MGMT
Congratulations

MGMT tricked us. Somewhere in between way too high festival time slots immediately following their debut Oracular Spectacular and my sister choosing “Kids” as her graduation song, we got it in our head that MGMT were this heavily pop-oriented dance act. “Time to Pretend” is the grand turn of the trick; it’s easily the best song the band have recorded to date, and it’s nothing like most of their other output. The most indicative of their true sound is “The Youth,” a lilting and ultimately boring number about taking drugs and being “together together together together.” It’s a trippy song, and MGMT are a trippy band. Not cocaine trip like Yeasayer or ecstasy like Passion Pit; MGMT are more of a narcotic-induced stupor. Their sophomore album, Congratulations, is a full embrace of drugged overindulgence; proof positive that the band itself is more a passing silly hobby than, well, an actual...

Streetlight Manifesto
99 Songs of Revolution, Volume I

Umm….Ok?

Being a Streetlight Manifesto fan is rarely, if ever, easy. The band rarely, if ever, does headlining shows outside of the larger markets, albums take several years to materialize, feuds with Victory Records drag the band down to a lower level and as of four albums into their career, every other album has (technically) been a cover album. You’ll remember that in between Everything Goes Numb and Somewhere in the Between, Streetlight Manifesto was forced to re-record the Catch 22 classic Keasby Nights in an effort to prevent the current incarnation of Catch 22 from doing the same. Now, after the magnificent Somewhere in the Between, Streetlight Manifesto is yet again putting off recording a new album of original material...and is instead releasing a collection of 99 cover songs.

I should elaborate. 99...

She & Him
Volume Two

Because I have no problem reading the work of other reviewers, I usually scan the interweb for opinions about CDs I don’t review. Case in point: She & Him. Their sound was a direct callback to the AM radio Golden Age in the 60s, however they were far more voluminous (bad pun) than normal 8-or-9 track records from that era (Volume One was 13 tracks long). However, the only substantive review that I believe accurately captured She & Him’s aesthetic was Daytrotter, who commented that listening to Volume One did not require a positioned and attentive ear to fully appreciate—songs like “Sentimental Heart” and “Black Hole” were actually best captured when in the background of some other activity. This makes sense—as a 60s throwback, She & Him and both of their records, seem clearly familiar, but without any of the tried notions of misunderstanding ala Panic At the Disco’s Pretty....

The Dillinger Escape Plan
Option Paralysis

A few nights ago I was in a family restaurant celebrating my Grandma's birthday when I heard System of a Down's Chop Suey! playing quietly over the dull hum of diners on whatever radio station the restaurant had tuned itself into. I remember thinking that it was a somewhat surreal experience but one which nobody except me thought in any way remarkable. A few days later I somehow found myself listening to the Top 40 chart countdown on Radio 1 during which they hosted a pop quiz, the answers to two of the questions being Rage Against the Machine, no doubt selected for the quiz because of Rage's recent Christmas Number One triumph over X Factor winner Joe McElderry. Then the frightening realisation dawned on me that the music that in my younger days was seen as unlistenable and too intense by the old folks who remarked on my musical tastes was no longer incendiary and elitist but demoted...

One For the Team
Ghosts

The common axiom goes that brash pop-punk should be ashamed of itself. It’s a pandering, easy to learn and easier to forget genre that takes a considerable amount of molding and tinkering with to turn into something approaching acceptability. Fall Out Boy is the perfect example; their best record is clearly their first, but the court of popular opinion gives that award to mediocre Folie A Deux, the band’s swan song and most melded with pop, rap, and radio-rock record. They matured, and thus they deserved the critical attention not afforded to them when they released the absolutely killer Take This To Your Grave.

But what about a band that deals exclusively in the brash distortions of pop-punk, knowingly forming records that don’t conform to societal originalities, thus fencing them out of potential ‘Album of the Year’ lists? One for the Team are one of those bands....

Liars
Sisterworld

I always found the expression "BLANK is not the word" an interesting and sometimes baffling turn of phrase. People who wet themselves laughing at a movie might leave the theatre and remark to their friend that "funny is not the word" to describe what they just witnessed. Or they might be coming out of a funeral and, wiping their eyes of tears they might remark to their friends that "sad is not the word" to describe the lovely service. Or, passing an attractive woman on the street, a friend of yours might remark that "fit is not the word" to describe her. These people don't mean that the film was not funny, or that the funeral was not sad or indeed that the woman on the street was unattractive. They just mean that those words don't seem to carry the full weight of the impact that the film/funeral/woman made on them, but they have a limited vocabulary so words like...

Four Tet
There Is Love In You

Offer up driving music as an interesting point of discussion on any Friday night in your local public house and your mates will no doubt sit hunched over their pints and suggest a number of natural contenders; mostly seventies rock giants like Steppenwolf or Deep Purple. But for a change of pace, or just to look super cool and down with the kids, I propose that you might like to venture There Is Love in You into the mix. Naturally you will be met with - depending on how well informed your friends are musically - blank stares or gasps of outraged disapproval. In the eventuality of blank stares you'll have to tell them who Four Tet is and then they will forget about it and possibly never hear the name again. However, in the instance of the latter outcome you will need to print off the following argument and keep it in your pocket or you may be laughed all the way to the kebab house.
...

Xiu Xiu
Dear God, I Hate Myself

Do You Like Marmite?

Xiu Xiu are one of the more puzzling of the Marmite bands; you know that you'll either love them or hate them, but it's sometimes difficult to know which side of that fence you come down on due to the unusual opposing forces at work within their music.

For this offering Jamie Stewart and Co. sound like they are attempting to craft the synthesized beauty and magic of the dream pop genre using cold, hard technology, not least a Nintendo DS, and the resulting war against their chosen medium (which has a tendency to get ugly as any fan of The Matrix or I, Robot will tell you) has been committed to tape and released as Dear God, I Hate Myself. To make it doubly difficult for the band to emerge victorious against the machines, Stewart peppers his computerised melodies, no matter how beautiful they look like getting, with...

Portugal. The Man
American Ghetto

Good Company.

People forget how short a time period the Beatles catalogue was recorded and released. Sure, the band (sans Ringo) had been together since the mid-50s, playing gigs in Liverpool and Hamburg, honing their craft. But the fact remains that from Please Please Me (the greatest album named after a blowjob) to Let It Be (the greatest album named after refusing a blowjob?) equals—seven years. Yep. In the time it takes Brand New to release two records, The Beatles put out 10 LPs, including two soundtracks to their own movie LPs. That’s quite a haul, considering the quality of the music, which needs no explanation.

Now, before being castrated for heresy, let me make one thing clear—Portugal. The Man are nothing close to the Beatles. Nothing. NOTHING. But, if we’re comparing output over a five-year period, P.TM certainly have...

Local Natives
Gorilla Manor

As music reviewers we face the unenviable task of trying to describe something that we will never be able to successfully communicate because, short of transcribing every single note onto sheet music, there is no way that we can ever give an accurate description of what we are listening to in a way that others can 'hear'. And so it is that we rely on tricks and associations in order to attempt to at least give people an idea of what something may sound like or how it makes us feel.

So if we take Local Natives' debut long player as an example, we might be tempted to describe the feeling or mood that overcomes us as we listen; I would say that it makes me feel as though the particularly cold winter which frosted the roads and dusted the countryside with a magical stillness and calm has finally passed and the days are getting longer, the weather brighter and spring is very much upon us....

Surfer Blood
Astro Coast

Surfer Blood is a band of four West Palm Beach natives that look like they’re fifteen; a high school group playing in some shitty basement while everyone’s upstairs drinking and making out. Luckily though, they sound nothing like this. In fact they sound quite good. Adept is the word. Mature, despite their youthful appearances, another one. And in so many other words, their debut album, Astro Coast, is a striking debut of good old, well done, effectual rock music. It’s one of the best albums this year, furthermore notifying everyone, quite formidably, that they can play the guitar like it’s the fucking Catalina Wine Mixer.

Now prior to release, Surfer Blood received a lot of hype. A lot. Bloggers went mad like a priest alone in a room with children when the song “Swim” hit the interwebs, (which, by the way, is not the best song on the album) and as a result, they gained a decent...