeat plays and the Walkmen deserve a new respect theguardian

Broken Records – If The News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It Say the Arcade Fire tour bus broke down in middle England a hundred or so years ago, there were no plugs for amps, nor amps for that matter, and they had to entertain the rowdy natives using anything that came to hand. The times

Comet Gain – Love Without Lies Comet Gain’s raison d’etre – rawness over cleanliness, a little charm and a lot of scrappy style thelineofbestfit

Crystal Stilts – The Dazzled The crepuscular glow of this quartet should be embraced; being this fucking miserable has never been so blissful. Nme

Conor Oberst – Danny Callahan Trad? Why yes, but even the most mundane folk formulas still sizzle in Conor’s trembling hands. Nme

The Lucksmiths – Good Light I can think of no other band that writes melodic pop songs as articulate about everyday life scenarios — cities, the weather, wasting time, interactions between friends and lovers — as the Lucksmiths, and they keep getting better at it as the years pass.… None of the stories are unnecessarily over-dramatic, but rather thoughtful, detailed, and recognizable. That real-life familiarity may be why their albums are so easy to listen to over and over again, to live with popmatters

Bon Iver – For Emma The story goes like this: Justin Vernon, jobbing musician and survivor of two failed bands endures a traumatic romantic break-up and flees to his father’s remote cabin in the woods of north Wisconsin. There, while also fighting illness, he records all by himself the songs that comprise For Emma … Vernon conceived of his recordings as demos; when he played them to record labels, they heard a completed work and he was promptly signed. Theguardian

The Mountain Goats – How To Embrace A Swamp Creature Anyone who has heard one of the umpteen albums by the Mountain Goats and been unimpressed isn’t likely to be swayed by Heretic Pride. Frontman John Darnielle’s voice poses a challenge to fans of tunefulness: reedy and limited in range, it’s built for declaiming, and often sounds at odds with the emotion of his lyrics….All the detail missing from Darnielle’s vocals is there in his songwriting… It gives his tales of mythical beasts, misanthropes and stock-in-trade characters failing in love a humanity that grows more enveloping with every listen. Theguardian

Destroyer – Foam Hands The song’s so strong it would’ve sounded perfect with Dan alone. Stereogum

Half Man Half Biscuit – National Shite Day When people talk about having a terrible day it’s rarely because anything truly terrible has happened to them. It usually involves traffic jams. Or a boiler packing in. Or your computer crashing at work before you’ve saved your Old Music piece on Half Man Half Biscuit, thus meaning you have to start the entire thing again from the beginning.

Such minor irritants form the backbone of Half Man Half Biscuit’s extended moan about the miseries of British life. Naturally, it’s set in a town centre, where annoyances can swirl around you like flies and the streets are packed with “fat kids with sausage rolls, poor sods conducting polls“. Equally naturally, it kicks off with a bus replacement service, frustrating frontman Nigel Blackwell mostly because he thinks it should be, linguistically speaking, a “train replacement service“.

Over gloriously unfashionable indie guitar bashing, Blackwell realises how pathetic these problems are and tries to put them into perspective against Robert Mugabe’s regime and the railway children of Calcutta. “This works for a while,” he says, “but then I encounter Primark FM.“

Possibly the only pop song ever to namecheck Stockard Channing, and definitely the only one to mention “a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets“, National Shite Day is hilarious and depressingly true. Because sometimes the sum total of global suffering seems like nothing compared to the pain of being shoved off the pavement by an idiot. Or as Blackwell yells before the final flourish of drums: “No bog roll!” Theguardian

Frightened Rabbit – Poke “While I’m alive, I’ll make tiny changes to Earth,” Frightened Rabbit frontman Scott Hutchison yelped in “Head Rolls Off,” a highlight from The Midnight Organ Fight, the Scottish band’s monster of a breakup album. Hutchison, who passed away at age 36, was widely considered to be one of the best lyricists of his generation. And he made more than tiny changes to this planet, providing countless listeners with a soundtrack to play when they were at their lowest, utilizing his music as a form of therapy to get them through the tough times. He leaves behind one of the strongest back catalogs of the indie rock era.

The band started from humble beginnings, riding a word-of-mouth press campaign to a major record label deal, developing a cult following in the process… Listeners around the world gravitated towards his startlingly honest and heartfelt lyrics, projecting their own experiences onto his morbid words and vivid tales of heartbreak. Hutchison, who throughout his life struggled with depression and anxiety, raised awareness of mental health issues and helped others by speaking openly about his condition.

“Poke” sees Hutchison at his most devastated state, writing about what it’s like after he finally does walk out the door he was so unable to pass through in “My Backwards Walk.” The last verse, widely acknowledged amongst his fans to be his finest songwriting moment, sees Hutchison grapple with the fact that though they’re finally rid of all the shit they hated, that he never hated his ex. It’s always been a tough listen, but “Poke” resonates even more now than ever. entertainmentweekly

Wild Beasts – The Devil’s Crayon that dread creature, the all-male guitar band, average age 21. Yet they are as like to the standard all-male guitar band as a peacock to a warthog. Limbo, Panto is an outrageously ostentatious album: think the lascivious court of Charles II, Victorian opium dens, 1930s cabaret, the Tiger Lillies’ musical Shockheaded Peter and the New York club Studio 54 at its disco peak, and you’ll get the flavour of their keeling theatricality. Though they sing of such laddish preoccupations as sex (Vigil for a Fuddy Duddy), booze (Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants) and footie (Woebegone Wanderers), it’s in a language – musical and verbal – as fiery and kaleidoscopic as a catherine wheel theguardian

She & Him – This Is Not A Test Inoffensive Radio 2-friendly AOR country tweeness. Thetimes

Deschanel is a natural hyphenate, an actress-musician-crafty girl The New York Times

King Creosote – Tortoise Regrets Hare Understated and unlikely new single from folk-influenced Scottish singer-songwriter James Yorkston…

The purpose to this rather unlikely single release though is King Creosote covering the original in Hot Chip fashion. Given the rising level of stupidity and inanity, witnessed even on BBC Radio 2, I very much doubt whether these two tracks would be given daytime airplay. The world will be a much better place if they were though. Pennyblackmusic

Sigur Rós – Inní Mér Syngur Vitleysingur erupts volcanically, the way Sigur Ros songs rarely do independent

Ezra Furman & The Harpoons – Take Of Your Sunglasses Real life will intrude soon enough for Furman. Thankfully, he appears committed to spending the interim bashing out songs, working on his poet-laureate credentials and celebrating the sheer, giddy wonder of being young and alive pastemagazine

caUSE co-MOTION! – Baby Don’t Do It For these guys, amateurism is a matter of devotion, and they take great pains to reconstruct the innocent illusion of “hey gang, let’s form a band!” Playing better instruments, or playing their pitiful instruments better, would be traitorous: In this worldview, learning to play properly is, as Lester Bangs memorably put it, a deadening process equivalent to “the putrefaction of a corpse.” Pitchfork

The Just Joans – Hey Boy… You’re Oh So Sensitive that gorgeous authentic sound spilling with mundane observations in a thick Scots dialect. The vocals come from both a pissed off boy & a lady who sounds somewhere between Emma Pollock & Amelia Fletcher cooing over longing guitar strums and an old atmospheric synth like The Wake used to use Normanrecords

British Sea Power – The Great Skua There’s a disheartening sense that the general public might agree with Nick Hornby, whose book 31 Songs sneeringly held up British Sea Power and their weird ideas – the songs about ornithology, the military garb, the stages covered in foliage and stuffed animals – as an example of how artists become shamefully obsessed with “trying to liven [things] up a bit” and thus divert rock music from its true purpose: providing entertainment that values “complacency and safety” for middle-aged authors. Theguardian

Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan – Come On Over (Turn Me On) Still obsessing over the dark side of love, it’s the sound of an adolescent Marianne Faithfull spooning with an ageing Johnny Cash, the pared-down, dusty folk swooning with romantic strings and retro keyboards. theguardian

The Last Shadow Puppets – My Mistakes Were Made For You Opening with a guitar chord twangy enough to grace a David Lynch film… it sounds good enough to be on a James Bond soundtrack theregoesthefear

Air France – Collapsing At Your Doorstep “If you have anything in you, anything unique, what others might term as originality, it will come through whatever the component parts used in your future Number One are made up from,” the KLF write in The Manual: How to Have a Number One the Easy Way.. On “Collapsing at Your Doorstep”, from this year’s No Way Down EP, the Swedish duo create a fantasy island out of bird chirps, tropical percussion, strings, a little kid’s voice, and two other little kids’ voices (from the 1980s TV show “Beauty and the Beast”). The results are as warm and transportive as the new West Coast sound of Gothenburg neighbors Studio, but also as catchy and wistfully innocent as the punk-minded pop of Sincerely Yours chiefs the Tough Alliance. Sort of like a dream? No. Better. pitchfork

Hercules and Love Affair – Blind The dance collective’s exceptional, self-titled DFA debut melded disco and early house with a warmth and sophistication that conjured anything from Sylvester to Frankie Knuckles to Arthur Russell, and spawned what must surely rank as one of the finest singles of the year in ‘Blind’ thequietus

Silver Jews – San Francisco B.C. Many of David Berman’s best-loved songs are tragedies, but “San Francisco B.C.” is pure comedy. With enough plot twists and dialogue to warrant the Coen Brothers treatment, it’s a narrative unlike anything on its surrounding record and a standout in Silver Jews’ catalog pitchfork

tUnE-yArDs – Fiya The year-end polling is over and we’re back to listening to music instead of ranking it, but the song that finished at the top of my list is still rattling around in my head…”Fiya” turned into something I like to keep handy just in case, like an asthma inhaler…it develops nicely, going from a hushed opening to an unhinged finale, building just a bit more with every bar…Sometimes when I listened to “Fiya”, I thought of Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”, one of my favorite big pop songs of the decade…”Beautiful”, a great and moving song whose psychic landscape is ultimately adolescent, enforces the feeling that telling yourself you’re worth something is all it will take to raise your spirits. “Fiya” takes a hard and mature look at the true nature of self-loathing, and through the sheer force of its final verse and the sound of the music surrounding the words, makes it sound like backbreaking and soul-wrenching work to break out of it, like lifting a mountain. But it could happen. It’s a good thing to be reminded of, so I’ll continue to keep this song close. pitchfork

Northern Portrait – Crazy if it could be bottled you’d have a fortune-making de facto happy pill on your hands. Because we are living in the real world though it may be better to swing open the doors and give the birds in the trees a 3 minute break from their sweet tweeting mp3hugger

Johnny Foreigner – Salt, Peppa, and Spinderella You know when Huw Stephens does his “let’s go over to our correspondent in Ipswich” bit, and then Local Radio Andy tells you what an exciting time it is for music there just this minute, and by way of proof cues up some generic high school jam band? Johnny Foreigner are them, writ large: mystifyingly held up as ‘the future’ of something bigger than Wednesdays at the Tap’n’Tin. nme

Of Montreal – Id Engager the funky track shows Kevin Barnes at his most honest and horniest. The track is a warning to women everywhere—“He’s just a slutty little flirt and sister, he’s only gonna hurt you”—before whispering, “Watch yourself.” Barnes may not have the answers when it comes to maintaining his relationship with Nina Grøttland or dating in general, but he somehow always finds a way to make a song danceable enough to forget about it all pastemagazine

No Age – Eraser a summer song in the sweatiest, most realistic sense– it’s not the Beach Boys’ gooey, über-idealized, convertibles-and-beach-volleyball version, it’s the waiting-for-the-bus, sweaty and desperate but still-sorta-excited-about-all-that-sunshine take pitchfork

Women – Black Rice If you’ve somehow missed the rising onslaught of lo-fi in the last half of this decade, you haven’t been paying attention… Recorded on “ghettoblasters and old tape machines” in Chad VanGaalen’s basement, there’s nothing about this track that feels remotely tacked on. You might believe this impressive murk of psychedelia was actually laid down in a garage back in ’67.

At once catchy and off-kilter, “Black Rice” coalesces elements of no-wave, psych-pop, and indie rock into a distinct and stunning anthem. As spacious minimalism and suffocating walls of sound collide, this brilliantly paced standout from Women’s impressive debut drives and drones in dreamy, drugged-out bliss, emphasizing negative space nearly as much as each guitar note, hand clap, vocal sway, or glockenspiel stab… And as its last staggered fits of guitar strums resonate into the void, the song barely resolving at its close, it becomes quite apparent that “Black Rice” sounds sweetest marred and buried underneath its own production treblezine

The Dodos – Fools why should the average indie-kid-in-the-street feel like shelling out their hard inherited greenbacks for fourteen tracks of mainly acoustic folk songs? Three words. Killer. Fucking. Songs. Songs like Fools that soar like Elliott Smith circa Either/Or. Songs like Joe’s Waltz and Paint The Rust, that sound a lot like I imagine Radiohead would if they’d grown up in Austin instead of Oxford. Musicomh

Kings Of Leon – Manhattan has Caleb waxing with the naïve enthusiasm of a senior yearbook quote: “We’re gonna set this fire we’re gonna stoke it up/ We’re gonna sip this wine and pass the cup/ We’re gonna show this town how to kiss these stars,” and it’s nearly impossible to stifle your laughter when he punctuates each verse with a smarmy soul-papa “I SAAAAIIIID!” All that’s missing is the attendant video where Caleb walks the NYC streets and gives dap to passers-by while the band taps away at their idea of funk pitchfork

Joe Lean And The Jing Jang Jong – Brooklyn

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