TV on the Radio’s third album, Dear Science, ends with a memorable transition: after ten songs describing individuals struggling to engage with a corrupting society on the brink of collapse, album-closer “Lover’s Day” admonished listeners to retreat from the cares of the world into personal sexual ecstasy. We may be at “the dawn of the luz of forever,” but that doesn’t mean we should turn our backs to all that’s still beautiful in life. The band’s fourth album, Nine Types of Light, challenges listeners to merge these two impulses, to rise to a state of epiphanic clarity in order to bring about a new era in human history.

The theme of social engagement is introduced in the first lines of album opener “Second Song”: “Confidence and ignorance approve me,/ Define my day today./ I’ve tried so hard to shut it down,/ Lock it up, and gently walk away.” Tunde Adebimpe sings these lines with the clarity of address of a master orator, backed by minimal accompaniment. But the subsequent lines describe a growing sense of spiritual engagement with “the light,” and the arrangement grows in urgency along with the lyrics. The chorus explodes with the joyous disco funk of Dear Science’s “Golden Age” as Adebimpe describes communal ecstasy: “Every lover on a mission,/ Shift your known position/ Into the light!/ Every diamond elemental,/ You are instrumental/ To the light!” The song’s joy is infectious, and its lyrics are Adebimpe’s strongest yet.

Kyp Malone’s “Keep Your Heart” finds him in the same heart-swollen mood as did his previous masterpieces “Lover’s Day” and “Province.” He soulfully implores his lover to “drop all your clothes and lies,” and pledges in his remarkable baritone that “If the world all falls apart,/ I’m gonna keep your heart.” “Keep Your Heart”’s vision of high romance against a backdrop of chaos recalls David Bowie’s brilliant “Heroes,” but replaces that song’s camp melodrama with plangent sincerity. It’s the band’s best romantic ballad, a song made for slow-dancing in a collapsing skyscraper or reciting before running through a minefield.

Adebimpe matches Malone’s amorous spirit on the electrojanglepop ballad “You,” and the outstanding, Depeche Mode-esque “Will Do.” In “You,” he pursues his mental projection of an ex through the haze of his memories; the song’s arrangement realizes this haze as the ideal of fog-enshrouded, laser-lit dancefloors.”Will Do” is sung to a more present romantic interest; its sonic landscape, though equally synthetic, is much more distinctly drawn. Synthesizer peals cry over anxious guitar riffs. Adebimpe sings, “Oh, my reddest rose, Caldera, set it off!/ How your fire grows amongst the caldera, glistening…” and his lover becomes a material manifestation of the light of the album’s title. “Will Do” is as direct a song as the band has ever produced, and belongs beside “Keep Your Heart” and “Province” as one of the band’s very best love songs.

The album’s second visionary song, “Killer Crane,” is the warmest, most organic thing the band has ever recorded. Adebimpe describes a vision of a bird emerging from a rainbow and spreading revelation across the surface of the world over echoing plucked strings, organ, and woodwinds. The effect is mystical; though the orchestration belongs to classical European music, the sound recalls George Harrison’s psychedelic experiments with Indian song forms. This avatar of the light proclaims on the wind, “Leave it behind:/ Your restless mind,/ Your jealousies./ An oscillation demands your patience.” Adebimpe is reborn as he follows the creature; he declares in ecstasy that he “can leave,/ Suddenly, unafraid.” “Killer Crane” has no precedent in TV on the Radio’s catalog. It belongs loosely to a triptych with “Second Song” and “Caffeinated Consciousness” that provides the album’s thematic through-line, but it sounds nothing like any of the band’s previous work. It’s a style the band should consider pursuing further.

Adebimpe’s love songs are matched by two furious Kyp Malone jeremiads, “No Future Shock” and “New Cannonball Run.” With its blaring horns and Talking Heads guitar, “No Future Shock” recalls Dear Science’s “Red Dress,” but where that song was grim, this one is glib; Malone sarcastically imagines life in post-recession America as an apocalyptic dance craze. “After the war broke your piggy bank,/ Ah, the bastards broke the world this time./ So we sleep with our guns…” he sings, before commanding listeners to “Dance! Don’t stop!/ Do the ‘No Future’!” “New Cannonball Run” is composed of contrasting electronic and mechanical instrumentation as Malone urges listeners to turn away from mechanistic mainstream culture and imagine whole cloth a new social order. This isn’t the first time electronic music has been used to decry the modern age- Radiohead have made a career of it- but the song’s militant urgency and Malone’s facility with language and melody make it compelling.

“To arrive ahead of its time/ Is the fate of the fish washed up on shore,/ But you know that he just won’t feel right/ ‘Til he’s swallowed up by the tide./ Thought he might know better this time,” Adebimpe sings at the opening of the brilliant “Repetition.” The song uses the minimalist sonic language of postpunk to evoke the feeling of being trapped in a cycle of self-destructive behavior. But Adebimpe finally owns his subject’s dysfunction, shouting “My repetition! My repetition is this!” to suggest self-realization. “Repetition” is followed by “Forgotten,” a mournful ballad about celebrity culture. The subject of “Forgotten” is the least illuminated on the album, but by the song’s end, (s)he has chosen to have his/her plastic surgeries reversed and “fade away into the night./ It’s paradise.” The song ends in a cacophony of anguished horns and distant, portentous fireworks.

“Caffeinated Consciousness,” the album’s last and best song, completes the visionary triptych that begins with “Second Song” and responds directly to every song that precedes it. Adebimpe here plays the role of the “Killer Crane,” the mystic presence compelling listeners into the light. Synthesized horn blasts accompany a devastating power chord riff as Adebimpe commands, “Now drop your self/ With no concern/ On how to breathe/ When your mind is burned!” His command is undeniable. This is body-grabbing, soul-rattling, ecstatic, unbelievable music. We are with Adebimpe “On optimistic!/ On overload!” When he shouts “Suffused are we/ To the cause of light!” it’s nearly impossible not to shout along. This song could start a religion!

“Caffeinated Consciousness” is every bit the equal of the band’s previous highs, “Lover’s Day” and “I Was a Lover.” It’s the best song Tunde Adebimpe has ever written by a comfortable distance, and this is the guy who wrote “Wolf Like Me.” But “Lover’s Day” and “I Was a Lover” were both written by Kyp Malone, who has a reduced presence here, only contributing three songs. Nine Types of Light is TV on the Radio’s first Adebimpe-centric record, and he earns it. While there are fewer stand-out songs here than on the band’s last two records, Nine Types of Light has an incredible cumulative power. And while the band still hasn’t returned to the glorious Wall of Wailing Guitars sound of Return to Cookie Mountain, they have far outdone that record in qualitative consistency. TV on the Radio has long been one of the most openly intellectual bands of their age, but they have never delivered their ideas as fluently as they do here. Nine Types of Light may be TV on the Radio’s definitive statement. Whether it’s their best album or not is entirely a matter of personal taste.

Lungs wins 2010’s “Most Fitting Title” award, as Florence & The Machine wisely focuses on lead singer Florence Welch’s singing, a blast of soul-inflected power bombarding your ears in the most pleasant way possible. It’s a positively enviable trait, one that on its own would probably set her apart from various other female singers to come out of England in the past decade or so, like Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Adele, etc. etc. Thankfully, she developed a sound that is significantly less derivative of classical soul, giving her an instant leg-up over the competition.

That voice is a gift, enough to have instantly taken breaths away when they played “Dog Days Are Over” at MTV’s VMAs. That’s the big hit. showing up on all sorts of soundtracks and film trailers and whatnot. Unfortunately, it’s the most bracing song present on the album, but their first single, “Kiss With a Fist,” shows another side of Florence’s approach. “Kiss” owes something to garage rock. It’s scrubbed of the grime, but paired with Florence’s vocals makes for an effective mix.

Generally -- on “Dog Days,” for example --  the album leans towards gently ornate rock music. The instrumentation is highly detailed, plunking pianos, strings fill every song at about the halfway point, compared to their generally quiet beginnings. “Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” uses this approach to become a galloping anthem each time the chorus hits, creating a sparse juxtaposition next to the chorus. The track basically begs for an electronic remix thanks entirely to its energy.

Arguably the greatest drawback of Florence & The Machine’s approach is that the performances are powerful, but they feel mannered. Never do the quiet moments feel moving, and the louder parts aren’t cathartic. There’s a very studied air about much of the music when it tries to feel tortured, such as on “Girl with One Eye,” a story eye whose emotionality is obscured by bombast. It tries to build up angrily, but Welch delivers a dry performance that’s more like an imitation of indignation rather than an expression of real defiance.

But overall, this is an agreeable collection of songs. I just can’t get invested in it as more than background music. “Dog Days” and “Kiss with a Fist” are more than worthwhile and show that there’s plenty of potential here for the band to stretch out into various directions. Toward the back end things get a little same-sounding, as the band tries to pulverize you into caring about songs that don’t have the effortless pull of “Dog Days,” but the first half is the sound of a band with some kick to it.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWOyfLBYtuU

Florence & The Machines:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

Smith Westerns’ self-titled 2009 album was full of good songwriting buried deep in distracting lo-fi, and the T. Rex comparisons were even stronger back then. Their singer and songwriting already sounded like Marc Bolan, but on “Girl In Love” their guitars did, too. The problem with Smith Westerns is that no matter how good of an album they make, I’ll be comparing it to Electric Warrior and The Slider. Fortunately, with Dye It Blonde, Smith Westerns have made a very good album. They’ve polished it up and made it sound dreamier and more anthemic (so basically they got…even closer to T. Rex). It’s frustrating that Smith Westerns’ formula is rooted almost solely in the sensibilities of other bands, especially because they’re so talented, but they don’t help themselves in that respect.

Dye It Blonde kicks off with a phenomenal track, “Weekend,” built around an adorable central thought: “Weekends are never fun unless you’re around here too.” With the way that last word rings out, it’s the first huge chorus of many on the album. Smith Westerns have no problem making themselves endearing, creating the image of a boy longingly looking into his girl’s eyes and telling her to stick around more. With that playful opening riff, the cutesy “na na na na na, a girl like you,” and those glammy guitar flourishes, “Weekend” echoes The Beach Boys along with T. Rex, and it highlights all of the album’s strengths.

The album would feel slight if this was their only approach, though. They boldly title a song “Imagine Pt. 3” and earn it, and they end two songs with titular, arms-in-the-air chants. “All Die Young” is particularly brilliant, and its “All die young/When love is love and when you are young” marks the album’s climax.

It’s hard to think of Dye It Blonde as particularly substantial, because Smith Westerns borrow their sound from so many places: T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Electric Light Orchestra, and on and on. However, they’ve put together ten grand songs, each backed by sweet sentiment. Listening to Dye It Blonde along with Electric Warrior and The Slider, the album is a success in that while Smith Westerns might follow their early glam idols too closely, they live up to T. Rex’s golden years. It’s a musical direction that you might wish Bolan had taken.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=roUxwXHHW3A

Smith Westerns:

• MySpace
• Twitter
• Last.fm

You’d be forgiven for thinking that Tapes ‘n Tapes died years ago in a semi-tragic bus crash -- victims not just of the typical blogosphere backlash that claims 75% of all buzz bands but also (and more importantly) a wholesale flipping of the cultural script, they’ve been keeping an extremely low profile. No longer are Pavement sprawl and Pixies energy viable selling points or reasons for any particular excitement. In the wake of both bands’ repulsive cash grab reunions, such affectations feel depressingly old hat.

But Tapes ‘n Tapes are not dead, and they’ve just released a new album. With Outside, the band rejects the bigger sound and spacier arrangements of their previous effort (the unfairly maligned Walk It Off) and instead begin slowly evolving the dynamics of their earlier, better-loved work. It’s a lateral move, but not necessarily a bad one. Outside sounds resigned in a distinctly non-sad way -- a solid indie-pop band, basically as good as their hooks, Tapes ‘n Tapes play a distinctly low-stakes game. But the hooks here range from competent-to-inspired, and that’s enough to make the endeavor mostly successful.

The record begins with “Badaboom,” an arresting rhythmic work-out that thrillingly erupts, at semi-regular intervals, into super-melodic blasts of guitar and hollering. It’s a promising tease of suspense and drama to come, but the following songs are hurdles: seventeen long minutes until you reach the first single. That song, “Freak Out,” might be the group’s best yet -- threading the dulcet melodies of their mid-tempo material with the skittish muscle of their dedicated bangers. But first you must wallow through the drowsy Tex-Mex horns of “Nightfall,” the forced whimsy of “One In The World,” etc. All of the material is spirited, but little of it is genuinely exciting.

However: the back half of Outside offers considerable pleasures -- the playfulness is dialed down, the emotion ratcheted up. In “The Saddest Of Keys,” frontman Josh Grier sounds like he’s howling at the moon. “People You Know” is ear-worm catchy without grating. And “On And On” throws wind-chimes into the mix, because that’s what kinda party this is. Outside hews closely to the sound of the band’s super-winning debut (The Loon) but it’s similar in a much more important way: these are perfect tunes for sitting on your balcony and drinking wine. There is absolutely nothing to think about once the music stops. And while that may be a dealbreaker for the more cerebral among us, analysis and depth have absolutely nothing to do with the success of Tapes ‘n Tapes. They always have been, and always will be, a fun band occasionally capable of striking powerful emotional chords.

Outside won’t change anybody’s mind about Tapes ‘n Tapes. But for those who never hopped off the bandwagon, it’s an exceedingly welcome treat.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBv82B6bF4k

Tapes ‘n Tapes:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

The first time I heard Santah, I thought they might be a jam band -- mostly because I’m worried that every new band I hear is a jam band, but also because the singer had long hair. But, anyway, this was during their days gigging around Champaign; I caught them playing a borderline-decent frat party, notable for its seemingly endless reserves of Keystone Light. Santah have moved on since then -- they’ve added an “h” to their name, they play cool venues in Chicago, and their sound is unmistakably part of that city’s rich pop-rock tapestry. Santah occupy the same stylistic space as your Pet Lions, or your Jonny Rumble: gorgeously melodic and romantic music with plenty of open space and earnest, intelligent lyrics.

White Noise Bed, Santah’s follow-up to their winning EP My Bones, is a grower in the traditional sense. The songs here, which are all exceedingly fine, do not scream for your attention, or jostle unnecessarily; the most remarkable thing about this record might be the pacing of it, both patient and generous. There’s no one song that overshadows the others, and the goodness is doled out in thick creamy dollops at a rate not exceeding the average rock fan’s appetite for hooks. The band’s mastery of recording technique helps; White Noise Bed feels real (by which I mean, really played by actual human beings with quirky flourishes) but it also sounds sculpted and manicured, mixing dissonance with melody in a manner similar to Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, although the general mood here is significantly peppier. The guitars in particular sound ecstatic, like they can’t believe how good they sound. I can hardly believe it myself.

“Chips Of Paint,” the third track, is a great entry point for the curious listener; the beginning sounds a lot like Billy Joel’s “Sleeping With The Television On,” which puts it in some pretty esteemed company. But Santah seal the deal on the chorus, with guitar lines that flow like molten lava. (Might sound like hyperbole, but it’s not -- I have to wear thick rubber gloves while I’m inserting the CD into my Discman. [For this reason I recommend you download the mp3s.]) Another key instrument in the mix, while we’re on the subject of key instruments in the mix: the piano, which is used both moodily (to great effect) and rockishly (to even greater effect), the way Spoon or the Hold Steady might do. Don’t even get me started on the bass work, which is rich and satisfying but largely beyond my descriptive abilities.

If you’re getting the sense that I love this album, it’s probably because I’m trying to express here how much I love this album. Loveability is its greatest asset, perhaps: these are just damn good songs, the kind that nobody else could write or play except this band. Which makes White Noise Bed a completely singular thing that is also incredibly approachable and fun to listen to. Which means this would’ve been on my 2010 year-end list if I hadn’t had my head so far up Rick Ross’s ass this summer, when it was released. (To be fair to both myself and Rick Ross’s ass, it wasn’t only me in there.) But I’m enjoying this late-blossoming romance all the same -- Santah have proved themselves very nice company in the early part of this year, thawing my frozen heart and lending the freezing landscapes of suburban Illinois a glow that I don’t know, now, what I would do without.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwdZYvlF8mw

Santah:

• MySpace
• Bandcamp
• Facebook
• Last.fm

You may not be familiar with her work, but Alicia Dara has been making a living in the music racket for over a decade as an independent singer-songwriter. She brings a wealth of knowledge and experience accumulated during those years to her new project The Volcano Diary – the band, which includes guitarist Gus Palaskas and drummer Dave Bush, play a gentle brand of grown-up indie rock they bill as electro-acoustic, with Dara’a voice as the recipe’s main ingredient. In the hands of a less confident and talented singer, the material on their new, self-titled debut could’ve been a snooze – the kind of stuff that might soundtrack Dawson’s Creek, if that was still a thing. But Dara carries these nine songs effortlessly, her sweet clear voice swooping and climbing ethereally atop the mix. It’s actually pretty thrilling.

My favorite parts are the parts that sound like early Aimee Mann – “Error Message” in particular stands out for its melodic charms, simply but effectively souring into deep melancholy on the chorus. Producer Steve Fisk (a guy who’s worked with Nirvana and Low, among others) displays an especially sure hand during moments like these, never letting the restrained backing overpower the main attraction or spoil the mood. Crunchier numbers like “Revival” don’t fare quite as well, for me – there’s a little bit of a granola vibe, but that could be a major plus if you remember Lilith Fair’s mid-90s heyday in a generally nostalgic way. And the execution is never less than expert; I can’t fault the less arresting moments for anything other than not being my personal cup of tea.

Dara is from Canada, raised by classical musicians, and she currently resides in the Pacific Northwest. The Volcano Diary make the kind of music that you would generally expect a person with that kind of cultural and geographical pedigree to make, which I intend as a compliment. This is soothing, pretty stuff, perfect for late night driving or leisurely nature walks. And these guys are very good at what they do. The emotional vulnerability smothered all over these songs more than makes up for any sonic risks the record doesn’t take. In fact, after listening to it a couple dozen times, I kinda wouldn’t mind checking out Lilith Fair, if I ever travel magically back to 1997 and have a few hours in between betting on horses and inventing YouTube.

The Volcano Diary:

• Official Website
• MySpace
• Facebook
• ReverbNation

Hey, it’s another interview! This time Oswald focuses his question laser on Alicia Dara, of Seattle’s The Volcano Diary, and turns it up to 11, asking some typically hard-hitting questions about what her new album is like, how she made it, and whether there are still grunge bands wandering around in the Pacific Northwest. You don’t want to miss this fabulous installment of America’s Favorite Podcast, Audio Assault!

For more info on The Volcano Diary, go here or here.

In this exciting new episode of Audio Assault, Oswald talks to Jim Hanke of the phenomenal Chicago band Kid, You’ll Move Mountains. They discuss songwriting, opening for the Dismemberment Plan, Milwaukee vs. Chicago, and trying to get Justin Bieber to join the band at Summerfest. All in all, it’s exactly what you’ve been waiting for your entire life.

Kid, You’ll Move Mountains:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Facebook
• Jim interviews Eric Axelson of Dismemberment Plan for Sock Monkey Sound

“And just a look will be the start” Christopher Owens’ affected, heartbroken voice cries in the chorus to Broken Dreams Club EP’s opening track, “Oh So Protective One.” As a preview of their sophomore album, following their debut, Album, this EP is, indeed, just a look. It’s six songs, running just seconds over half an hour. It’s a very promising start, though, more directly affecting than their debut. “Oh So Protective One” features punches from horns and finger-picked guitars. Comparisons to Roy Orbison have been apt.

Orbison, of course, was king at melodramatic, moving music. Girls have a gift of making songs with the same effect with less vocal bombast. A line like “And when I said that I loved you, honey/I knew that you would break my heart,” like most rock lyrics, read like cliches when you put them down on paper. But on the best song here, “Heartbreaker,” it’s honesty and simplicity is winning. It’s an exclamation mark on a song that musically feels like a whiskey on an empty beach. There’s nothing this propulsive on their debut, and it alone makes this EP a great late-in-the-year gem.

The EP is basically like this throughout; even compared to Assault-favorite High Violet by The National, it’s a sad-sack record. But it’s gloriously beautiful, filled with somewhat unexpected arrangements like a trumpet on the title track and and sudden, gorgeous backing vocals on “Substance.” The mostly instrumental “Alright” alone stomps with Tarantino cool and an sort of glam-ness while still having the opening couplet “I don’t wanna be alone anymore/I don’t wanna drive you away.” It’s a stark contrast with the more subdued material.

Maybe it’s a mopey listen, but it’s one that places its chips on the side of quiet reflection in a winning way. There’s something adolescent about this kind of hopeless malaise and its nonspecificity. Girls pull it off, though, by treating it so normally it almost feels like a natural state until Owens joyfully sings about getting out of here and going to Carolina as an escape. That’s just the kind of sad realization and denouement that makes for inspiring music.

In this, the landmark twentieth episode of Audio Assault, Jere and Oswald dissect Kanye’s new masterpiece and the latest installment of the Harry Potter franchise. Plus: Oswald interviews Miss Alex White of White Mystery -- they talk about booking shows, writing songs, and making buttons.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE9gh4COMdI

On this fascinating new episode of Audio Assault, the three distinguished gentlemen discuss Conan, Scott Pilgrim, and Alison Brie. Also included is the electrifying conclusion of our interview with Benjamin Grigg from Geronimo!.

(Check out Geronimo!’s MySpace, buy their album here, and vote for them as The Deli’s Chicago Artist Of The Month. You can also check out their new video for “Design Yourself A Heart” here, or watch them performing some classic Rage Against the Machine songs at a recent Halloween show.)

Hey! Look at this! On the official Assault.it list of Special Favorites, Chicago’s own Geronimo! rank pretty close to the top. They blend mathy aggression with the hypnotic jangle of post-punk indie rock. And they absolutely decimate their enemies in a live setting. The trio recently released a video for “Design Yourself A Heart,” a definite highlight from their debut full-length Fuzzy Dreams (which you can buy on iTunes or directly from the band [for only $5!!!]). It’s a strange and somewhat disturbing video, and you probably won’t want to drink any water for a couple hours. Good job, Geronimo! – you’ve kicked our asses once again!

Geronimo! – “Design Yourself a Heart” from Northern Outpost on Vimeo.

I was skeptical about Bars Of Gold; the band includes former members of Bear Vs. Shark, a group I never listened to because – let’s face it – there is no way a bear and a shark could ever fight. A shark vs. an octopus, okay; a bear vs. a lion, even better. But the basic premise just never seemed realistic to me. However: Of Gold, Bars Of Gold’s debut LP, is a fantastic and engaging listen from start to finish, a vital and organic explosion of rural malaise and urban fury. And it doesn’t ask you to believe anything about animals that you know to be patently untrue.

“The Hustle,” Of Gold‘s six-minute centerpiece, grafts hardcore bellows to ominous banjo licks that recall Modest Mouse’s early weird stuff, and then pushes them off a cliff with a drumbeat that will shatter your fine china if you play it too close to the kitchen. It’s the kind of song that makes me want to invite all of my friends over and then murder them, and it establishes Bars Of Gold as a volatile, lethal force. The rest of the disc is almost as good; whether they’re playing around with videogame-style synthesizer figures on “Boss Level” or slowing things to a graceful swoon for the album-ending “Cannibals,” these guys prove themselves to be the kind of free-thinking, risk-taking band that you simply can’t ignore.

I’ve gone through several different stages with this record; after the first few spins, I pegged it as “interesting and challenging but not totally successful.” Then I started to notice the pop songcraft below the crazy dynamics, and my appreciation deepened. Cut to a week later and I’m sleeping with the album under my pillow and whispering sweet nothings to it. Bars Of Gold are equally capable of breaking your heart (“Heaven’s Got A Heater”) and putting their fist through it (“Doctors & Lawyers”) – I’ve had long-term romantic relationships that weren’t this dramatic and fulfilling. Of Gold ranks among the best records of this year, and it will probably never sleep with your best friend.

Bars Of Gold:

• MySpace
• Blogs Of Gold
• Last.fm

Deerhunter began as a semi-frightening band; their first two records, Turn It Up Faggot and Cryptograms, felt foreign and surreal upon first listen. The psychedelic meditations on alienation and weirdness that formed the bedrock of their sound were perfect for sitting in your bedroom or driving on a snowy road late at night, but they weren’t exactly something you wanted to share with your friends. Frontman Bradford Cox, with his frank homosexuality and penchant for adorning his strangely skeletal body (a result of the genetic disorder Marfan syndrome) in dresses and cheerleader costumes, was equally enchanting and off-putting, and his songs reflected the distorted headspace of a lifelong outsider. But beginning with the Fluorescent Grey EP, Deerhunter started to open up, a trend that continued with 2007′s magnificent double-punch Microcastle / Weird Era Cont. Halcyon Digest is their most accessible effort yet, a perfectly paced mix of all the things that make this band so special – they allow plenty of time for the dreamy wandering that makes them such headphone favorites, but the focus is more squarely on their poppier side. They’re now haunted rather than scary, and this record is the perfect autumnal security blanket.

The album starts with “Earthquake!,” a slow, gauzy number that works less as a standalone song than as a symbolic shaking-loose of the themes that will dominate the proceeding tracks. “Do you bone the sheets?” Cox sings in his delicate voice. “Do you think of me?” “Don’t Cry” emerges from this woozy malaise, showcasing Deerhunter in perfect pop mode – and lyrics like “Come on, little boy / I am your friend, and I understand the pain you’re in” finalize Cox’s transition from a confused and wounded boy to a man secure in his skin, a role model for anybody that’s afraid to leave the house. On another song, the wonderfully aimless “Sailing” (which is one of the few tracks that would work equally well on an Atlas Sound record), he sings, “You learn to accept / Whatever you can get.” Halcyon Digest is far from free of internal conflict, though – Cox returns time and again to his fears of growing older, and the album vacillates between themes of escape and surrender.

And though the set spends most of its time searching for the emotional sweet spot between accepting the mantle of responsibility and longing for simpler times, its two best and most important songs are about lives cut short: “Helicopter,” the disc’s centerpiece, is an impressionistic masterpiece about a young Russian man sold into sex slavery – its lyrics are accompanied in the liner notes by the story of Dimitry Marakov, and little context-creating add-ons like that are a great argument for picking up a physical copy of the disc instead of downloading it. “Helicopter” begins with Cox moaning “Take my hand and pray with me. . . the devil has come for me,” and builds to a shattering emotional climax of “Now they are through with me.” The other song in question is the album-closing “He Would Have Laughed,” with a dedication to Jimmy Lee Lindsey Jr. – aka the recently deceased punk rocker Jay Reatard. The track rambles for over seven minutes before ending abruptly, an appropriate aural correlative for its subject matter. With these tracks Deerhunter show off their tight grasp on dynamics and a newfound emotional maturity that suggests they really are ready for true adulthood, even if they don’t quite feel it in their bones yet.

But it’s not all sadness and ghosts; guitarist Lockett Pundt contributes two of his trademark pop songs, the effervescent flispide to Cox’s melancholy musings. And Cox’s own “Coronado” features some surprisingly hot sax action, a final rally before the epic comedown that is “He Would Have Laughed.” Halcyon Digest is Deerhunter’s first perfect record – instead of separating the elements down the middle, as Cryptograms did, or shoving all the slow songs into the middle section, à la Microcastle, the band allows their disparate elements to converge and mingle here, creating an experience as cohesive as it is moving. Anyone familiar with Deerhunter’s previous work would’ve been foolish to expect anything subpar from the group, but Halcyon Digest is a flat-out masterpiece, proving once and for all that these guys are a band for the history books. Mark down a “flawless victory” for all the outcasts.

Radiohead made a smart move with Kid A.  After the near-universal critical acclaim and adoration they received for OK Computer, it may very well have been career suicide to try to duplicate it with their follow-up.  Instead, they went in a very different direction, adopting the glitchy electronic style of acts like Aphex Twin and Autechre and making it work in a new and interesting context.  Sufjan Stevens takes a page out of the Radiohead playbook with The Age of Adz, his first full album since 2005’s Illinois, but with decidedly more mixed results.

The thing is, when you have an album as critically successful as Illinois, the pressure to duplicate it is immense.  With Stevens waiting a full five years between albums, the pressure only intensified over time.  This was further complicated by the fact that he had established the “states” gimmick that quickly became an albatross around his neck.  If he created another state-themed album, some critics would dismiss him as a one-note act.  If he didn’t, he would inevitably disappoint some of his fans.

Clearly, though, moving in a new direction was the best way for him to go.  The brand of twee indie rock that he helped establish has become so watered down with second-tier acts like Freelance Whales that Stevens would only seem like a parody of himself if he stuck with the same formula.  Changing up the formula only gets him so far, though.  He still has to deliver some really quality material to prove that the success of Illinois wasn’t a fluke.

So does he accomplish that task with The Age of Adz?  Well, yes and no.  Whereas Kid A knocked critics on their asses and cemented Radiohead as one of the most beloved rock bands of our time, The Age of Adz is likely to leave many listeners underwhelmed.  Despite the new electronic bells and whistles, it is actually a more subdued, personal affair than the albums he has become known for.  It is not an instant gratification sort of album, instead rewarding more patient listeners with its subtlety and craftsmanship.  Unfortunately, we live in an age if instant gratification and without any “Chicago”-style standout tracks, The Age of Adz is likely to leave many people cold.

There are some genuine missteps here, too.  The album’s sprawling finale, “Impossible Soul,” is an ambitious number that includes a dizzying amount of different effects and styles.  Unfortunately, one of those effects is auto-tune, which gives it a whiff of desperation.  Auto-tune has far outlived its novelty by this point, and its inclusion is frankly kind of a head-scratcher, even given the kitchen sink approach to this particular track.  After the subtlety of the previous ten tracks on the album, “Impossible Soul” seems like Stevens included it solely for the purpose of proving he is still ambitious.

It’s not stylistic ambition that makes this album worthwhile, though, it’s his signature combination of intimacy and grandeur.  Lyrics like “Sufjan, follow your heart.  Follow the flame or fall on the floor,” give us a window into an artist who is trying really hard to reconcile his artistic ambitions with the pressures of the music industry.  It’s arguable whether or not he succeeded in doing so.  The Age of Adz is an overall success for Stevens despite its occasional flaws.  It has proven that Stevens can succeed artistically while branching out into new territory, but the inclusion of gimmicks like auto-tune and frenetic genre-hopping indicate that maybe Stevens isn’t quite comfortable with letting his songwriting speak for itself.  That’s a shame, because his songwriting is still a cut above most of his peers.

Photo by Laura Gray

There are awesome bands in Chicago. The problem is that nobody listens to them. And it doesn’t matter how many times I say the words “Welcome To Ashley,” “Jonny Rumble,” and “Maybenauts” – crummy pop-punk bands will always draw a larger audience. I’ve come to terms with that sad reality. What I absolutely cannot come to terms with is you passing on the new California Wives EP – it’s called Affair, and it will make you fall in love with pop music all over again. From the first chords of “Blood Red Youth,” which conjure weird images of Rush discovering a MacBook in the pre-civilization desert, to the frenzied “wearing your fancy shoes tonight” climax of “Twenty Three,” California Wives deliver the goods.

These guys are one of those bands that seem to spring fully-formed from the ether, even though the secret is always practice, practice, practice. California Wives have practiced; they are tight the way professional bands are tight. They own their shit. I saw them open for Jonny Rumble at Beat Kitchen a couple months ago and they were scarily focused and taut; I overheard their set at a street fest a few weeks after that, while I sweated it out in the Assault tent drinking beers with @eddieftw, and I realized that this was something truly special – what Affair does is similar to what M83′s Saturdays = Youth did in 2007. When I listen to Affair, I feel like I am in the greatest John Hughes movie that was never made; I feel like I’m walking not just on the clouds, but amidst the clouds; all my emotions are pink and fluffy, like cotton candy. This band is better than Prozac.

But, seriously: what sets this EP apart from the thousands of others that get released by unsigned bands every year? First, there’s the production – the songs are arranged artfully, with exactly the appropriate amount of bells and whistles. You could break these tracks down to their essentials, play them on an acoustic guitar, and they’d still be fantastic. But dressed up in the fanciest clothes that the band could find, these compositions reach for a different level. Do they grasp it? Yes, of course they grasp it. California Wives are major! Second: this is sensitive, emotional music that still finds the time and wherewithal to rock out – when the guitars start chuggin,’ you know they’re gonna build to a massive, awe-inspiring melodic drone, one that perfectly complements the sophistication and craft on display. California Wives are nice, but not too nice – they do fuck shit up when it’s necessary.

Do you need any more reasons this is great? Okay, here’s one more: they are nice, normal-looking dudes that take obvious joy in creating music. They were not formed by accident at Hair Cuttery. I’ve taken to calling California Wives “the Walkmen of Chicago”; that might not be fair or accurate, but that’s the vibe I’m picking up, whatever they happen to be putting down. Affair makes me want to go back to college and major in poetry. This band is eerily precise and absolutely breathtaking in their ability to create polite, pretty soundscapes that dudes like me want to live in. In a world where everything seems crazy, California Wives make sense; they also make great music, and Affair is incontrovertible proof of that fact. I always say I want more when a band drops a decent EP, but this time it’s serious – my skin itches.

California Wives:

• Official Site
• MySpace
• Last.fm

Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. clinch it midway through the second track of their debut EP, Horse Power. Falsetto vocals spiral up over a mild cacophony of acoustic instrumentation with smart electronic accents; it’s like Tapes ‘N Tapes started jamming to Grizzly Bear and gave full reign to the Bollywood Strings preset on their keyboard. The song is called “Vocal Chords” and it’s delightful.

There are four songs here, but one is a Beatles dead-ringer (“Simple Girl”) and one is a cover of the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows.” All showcase the band’s subtle ingenuity. Dead Earnhardt Jr. Jr. do things a lot of other indie bands do, but they do them with a disarmingly innocent twist; the playing is precise and smart and almost glacially pure in tone. On opener “Nothing But Our Love,” they sing, “Don’t try so hard,” and the track spazzes gently toward Postal Service territory.

The duo behind the goofy moniker are from Detroit, but this doesn’t sound like a product of the Motor City; it sounds like the various ingredients were sprinkled from a magical cloud above a pink mountain. It’d make the perfect soundtrack to a late afternoon drive around the fancy part of town, although you might lose patience when they start playing it inside Urban Outfitters.

What is it that gets our gears of interest cranking? What is that magical quality that attracts us to a new artist, convinces us to stop emailing each other extreme ballsack injury videos and actually pay attention to something foreign and possibly awesome? There’s no simple answer for that; much like mating rituals, it’s different for everyone. For me, it’s often all in the name. I get emails about new bands all the time and I can usually tell, just from the subject line, whether I want to listen or if maybe I’d prefer to open my wrists with a rusty nail dipped in canceraids. But sometimes, and this is rare, I get an email about a band and I just say “Fuck it, I’m posting that, I don’t care.” I haven’t even watched this video. But the band is called Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr. Check it out:

Man, I’ve listened to this record maybe twenty times and I just don’t think I “get” it. Yes – it’s great. Arcade Fire have released their third consecutive masterpiece, and I join every other right-thinking person on the planet in being elated about this fact. And it sounds fantastic – the production mistakes of Neon Bible have been corrected, and the record pops out of your stereo in a way that even Funeral didn’t. The bass is especially prominent, turning some of the slower, waltzy numbers into low-key new wave bangers. The Suburbs is close to the ground; it hums and thrums.

But some of the elements don’t add up for me. The lyrics are intelligent and thoughtful, but I don’t see any grand statement cohering. The lyrics on Funeral were impressionistic, deeply felt, colorful, humorous – that album truly felt like a call to arms for all the kids stuck in the suburbs, feeling their feelings without any way to appropriately express them. And Neon Bible was a claustrophobic nightmare, with the band always one step ahead of the great yawning maw of an inevitable apocalypse. But I don’t hear anything on that level here; yeah, the suburbs are boring, and if you want to be an artist you should probably move to a big city. And indie kids don’t dance at rock shows. So what?

The old-fashioned car on the cover made me think this record would examine the well-manicured suburbs and plentiful cocktails of John Updike’s short stories from the 70s, a kind of period piece. And that’s the vibe you get from about half the songs – they’re elegiac, with subtle melodies that reveal themselves slowly. (There’s a lot of repetition on hand here, unfortunately supporting most people’s ideas about some kind of conceptualism at work. I say “unfortunately” because I don’t think the record itself can support that kind of intense focus – if the main concept is what I think it is, then they didn’t do enough with it to justify spending over sixty minutes on the subject.) But even early on, Butler starts whining about the “businessmen drinking [his] blood,” which makes me believe that he’s writing from his own unique perspective. And since Butler was born in 1980, he had the same Goonies childhood all the rest of us did, and it wasn’t that stifling.

Look, this isn’t a bad record. As I said earlier, it’s pretty great. I will keep listening to it until I wring some satisfactory meaning from it. But the band did themselves a disservice by calling the damn thing The Suburbs and being so serious about the whole thing. It’s true that Arcade Fire make all of their contemporaries look disposable and tacky, and they’re one of the only bands that can convincingly claim U2 / Radiohead stature. (Their career is starting to look exactly like U2’s, actually, with all of the awkward transitional records removed from the equation – I’ll call The Suburbs their Joshua Tree without feeling weird about it. [The Suburbs is Arcade Fire’s Joshua Tree.]) But the suburbs? Really? Maybe it’s because I never made my great escape to a major metropolitan area, but it’s not that bad out here. I mean, we’re still people. We’re not dead inside. We, too, listen to Arcade Fire.

Neck tie filled accidentally in some way dazed
lines of hope anthems getting sweaty
bespectacled noses oily and open and receptive to new sighs.
These sounds grand scaled so tulip garden so there pollens and sneezes.
Eat this Ford on the lawn front. Superbly cut grass,
a man-made paradise pared down to one abode. To the abdomen!
Nothing suburban about this high mind. This strict fissure
radiates kisses such that you bet blisses on a sway.

Heard it? I seen it. Some contraption half-remembered
perhaps a vested forgetfulness at work, a gaudy ambiance, too
universal to touch the lawns gnomes the pavements elves
the shopping cart babies

yet tender in mind.
Fuzzy like a specific beer on a favorite summer.