6. Iceage - Beyondless

I'm slightly back to the main(er)stream on this one after two very out there posts - but only slightly. Iceage are a gang of carefree Copenhagen rebels who played aggressive post-punk and gained quite a lot of attention in those circles for their first two albums New Brigade and You're Nothing. However, they shifted gear slightly on 2014's Plowing Into the Field of Love, where especially lead single "The Lord's Favorite" caught mine and a lot of other people's eye. It's a kinda pompous, country-tinged song where Iceage keep all of their unpolished jangliness but drench it in champagne, and the result is a really fun song that also sounds super different. To the pleasure of many, and the woe of others, this is the direction Iceage have pursued on their long-awaited new album, Beyondless.

Dope.

The pallette on Beyondless doesn't seem like much of a punk aesthetic. Horns, strings, chimes, basically every song is adorned with rococo embellishments, stealing more than a couple pages from Kaizers Orchestra's book. There's even what sounds like burlesque dance numbers several places. But Iceage don't abandon their post-punk roots, rather I really think they've evolved their sound in an interesting new way. For all its jangly guitars and saloon pianos Beyondless sounds surprisingly modern. It's so on point. Not overstuffed or annoying, just tastefully different. I love it.

Iceage singer and songwriter Elias Bender Rønnenfeldt is rapidly morphing in to the millenial version of Nick Cave, both his lyrics, persona and singing style channeling the prince of darkness more and more for each iteration. And it's not cheap imitation - Rønnenfeldt holds his own, especially as a lyricist, 'smart and hyper-literate'. Though slightly impenetrable due to their archaic vocabulary and meandering metaphors, reading the lyrics to the songs as poetry reveals some pretty cool insights into Rønnenfeldt's messed up mind. The most direct are opening track "Hurrah", a deeply sarcastic ode to war told from the first person view of a bloodthirsty soldier; and the equally in-your-face on "Showtime", a vaudevillian piece where a singer not entirely unlike Elias shoots himself on stage at the end of a sold out and critically lauded show. Otherwise Rønnenfeldt's meanings are harder to decipher, but there's an overarching feeling of violence, desolation and catharsis, at both personal and societal levels. He took the word "Beyondless" from Samuel Beckett's word-bending novella "Worstward Ho", and the album certainly speaks about something without a beyond, if that's a thing.

The rest of the guys hold their own as well. The drumming especially stands out - every song on the album is instantly recognizable from its drum patterns. Together with the guitars and bass the group has this tightness that only jamming together since childhood can produce, allowing for seamless transitions in tempo and dynamics. And the production is absolutely beautiful, all the additional instruments taking up their respective places in the sonical landscapes. Even on a busy song like "The day the music dies" you can easily choose if you want to focus your attention on the chugging rhythm guitar, the horns, the keys, the bass, the vocals, or the barrage of percussion. On a more abstract song like "Take it all", an amazing string section, sparse guitar riffs, lingering bass notes and an absolutely captivating vocal performance manage to build up to the best climax on the album, even though almost nothing happens. It's a stunning piece in its relative restraint, achieving devastating emotional impact from a simple unexpected chord change.

There's not a bad song on the album, but there are standouts. The aforementioned "Take it all" and "Showtime" ensure that the album ends on an even stronger note than it opens on. Besides this, the drunken stumble of "Catch it" is a winning blend of old and new Iceage, the awesome freak-out bridge morphing beautifully back into the song for a thrilling, screeching ending. And easily the poppiest song on the album, "Pain killer", featuring Sky Ferreira on guest vocals, is also a favorite of mine. It's simply a killer song with its brass section, fun chorus (alright alright alright) and great guitar riffs. Love it. And check out the lyrics - it's not your run of the mill love song.

Well done Iceage. Awesome album. I've played the hell out of this thing.

Best tracks: "Take it all", "Showtime", "Pain killer", "Catch it"

7. Igorrr - Savage Sinusoid

I don't envy anyone who has to review Savage Sinusoid. The album took four years to complete, and it would take four months to write about. I was weirdly hoping I wouldn't have to. But it's just too good, of course it's on this list.

I wouldn't have a chance at describing it, but it doesn't really matter, because it only takes like a minute of listening before you get what the deal is. Start with the first minute of "Houmous". It has most of the record's components in it: accordion, death metal, Aphex Twinnery, saxophone, insane howls, funky slap bass, and next-level drumming. How's that for a fucking smorgasbord. Another random minute of this song will bring you the chicken, the opera, the triangle, the flamenco, and an absurd 8-bit outro. And this by no means the most extreme song on the album. I'm not trying to make it sound intimidating or anything, I'm just trying to get this shitty stuck-upness that we all have out of the way. The sooner you can brush away that initial 'this is awful' knee-jerk reaction, the sooner you can start appreciating Igorrr's music. And you should, because Savage Sinusoid is so full of passion, creativity and magic that I can guarantee that you'll be won over before long.

Quite a fitting album cover. Looks evil at first but quickly feels more benevolent.
Like the music. Or maybe it's just me.

You see, this is an amazing album. In a mind-melting, reality-altering way. It's pure creativity, with no limits. Gautier Serre, the French musician behind the stage name Igorrr, loves classical music, all kinds of metal, balkan dance music, trip-hop and electronic music, and by combining them all at once he has created (needless to say) an entirely unique sound. Igorrr began around 2006 and was long a one-man show, the songs built around loops and samples. But for his third official album, Serre has expanded to a full band line-up, vying to make Savage Sinusoid entirely sample-free. That's part of the reason it took so long to complete, but it really adds to the result. It's quite stunning that this insanely intricate and hectic album is actually all performed by humans. There are some amazing making-of videos on YouTube, that are well worth watching. There's that inspiring, obsessive, Wintergatan-esque feeling to the sessions. You gain a lot of respect for the music after watching drummer Sylvain Bouvier gasp for air after laying down the climax for "Opus brain", watching Nils Cheville on acoustic guitar, Yann Le Glaz on saxophone, Laurent Lunoir and Laure Le Prunenec on vocals, Katerina Chrobokova on harpsichord, Antony Miranda on sitar, Erlend Caspersen on bass and Pierre Mussi on accordion completely shred on their respective instruments to nail the bonkers tempos on "Houmous", "Va te foutre" and "ieuD", all while Pierre the chicken (of "Chicken sonata" fame from the 2016 GoPro awards) waddles around.

"Spaghetti forever" amazingly sounds like Muse's entire discography compressed into four minutes, and it doesn't even sound forced. From the classical guitar to the "Hysteria"-esque fuzz bass to the angelic choirs, from the grandiosity of "Knights of Cydonia" to the longing violin of the Exogenesis symphony to the futuristic synths of The 2nd Law, it's all there, for better or for worse. The Montmartre-odyssey "Cheval" is stuffed with so much amazing accordion shredding and slap bass that you hardly notice it when the death metal shrieks and blast beats howl away at the bottom of the mix (that's right, death metal underneath with Parisian street ambiance on top). Picking it apart, it's absolutely stunning what Igorrr pulls off on this album. But that really doesn't do it any favors. The music works so incredibly well as a whole. It's entertaining to gawk and say "holy fuck we just got 10 seconds of this and then 10 seconds of that", but it really diminishes the overall impression. So I'm gonna shut the fuck up now and let you get on with it.

This aesthetic is amazing. It's like metal Monty Python.

Again, the whole thing is about the contrasts. So my favorite single tracks are the longer, multi-part ones like "Opus brain", "ieuD", "Au revoir" and "Houmous". But in the context of the album, the more one-sided tracks are just as important. The Chopin-inspired ballad "Problème d'émotion" has just enough electronic weirdness to it that it's unmistakably Igorrr, and I absolutely love it. (A quick glance back at his earlier demos reveal more of this genre - I'll definitely dig deeper!) Similarly, the non-stop intensity of "Apopathodiaphulatophobie" (fuck you too), "Viande" and "Va te foutre" are little more than a crossover-metal curiosity on their own, but it's how they mix with the rest of the album that makes the whole so stunning.

I still vividly remember the first time the stutter edit melted my mind. I was like 15, the artist was electronic music pioneer BT and the song was "The Antikythera Mechanism" (generally the entire This Binary Universe album) (but really, listen to that song, all the fucking way through). Since then this effect has become annoyingly ubiquitous on dance floors across the world, thanks to dubstep and EDM, but with discovering Igorrr this year I've finally relived that mind-melting awesomeness of my youth. Maybe Savage Sinusoid will give someone else this experience, just with Bach, Aphex Twin, or Satie, or French, Balkan, Spanish, Polish or Indian folk music. I wouldn't be surprised.

Best tracks: "Au revoir", "Houmous", "Problème d'émotion"

8. Ambrose Akinmusire - Origami Harvest

Oh the pleasures of discovering new shit. You don't know what you've been missing before you try it. And there's too much weird new shit out there to try all of it. Which is why I've fallen so completely for the world of that Albumaday blog. The Brightly Off-Coloured Discophile (as he fashions himself) presents some weird-ass record that I would never ever think of putting on myself, or whose existence my imagination simply would not have been able to conjure up. And then he sends the albums on a space rocket of profanity-laden praise, he verbally wallops you over the head with a sledgehammer until you simply have no choice than to go put on this shit, if only to prove him wrong. It's my new favorite form of prose, and for the sake of family-friendliness I'll try to keep it to a minimum on this blog, but I can't guarantee some of that beautiful filth isn't bleeding through.

Anyway, he's introduced me to a metric fuckton of amazing jazz this year. Some of the albums are like the jazz you think you know, just better. But some of them are unlike anything I've heard before, unlike anything my imagination could have conjured up - and better than both. One of these is jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire's glorious clusterfuck Origami Harvest.

Now that, my friends, is what I call an album cover. It reminds me of both
(1) the best street-art I saw in San Fransisco, and (2) the cover of To Pimp A Butterfly.

Actually, calling this a clusterfuck is a completely undeserved insult. I was referring to the fact that bandmaster Akinmusire has, alongside your to-be-expected jazz line-up of piano, drums and saxophone, invited to the party not only a classical string quartet, but also rapper Kool A.D. So it's an unlikely meeting of worlds, but there's no trace of indecent behavior here. Rather, each player in this symbiosis makes space for the others, patiently, attentively listening, restraining, adding only where needed. For all its diversity in genre and sounds, the overall theme for me is minimalism. The result is wonderfully soothing, calming and beautiful. B, E, A, utiful. "Americana / the garden waits for you to match her wilderness", with its almost Steve Reich-y string and piano ostinati, its gentle spoken word balsam, its amazing theremin-or-whatever midsection, and its extremely tasteful drumming and trumpet flourishes, is one of my favorite pieces of music in like, god knows how long. Putting this shit on after a long day of work soothes me to the very core of my soul.

Not all of Origami Harvest is as gentle, though. This shit is never boring. Quite the contrary, some heavy duty boundaries are being pushed here. There are sections where the Mivos string quartet sound more like Jonny Greenwood and the London Contemporary Orchestra. And sections where Kool A.D.'s slightly over-woke spoken word fluff becomes actual ballsy rapping. And sections where the whole ensemble ditches the restraint thing and go way out in the leftfield. I'm not jamming with all of it, like the two-minute drum solo intro to "miracle and streetfight", and the loud avant-garde outro to album closer "the lingering velocity of the dead's ambitions" has me feel like OK I guess it's fine that the record is over now. But it's not that the album is an overdose or runs out of ideas - playing this thing from the start again is just as enjoyable, it just makes me realize that there's so much amazing music packed into this thing that it doesn't matter that some of it veers a little far in one way or the other. It makes for, as the record label (more precisely but less entertainingly than Mr. Brightly) puts it, "a surprisingly fluid study in contrast". (On Albumaday you can read that "this shit melts together better than cheese, toast, with a pickle on the side".)

At the heart of it, Origami Harvest is a heavy-ass protest record. And it's not specifically in the lyrics. As mentioned I'm not the hugest fan of Kool A.D.'s semi-improvised delivery of variations over words like "the mind / dimensions / consciousness / infinite", and he says "Americana / America nah" a couple more times than necessary. His additions sound more like another instrument rather than the lyrics to which the rest provide backdrop. No, the record gets its political weight just from its sheer blackness. The album cover, the mixing of whiter-than-white chamber music with the black genres of jazz, funk and hip hop, it's such a statement. Not a confrontation, because it's so fucking beautiful, just merely a statement of existence. It's black people having to be twice as good as white people in order to get half as much in return. In order to even be acknowledged as a person in America and not a criminal suspect, a black man has to be constantly on his toes and constantly perfect, and certainly never in the wrong place, it doesn't help if it's at the right or the wrong time. This album is just so damn good that we "despite its blackness" have to appreciate it. A thread through Akinmusire's career, "Free, white and 21" just whispers names off the ever-growing list of black lives ended by structural racism." This is when Origami Harvest becomes more than just music. But being told that the world sucks in a multitude of different ways doesn't make this a less solid listening experience. It's a wonderful album, which also, if you listen to it in a certain way, can open your mind in painful new ways.

Ambrose Akinmusire has quickly become something of a jazz superstar. For good reason.

So back to the music. It's all so well done. There's not a lazy beat on this thing. For all its experimentation, it sounds so perfectly precise. When opener "a blooming bloodfruit in a hoodie" transforms from spacious intro to solid groove after over two minutes of airiness, you hear that the groove has been there all along. Every seemingly abstract flourish on the 15-minute monster "miracle and streetfight" is just so on point. And To Kool A.D.'s credit, his timing is impeccable throughout. It takes a quality rapper to put proper rhythm even when the music turns slow and lilting. But the biggest praise is to Akinmusire himself. This rising jazz superstar has won some of the biggest prizes there are in jazz the last few years. Here he proves his worth with creating a challenging vision that he leads to fruition in a way where I suspect a lot of other people would have turned it in to a complete... clusterfuck. The best parts of the album is where he challenges us with contrasts, transitions, surprises. It's a compositional masterpiece and a thrill to listen to.

It's all the more frustrating how much bad and boring jazz there is out there, when you realize that it can also be this good. I'm just realizing, looking back, I've always loved it when jazz has trickled into my life, like out on the vibrant scene in St. Louis, on some of my favorite records like Radiohead's Amnesiac and Susanne Sundfør's Music For People In Trouble, amazing electronic amalgamations from people like Thundercat and Flying Lotus, and more mainstreamly like on Kendick Lamar's To Pimp A Butterfly, where Akinmusire himself features on trumpet. Getting on the jazz wagon this year has been a delightful ride. Shoot me a message if you're keen on more recommendations. But start with Origami Harvest.

Best tracks: "Americana / the garden waits for you to match her wilderness", "a blooming bloodfruit in a hoodie"

9. Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy

What is it about teenage angst that works so well in music? Yes, it's relatable as hell when you're the same age, because everyone friggin gets it, and for a while later it will probably still hit you pretty hard in the feels, but shouldn't it start sounding childish and stupid sooner or later? I for one was certainly expecting that I one day would be able to look back at that time and laugh at all those silly feelings. Well, I'm now 28, and that day still hasn't come. And it's not just me - this theme is as huge in popular music as a good comic-of-age story is in literature and film. There's something about how overwhelming it is, how all-encompassing those emotions are. You just want it all to go away, and you just want it to last forever. Whether or not the listeners remember that themselves doesn't really matter, because it shines through in the music. And it's so damn real. Now a solid amount of years past my own adolescence, I still feel like nothing realer has happened, and probably never will. Some people my age freak out about that. I think I'm fine with it, but it sure is an amazing form of escapism to put on some Car Seat Headrest once in a while.

This album cover is absolutely wonderful. 10/10.

Car Seat Headrest started in 2010 as the solo project of then 17-year-old Will Toledo. He recorded and self-released about ten albums over the next three years. And during this time, he's angsty as fuck. He's growing up gay and different and lonely and sad. He gradually gained a bit of a cult following, as he gradually got better at both recording and songwriting, developing his signature style of what can best be described as low-fi prog punk. His songs are long and meandering, often over ten minutes long - quite an anomaly in the indie rock scene. And they're honest as hell. Like looking in a too-bright mirror when you're hungover. So he got a record deal in 2015, got together a proper band, released a compilation of his Bandcamp years, then in 2016 got his definite breakthrough with the album Teens of Denial. This is the point where I jumped on the wagon.

So now he's at this weird place where he's sitting on all this material literally recorded in the back of a car (hence the band name), which he's actually quite proud of, which most people have never heard. So rather than put out a brand new album, he goes back and re-records one of his old ones. It's a weird-ass move, but seeing where he's coming from, I kinda get it. He's got the budget, the equipment, the bandmates and the skill now that he didn't have back in 2011. He hasn't stopped making art and sold out; he's giving his art the format it deserves. Besides, Teens of Denial was probably his last teenage album. He's now 26, and any new music is going to be coming from a decidedly different place than whatever created those ten manic creations. So giving us Twin Fantasy again, commonly accepted as the best Car Seat Headrest album (I wouldn't know, I've barely dipped my toes into those old recording), makes a lot of sense. The result is such a definite statement of that time, it has a timeless quality that the self-made albums just couldn't have.
Thus, we're in the unique situation now that there exists two different versions of Twin Fantasy. They're subtitled (Mirror to Mirror) (the 2011 version) and (Face to Face) (the 2018 version). Fans are biting each other's necks off arguing over which is better, which tracks were ruined, which changes should never have happened, whether the whole thing should have happened, whether you're a true fan unless you like the old lo-fi stuff. I don't care about any of that shit. Twin Fantasy was an entirely new album for me, and only on a few occasions have I gone back and listened to the old versions. It's hard to rate one over the other. There are minor variations in many of the songs, so I kind of get the confused fans, but it's a pointless exercise. So I simply took (Face to Face) at, ehem, face value.

2 x Will Toledo in the "Nervous young inhumans" music video.
They're not huge on the visuals thing.

And it's an amazing dive into a messed up teenager's mind. It's a stressful place to be, and the album is almost 80 minutes long, so rarely do I do it all in one sitting. Specifically, track two is the 13-minute monster "Beach life in death", which kind of overshadows the entire midsection of all the album. But I urge you, at least stay for the first ten minutes. If you've gotten to "I! Don't! Want! To! Go! In! SAAANE!" and found out this isn' your cup of tea - fine. If you are into it - stay tuned for the equally thrilling "Bodys" and "Cute thing", and melt in pleasure every time a snippet from previously in the album is reused. That's such a hella good effect, and Toledo uses it in just the right amount, whether it's inverting "Stop smoking (We love you)" to "keep smoking, we love you", or reviving the outro from "Beach life in death" in one of the countless sections of the 16-minute penultimate track "Famous prophets (Stars)". Other memorable moments include the lyric in "Cute thing" about the stammering drunk trying to tell him how good that shit was, delivered hilariously deadpan; the looping three-against-four rhythm in the heartwarming outro of "Sober to death"; and the charming "Is it the chorus yet? No, it's just the building of the verse, so when the chorus comes it'll be more rewarding." during "Bodys". Speaking of the choruses, some of them do indeed sound a bit too much like an angsty teenager writing a generic chorus - but some of them are really good. There are enough of the really good ones here that you'll experience no lack of catchy hooks and singalong

The lyrics of the album revolve around a short-lived relationship, and many of them have been rewritten for this new version, reflecting Toledo's changed view on the whole deal. Quite a unique and weird situation to be in. I won't go into detail. But closing track "Twin fantasy (Those boys)" is left completely unchanged, and takes an odd third-person view that paints the relationship as a piece of sepia-perfect nostalgia. "They just want to be one / Walk off into the sun / Not kissing / Not fucking / They're just having fun fun fun fun fun" is probably the sentiment best captured on the album cover. The outro of "When I come back you'll still be here / When you come back I'll still be here" loops on and on, and I read that the vinyl version ends on a locked groove, with the last few seconds looping endlessly, allowing the fantasy to live on as long as you want.

Someone with too much time on their hands should dub SKAM season 3 using only Car Seat Headrest songs on the soundtrack. There's literally a mood on Twin Fantasy for every scene.

Best tracks: "Beach life in death", "Bodys", "Twin fantasy (those boys)", "My boy (Twin fantasy)"

10. Hamferð - Támsins Likam

Here's a brief introduction to doom metal. Or, the common understanding of it.

It's obviously an unfair simplification, but it gets three things right. A doom metal song is typically really long, really repetitive, and really sparsely instrumented.

A lot of people dislike doom metal, which I can completely understand, but they tend to have strange reasons for it.
One I get a lot is that it's "too extreme". And yes, if you're a metalhead, the fact that the songs are long, quiet and meditative, with not necessarily that much happening at any given time, is itself quite extreme.
Another one I get a lot is it's "too sad/depressing". But I really don't get that one either. Sure, the soundscapes are dark as hell, but the music never feels sad. It's not personal enough. Sufjan Stevens makes me sad. Electronic music can even make me sad. Doom metal is just epic. Intensely epic. Cinematic, big feelings, but not sadness.
And sure, if you're an adrenaline junkie unable to listen to anything slower less than 120 bpm, then doom metal is not for you. Because this shit is not a goddamn penis measuring contest. Metal can be so stupid sometimes. Like why do people think they have to start shredding once they get an electric guitar in their hands? But if you think that's what all metal is, that's like watching this knucklehead with a glittery electric violin demonstrate his  understanding of 'classical music'. So enter doom metal. This is metal excercising restraint. And more often than not, I find experience that is an absolute joy.

Hamferð are a Faroese doom metal band. Or rather, I won't pretend there are others, because there aren't in this tiny nation of 48 000 people (the music scene is wonderfully vibrant and diverse, though). So they are the only Faroese doom metal band. And that's not the only sense in which they're unique. They released the four-track 'EP' Vilst Er Síðsta Fet in 2011, the six-track 'album' Evst in 2013, and up until this year this was the entirety of their output. It's a stunning, woefully short catalogue, in my opinion. It singlehandedly got me into the genre, so I'm obviously biased, but I have branched out since, discovering more to love in this dark musical world, but nothing strikes quite the same chord with me as Hamferð's unique sound does. So the arrival of Evst's long-awaited follow-up early this year was exciting indeed. They promised an epic narrative, their most ambitious project yet, and boy did Támsins Likam deliver.

I'm not sure what more to expect/want from a doom metal cover. This imagery doesn't do much
for me, but it's consistent with the music, I guess. And the title, which means "body of the mist".

Hamferð haven't lost their touch. And I wouldn't blame them if they had. These are regular guys, working normal jobs and doing some Hamferð stuff when they have the time and money. Three-show tours every now and again, playing to modest but growing crowds across Europe. They're not full-time satanists (which is good) or professional musicians. Singer Jón Aldará is a friggin ornithologist. It's not a given that magic is gonna come out when they enter the studio. But they're good musicians. They have a clear vision. And clichéd though it may sound, they're inspired by the Faroe Islands. For case in point, see the video below, of which probably half the views are mine.

Whereas Evst began with its heaviest riff, Támsins Likam begins with its quietest section, the 9-minute opening track "Fylgisflog" being the song on the album closest to fulfilling the schematic above. It has a moody and exciting 4 minute intro, but I will admit I don't always play this thing from the top. The next four tracks  "Stygd", "Tvístevndur meldur", "Frosthvarv" and "Hon syndrast" are directly accessible in comparison, with 5-6-minute song lengths, legitimate riffs and actual 4/4 grooves (at first the relative lack of unconvential time signatures slightly disappointed me, but I'm sure for the majority of you that's at most a minor issue), and although I feel like I'm disrespecting the spirit of doom or something, these tracks are indeed 'easier' to put on. They will appeal to a wider audience of metalheads than did Evst. But I may feel ever so slightly that they're not actually doom enough. It almost feels too... happy. Doom is best in large doses. It's all about the contrast. The four back-to-back relatively uptempo tracks are all amazing, but they do rather exhaust me, and lately my favorite has become the slowest song of them all, closer "Vápn í anda". Before this there are fewer of the dramatic melodic sections reaching the same heights as on Evst. There are no dead stops in the middle of the album. Yes, on ANY other album that would be... not a problem, to say the least, but here I find myself missing it. But I'm aware that my tastes here are quite extreme.

But the full-scale doom on the opening and closing tracks (who together amount to half the album's runtime) really add to the experience. When I do sit down and listen to this thing in full, my is it a trip. It's a widescreen cinematic experience. It does everything Evst did, and refines it. Even with my passable Faroese, I have a hard time following the archaic lyrics, but it doesn't subtract from the experience. Whether you're picturing a hero's journey and battles of a war, or lonely desolation and battles of a mind, the story is vivid as fuck. I don't know whether I prefer Aldará's deep growl, his operatic chest voice, or the tortured rasp he croaks out in "Tvístevndur meldur", but the combination is breathtaking. He channels a thousand years of history like a force of nature. And the band is as tightly orchestrated as if they were recording for BBC's Planet Earth.

Hamferð do explore some newish territory here as well. There's an unfamiliar semi-shuffling groove on "Frosthvarv", which works much better now than when I first heard it. And there are twenty seconds of spine-tingling black metal on "Hon syndrast" - the way this is paired with the dramatic climax and outro of the song is incredible. But the main virtue of Támsins Likam is as a culmination of what Hamferð could be - and now is. They might make a better album, but I wouldn't put my money on it. I wouldn't even bet on them making another album. This album exists, and it's a gift to the world of metal, and certainly to the world of me. There may never be made an album that is doom enough for me. If someone did it would probably be boring. You'd have to keep the intensity. This is the key to what Hamferð does, and it's definitely not easy. I don't know why I love doom so much (please tell me, psychoanalysts), but I've been returning to Evst over and over again for five years, and despite my very specific objections, I suspect I'll be returning to this one for ten.

Best tracks: "Hon syndrast", "Vápn í anda", "Tvístevndur meldur"

I'm seeing them live in Trondheim on Sunday. I don't know anyone else who's going, but I'm going. So if we haven't talked for a while, and you're ever so slightly interested - drop me a message.

More honorable mentions

Welcome back, we're back to normal now after yesterday's rather indulgent detour. Here are three more honorable mentions, i.e. albums that I've enjoyed a lot this year and that almost made it to the top ten list. Said list will commence in the next post. All aboard!

First thought: Boring. Second thought: Actually kinda poignant? I mean, the color scheme is
striking, the font neat I guess, and her expression intriguing. In a few years this might just become iconic.

Snail Mail - Lush

Lush is the debut album of Lindsay Jordan, a.k.a. Snail Mail, a singer-songwriter born in friggin 1999. She was just 15 when she released her debut EP, and got a 'Best new music' label from the influential music website Pitchfork, and her album debut has seen both huge hype and raving reviews. But is it actually good, though? Well, curious as to what all the fuss was about I've given it quite a few listens, and yes, I concur that it is good. There's that alluring melancholy 'loner's contentment' vibe that Angel Olsen an Kurt Vile channel so perfectly. Her voice is passionate and raw, and her guitar playing is refreshingly fun and creative. It's certainly a welcome album for those of us still fond of the honest, guitar-based indie rock of its 90's and early 2000's heyday. And I have a sneaking suspicion that's why it's getting as much attention as it is. Still, what makes it a good album is that it pushes forward in addition to looking back. While her fans may be boring nostalgics, Jordan isn't. The skeletal song structures like on "Intro" and attention-grabbing single "Let's find an out" remind me as much of SoundCloud trap as Perfume Genius. But she really is at her best when doing completely her own bedroom-daydream thing. The rerecording of "Stick" off her debut EP is so vulnerable and honest, so completely heartbreaking, so reminiscent of those self-doubting teenage years, it hits me deep in the feels every time.

Hear: "Stick", "Pristine", "Heat wave"

Too bad that the cover isn't better, cuz Yves Tumor is a really interesting visual
as well as musical artist. This creepy-ish one doesn't do much for me, though.

Yves Tumor - Safe in the Hands of Love

OK, enough with the 'minor variations on indie rock' shit. Now here's some craziness. I'm not sure what it is, but it's crazy good. There's plenty of jazz on here, some hip hop, a lot of ambientness, some industrial noise rock stuff, even some pop-like R&B in places. Wait, what? OK, rewind. Who the hell is Yves Tumor? Well, it's the unlikely pseudonym of the person given the even more unlikely birthname Sean Bowie. I don't even know what he looks like, since he's as experimental and provocative with his visual and body art (here's the cover of his debut album, Serpent Music, which came very close to making my year-end list in 2016) as he is with his music. Digging up some info while listening to the album, I strangely came across this fascinating shoot just as the amazing "Recognizing the enemy" came on, where he sings "Inside my own living hell / I can't recognize myself".  And check out the amazing music video snippets he keeps posting to Twitter (especially that last one). I think I'm starting to get the idea. But hey, the music is awesome. Incredibly well made. As Albumaday put it, "this shit slides so easily into a room it's like a buttered up mosquito." He goes on in hilarious fashion to point out that "It's trippy as balls and relaxing as fuck. And, trust me, that combo ain't easy to make. Yet it'll seduce you faster than Idris Elba asking you if you want to split a bottle of your favourite alcohol." (You, sir, are wonderful.) So yeah, Mr. Tumor, Sean, Mr. Bowie, he knows what he's doing, and he's rapidly getting better at it. He's signed with Warp records now, and if the Aphex Twin nods weren't clear from the music video snippets, he certainly doesn't put labelmates Brian Eno, Flying Lotus, Mark Pritchard, Grizzly Bear or Squarepusher to shame either. Massive Attack's latest also springs to mind. Overall there's just so much going here, so many different things smoothly combined into a majorly enjoyable listening experience for those slightly experimentally minded of you. I mean, I first listened to this while doing yoga in my apartment, and I enjoyed every moment of it. This is a man to look out for.

Hear: It doesn't make much sense to play them alone, but "Noid", "Recognizing the enemy"

In-house artist David Barnes has done some pretty crazy stuff on previous album covers,
and this is one of my favorites actually, despite the atrocious color palette.

of Montreal - White is Relic / Irrealis Mood

OK, from the hip, hyped and modern, we continue to a veritable dinosaur in the music industry. It's been a decade since of Montreal was relevant, and two since they were new and exciting. But, we're a small, devoted fan base sticking out for Kevin Barnes' ever-morphing musical circus. Fans have had different points at which they started dropping off - for some it was when he ditched his longtime bandmates for the 2013 country-rock left turn lousy with sylvianbriar (I really liked this one though - click for Norwegian review). For me it was 2015's completely unlistenable and impenetrable Aureate Gloom (just trying to read that track listing puts me in a bad mood). But hey, I saw them live last year, which has been on my bucket list ever since I heard how surreal their stage shows are. And then this spring Barnes released this little gem. Here he's actually realized that less can be more. Rather than pack as much chaos into each song as possible, he gives these songs time to breathe, morph, evolve. The six tracks are all between 5 and 9 minutes, and "inspired by the extended dance mixes that people used to make for pop singles in the 80s". It really works. It's jazzy, funky and fun, which I still think is Kevin's best sound, also a sound that pairs much better with his still as dense, dark lyrics what than busy indie prog did a couple albums ago. There's a lot of beautiful saxophone here, which I always appreciate. Kevin goes to some new sonical territory he hasn't explored before (not a small feat after a 15-album run), even rapping a semi-confident triplet flow on the final track. That last track "If you talk to Symbol / Hostility voyeur" (they all have double titles) is probably my favorite even - usually a good sign.

Hear: "If you talk to Symbol / Hostility voyeur", "Writing the circles / Orgone tropics"

XX: The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

My goodness that is an underwhelming album cover.
Some of the single art is better, but not by much, tbh.

Ah, The 1975. Bombastic, pretentious, self-aggrandizing? Yes. The band that makes bubblegum pop songs appealing to both emo kids and suburban moms, but combines them with abstract instrumental pieces on their albums to make them seem like era-defining statements? Yes. Do I love them? Yes. I think they're deserving of both the hype they get, the hate they get, and most of the big words they use about themselves. Matt Healy is a captivating frontman with a lot on his mind. I like their fearlessness in combining new and old, different styles that shouldn't work together but often do. And they're a group of buddies from Manchester who play by their own rules rather than those of industry executives, music critics, or internet tastemakers.

But they only have two records under their belt, and their first one sounds pretty immature in my opinion, so if they are to cement their status as a generation-defining band, there's a lot of pressure on for their third album. And they've dropped some (five, actually) advance singles, many of which are super awesome. So I've been really hyped about this album. Which - as mentioned - dropped on Friday. So ladies, gentlemen, and those that lieth betwixt, some ramblings about my pre- and post-release thoughts on A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships.

From the "pastel-dancy" "Sincerity is scary" video (see below).

Let's start with the singles. They're more diverse than you'd think possible even for a group like The 1975. The first one, "Give yourself a try", is a high-paced rocker centered around a relentless three-second riff that repeats for the entire song. Literally. The beat is just a repeating drum machine loop, with the only variation offered by drummer George Daniel's characteristic cymbal mashing. It's minimalist and weird, reminding me almost of Radiohead's "I might be wrong". The song progresses through Healy's fantastic delivery of a string of "older and wiser" style lyrics. They're memorable and entertaining and thought-provoking. Some have called it a return to the emo-rock of their first album. But I disagree, "Give yourself a try" feels fresh and different and is one of my most-played, -sung and -danced-to songs of the year.

The next one was even better. "Love it if we made it" is shockingly good. From the moment its quiet turn-up-the-volume synth intro explodes with Matt shreaking "We're fucking in a car, shooting heroin", the intensity is sky high the whole song through. Healy has often complained about the lack of social and political commentary in pop music, and here he does his utmost to right this wrong. Going after Trump, Kanye, Milo, xenophobia, the refugee crisis, the prison industry, fossil fuels and a bunch of other timely topics in the verses, the song's chorus is like a rallying cry for those who see some glimmer of hope in this mess. Here he spells out some of it. As some other review I read pointed out, whereas "Love it if we made it" might at first sound like a sappy love song, with the "we" referring to a standard relationship, it turns out it's referring to friggin humanity. He's saying "Imagine if we could get through all this, together". It's almost 50 years since John Lennon's "Imagine", and modernity has failed us. This is an absolute gem of a song, and when the second chorus brings back the playful funk that The 1975 played with on I Like It When You Sleep..., I almost feel guilty for enjoying myself as much as I am.

OK, hype hype. The next single was "TOOTIMETOOTIMETOOTIME". It's way to poppy, overly autotuned, I was immediately disappointed. The next was "Sincerity is scary". It's got a lame jazzy intro, it's very short and came across as pretty boring and sappy to me. And then came "It's not living if it's not with you", which does sound more like a The 1975 song, but also is even poppier. So, mixed feelings. Luckily for several of these songs, they received music video treatments, and I think I'd rank how much I like the music videos in the exact opposite order as how much I like the songs. The video for "TOOTIME..." is giddy, charming and heartwarming, and made me appreciate the song ten times more. The pastel dancy video for "Sincerity is scary" makes the song feels much more... sincere. And whereas "Give yourself a try" has a sort of lyric video with an over-the-top but cool aesthetic, the video for "Love it if we made it" kinda just knocks you over the head.

From the "Give yourself a try" video. C.f. "over-the-top but cool aesthetic"

So what about the album? Woof. Well, the first impression was terrible. You see, they've gone for a 22 A Million sound. You know, that amazing Bon Iver record with all the vocoder stuff. Which is a damn shame, since the thing about vocoders is that they warp your voice to just sound like what the vocoder sounds like. So if you use a vocoder in the same way as someone else, even if your voice is completely different, the result is gonna sound exactly the same, and that's what happened here. This isn't a nice "you can hear their influences" type nod, it sounds identical. Like, in a Greta Van Fleet/Led Zeppelin way. It's hella distracting. Boo. The intro just completely put me off. And "How to draw / Petrichor", the first "new" song in the tracklisting after two back-to-back singles, is so derivative that I'm still not over it when the actually pretty awesome second half of the song kicks in.

Luckily, though, the second impression is better. Now I like it quite a lot. It's easily as good as I Like It When You Sleep.... It takes risks, it combines genres that shouldn't be combined and really often makes it work, it's long and bombastic, and the comparisons to "the OK Computer of our generation" (bleagh) are actually understandable. (I don't agree, but I can see where they're coming from. Specifically, they're coming from the Siri-narrated "The man who married a robot / Love theme".) The one place the vocoderisms really work is on the extremely emotional "I like America & America like's me". I think it would make Justin Vernon proud. It's mixed with trap beats, and Healy has described it as an "ode to SoundCloud rap". It's a prime example of the successfully mixing things that shouldn't work, but do. Otherwise there are some very sappy ballads here, and these have only gotten better since I Like It When You Sleep.... "Inside your mind" and the acoustic "Be my mistake" are both lovely. And the low tempos make songs like "Sincerity is scary" and "It's not living if it's not with you" work much better in context. Especially the latter. It's annoying and poppy when played on the radio with other similar-sounding messes, but as track 11 on an actually quite introspective, serious album, it's triumphant and wonderful. The only song I really don't like is the jazz standard (yes really) "Mine". Just... don't. It sounds like the kind of family-friendly Christmas album Britney Spears might release in 4-5 years' time. Luckily, the last two songs bring back the soaring guitars nd sees The 1975 back in band mode. The last song is maybe my favorite of them all.

Conclusion: I don't know how high it would be on my top 10 list, but it would certainly be on there. Give it a try. It's the real deal. If you liked I Like It When You Sleep..., chances are you're gonna like this too. I'm really into it, actually, despite its many flaws. The 1975 sure aren't perfect. They'd be boring if they were.

Best tracks: "Love it if we made it", "I always wanna die (sometimes)", "I like America & America likes me", "Inside your mind"

Welcome back!

Hi all,

Happy December 1st, the date marking the joyous return of my annual semi-functional musical advent calendar! I can promise you that this year it's gonna get real crazy here. You see, friends, thanks to my friend Stefan I've come across this amazing blog. The reviews on this site are balls to the wall hilarious, in large part thanks to the prominent swearing, but they are generally super interesting, heartfelt, eye-opening reviews, of stuff I would never have heard otherwise. The most featured genres on this website for "audiophile motherfuckers" are jazz, classical, electronic and hip-hop, preferably a mix of all of the above on the same album. The results are frequently amazing, and (spoiler) some of my favorites from this site have indeed ended up on my year-end list (you'll probably never guess which though). So, huge shout out to this anonymous friggin genius.

So while I realize that my lists have often seemed slightly schizophrenic in previous iterations, that trend is not going to get any milder this year. As always, I'll start with some honorable mentions, the first batch of which follows below. Then, as a bonus due to special circumstances this year, I'll dedicate a post to my first impressions of The 1975's new album A Brief Enquiry Into Online Relationships. This has been one of my most highly anticipated albums this year, since I really enjoyed both their previous album, and many of the singles they've dropped so far this year. Due to its November 30th release date, and the fact that I had to start working on my year-end list some time before that, I felt that rather than "saving a spot" for The 1975 or making a rushed decision on the eve of December 1st, I'll simply exempt them from eligibility and make a separate "premature evaluation" post. Should be fun.

Then there'll be some more honorable mentions, then the top 10 comes. I'll try to be less verbose this year and rather focus on finishing this thing before Christmas. Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

OK, that's enough for now, enjoy the ride!

Really pretty cover. I really like it. The picture, the colour palette,
the style of painting. Makes we want the vinyl.

Hjerteslag - Nattseileren

First out is Norwegian band Hjerteslag's third album Nattseileren, keeping it real. These guys from Bergen play jangly, dreamy pop/rock. It's not particularly new or different, it's just really enjoyable. I saw them live last year, in support of their previous album Vannmann86 (featuring the lovable "Sang til Sonja"), and they really know their shit. They put on a hell of a show and are energetic as fuck. On a good day they sound like early R.E.M., and I mean not just in that the arrangements and playing style sound the same (which is true for, like, the majority of indie rock), but that they capture the same spirit that R.E.M. had on those classic IRS albums. Furthermore, the lyrics are frequently beautiful. The Bergen accent and delivery evokes John Olav Nilsen & Gjengen (who spearheaded the Bergen revival that started conquering Norway about 10 years ago) and the themes evoke Jokke & Valentinerne (the most celebrated 'gutter poet' in Norwegian rock). So, biggish words there. Don't expect something breathtaking on first listen, though. This album's finer points stand out on repeated listens, slowly revealing the little details, when you (or, the Norwegians among you) notice a particularly striking lyric, or hear a certain melody while you're in a certain vulnerable emotional state. The album might be a little front-heavy (best songs coming first), or it might just be because I haven't played the whole thing many enough times. 

Also a cover I really like. Like the wordless music within, the album art speaks
for itself, a beautiful composite image accompanied only by a name.

Jon Hopkins - Singularity

This one is from Albumaday, and I don't think I could put it better than he did. I'd link his review here, but I can't friggin find it. I sent him the following message using his Contact page: "A fucking search function on your site! That's all i ask for! Sincerely, Huge fan." So, dig it up yourself if you're interested, I can't find it. Anyways, Singularity. This is mind-meltingly good electonica. Jon "the wizard" Hopkins is a veteran in the game, and I'm no connoisseur, but surely this must be his peak so far. It flows so awesomely well, balancing pulsing high-octane dancefloor jams with hypnotic, minimalist piano pieces. A completely immersive experience. I think the title track and "Luminous beings" are my favorites, but put on that shit in full. Appreciate how, sandwiched between two sparse, meditative piano pieces, an unassuming track like "C O S M", containing not a single melody, barely a beat, and having no discernible direction still can convey so much emotion. Tell me you're not moved after listening to that beautiful, beautiful electronic mess. Other recommended Hopkins-related pastimes would be watching him recreate and even add to the magic live, or absorbing the very on-point music videos for "Emerald rush" and "Feel first life".

Beach House have some pretty awful album covers. So I guess for being them this
one isn't so bad, but it's still not very good. It looks better from afar than up close.

Beach House - 7

You've heard this shit before. Six times, to be precise. Beach House have stuck to their formula, they carved out their own niche and basically invented a genre. But whereas their previous albums (2015's Depression Cherry and Thank Your Lucky Stars) started to sound trapped in this style and out of ideas (I find these albums pretty boring and they haven't aged very well either), the aptly titled 7 finds a Beach House sounding rejuvenated and excited again. Now, this is Beach House we're talking about here, and they're certainly still unmistakably Beach House. Victoria Legrand's gentle vocals drape this album in a velvety blanket, and the synths and guitars are as thick and reverbed as we've come to expect. But there are new touches here that keep throwing your ears off. Slightly grungier guitars, brasher drums, slightly higher tempos. And all these jarring elements go really well with the aforementioned dream-pop staple elements. "Dive" is the best example and a clear highlight on the album.

This genre is often really beautiful, it just too often veers into the territory of boring. But while 7 is very much of the same genre, it is possibly least Beach House's most beautiful and least boring album yet. While there are many good songs on all of Beach House's albums, their impact is sometimes diminshed by too many too-similar sounding songs surrounding them. Thus 7's success lies in its adding just the right amount of variation to a winning, but aging, formula.

1. Perfume Genius - No Shape

How much emotion is it possible to pack into one minute of music? I'm not sure, but Mike Hadreas, aka. Perfume Genius, has spent the last ten years trying to find out. On No Shape opener "Otherside", I think he gets dangerously close to the answer.

I like how the writing evokes the homemade feel of his older
album covers, but makes it all more technicolor.

He started his MySpace page in 2008, while recovering from alcoholism and drug addiction. Reading an account of Hadreas' pre Perfume Genius life is a painful affair: Receiving death threats at high school as the only openly gay student and dropping out before finishing, getting hospitalized after being attacked by 'a carload of young men' while walking down the street, moving to Brooklyn and falling into alcoholism and drug abuse, moving back home to live with his mom and stepdad for rehab. It turned out the best therapy, as is often the case, was making music, so he began uploading videos of himself playing piano and singing, and soon enough he was signed by Matador Records. He became Perfume Genius, and released his debut album Learning in 2010.

Hadreas' voice is thin and trembling. His songs are simple, short, little more than sketches. And they demand your full attention. What's amazing about his music is how extremely intimate and personal it feels. Although he's been in his thirties for most of his Perfume Genius' career, he sounds like just a teenager, discovering his creativity and talent for the first time, and as a listener I'm taken along on this journey. His victories become my victories. While his debut album and 2012 follow-up Put Your Back N 2 It featured mostly simple, acoustic instrumentation (but truckloads of beautiful and memorable songs), he took a dramatic turn towards more electronics, more explosions, creepy soundscapes and abstract experiments on 2014's breakthrough Too Bright. I loved it to bits, and in the following years, amazing little drips, like Jonathan, his 2015 collaboration with Christine and the Queens, or his 2016 cover of Elvis' "Can't help falling in love" for a Prada advertising campaign, had me in awe at the emotional power of this man's music. When No Shape's first single "Slip away" arrived in March last year, I was at first a bit hesitant. It's the loudest and busiest Perfume Genius song by a far stretch, and the video was also a bit overwhelming in all its technicolor production. Had Hadreas forgotten what made his music so memorable in the first place?

Not sure why he keeps doing this off-shoulder thing,
but hey man, you do you.

I needn't have worried. For No Shape is all about diversity, and for every loud, triumphant "Slip away" and "Wreath", there's a barely whispered "Every night" and "Die 4 you". Hadreas has discovered that such contrasts even within a song, such as on jaw-dropping opener "Otherside", make the impacts of both the highs and lows exponentially greater. Adding to the sonic pallette are the understated baroque-pop of "Valley", the sassy funk of "Go ahead" (following up on Too Bright's "Fool"), and the near ambient feel on "Choir" and "Braid". The instrumentation is impressively varied, every song creating its own very distinct world to the same extent as on masterpieces like Kid A. There are absolutely gorgeous live string sections on many songs, but rather than getting sappy, they challenge and drive the songs forward. And the way Hadreas combines them with other instruments, vocal arrangements and mystical percussion in ever restless curiosity is fascinating.

Hadreas' lyrics have always been on the minimalist side. Or perhaps pointillist. Often seemingly meaningless two-word phrases are strung together so they only vaguely make sense. But it's a technique he's perfected for a long time (check out "AWOL marine", opener on Put Your Back N 2 It), and still uses on the majority of the songs on No Shape. Barely around twenty words, the lyrics on "Otherside", "Choir", "Braid" and "Alan" read like perfect little poems. On other songs Hadreas is atypically wordy, but no less eloquent. The wonderfully defiant "Go ahead" speaking out against religious homophobes always gets me: "If you need to take a moment, take a moment. If you need you can even say a little prayer for me. Baby I'm already walking in the light."

I'm both impressed and very pleased that the relentless musical experimentation hardly anywhere gets in the way of the emotional impact. Maybe "Sides" is the one song that would have been better off with a more stripped-back instrumentation, as I can't really make out the intention of the song behind its flashy embellishments. But still, 12 out of 13 tracks here are jaw-dropping successes. And again, the emotional impact packed by naked album closer "Alan" is just multiplied tenfold by the sonic and lyrical experiments preceding it. If I'm out and about I'll tend to listen to the first, riveting half, and the second, meditative half is better suited for quiet evenings. Both versions of the album strike a massive emotional blow. While I didn't play the second half quite as much in the beginning, it's only gotten better with time, and that's what really sealed this album in first place for me. Hats and shirts off for Perfume Genius.

Best tracks: "Wreath", "Otherside", "Die 4 you", "Go ahead", "Alan", "Slip away" (yes that's half the album, sorry).

(Yes there are a lot of "half"s here, maybe I'm influenced by the book series I'm currently reading, The Shattered Sea trilogy, whose titles read "Half a king", "Half the world", and "Half a war".)

2. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard - Polygondwanaland

These guys are amazing. King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard (which is my new favorite thing to say in a Scottish accent) are an Australian seven-piece psych-rock band with two drummers, three guitarists (one of whom plays a bright yellow guitar with the frets rearranged to create odd microtonal scales), and they released five - five - full-length albums last year. With that sort of insane production you might think the quality would suffer, but while I'll admit that some of them were a bit of a mixed bag, the November release Polygondwanaland is an epic psychedelic journey rich in spine-tingling Gizzverse lore, a thrilling array of genres, and an absolutely perfect flow without a single down moment. While King Gizzard don't sound the least bit old-fashioned, anyone who says there hasn't been good psychedelic rock since the 70's needs to listen to Polygondwanaland.

Typical drawn King Gizzard album cover. Not exactly aesthetically pleasing,
but with some interesting elements on it once you're into the music. Note the
horrible figure in the box down in the left. 

The album consists of four relatively distinct parts.  The first is the incredible ten minute opening track, "Crumbling castle". An intricate and precisely crafted piece of prog rock, it expertly builds up, segues between sections, introduces a bunch of different riffs and themes, but ties together beautifully, and stands alone as perhaps the finest single song King Gizz have created. Its release preceded the album by a few weeks, and got me thoroughly hyped, despite the brief sludge-metal coda, which some people tend to find off-putting.

The rest of the album sounds nothing like "Crumbling castle". From track 2 to 9 we're presented with a sonically much more restrained set, "Crumbling castle"'s tight prog-rock licks giving way to a an almost laidback, desert-psychedelia vibe. The songs flow unnoticably into one another, each picking up where the previous left off (a not entirely unfamiliar trick for King Gizzard, cf. 2016's Nonagon Infinity), and gradually increasing in intensity as the tracklist progresses. While the title track's main job is to calm us down after the adrenaline rush of "Crumbling castle" and introducing us to the magical, prehistoric world of Polygondwanaland (Gondwana is the name of the supercontinent formed 550 million years ago), it does so with a suprisingly complex set of polyrhythmns, plenty of flute and delicate acoustic guitar work. The next two tracks each turn the pace up one notch, with catchy, incessant ostinatoes (ostinati?), more synths, and a bit of Murder of the Universe's spoken-word weirdness and some scary demon-like backing vocals singing about dinosaurs. But still with flute, hypnotizing polyrhythmns, and some super groovy bass licks.

The album continues building, and a riffier, tighter structure emerges elegantly from the sprawling soundscape with "Inner cell"'s lovely acoustic guitar hook. As the song of conspiracy and revolt builds to a stunning climax, the super-awesome 80's horror movie synths of "Loyalty" lead us in to the most lyrically captivating moment on the album. After a bass-riff breakdown, the following barrage is performed with a tilted rhythm that just oozes madness, by some sort of god-figure (or man who fashions himself a god) who sees his people revolting against him: "What is with these / crimes of treason / I will fight this / inquisition / If I have to I will / not surrender / If I'm backed in / to a corner / I will draw and quarter / all the children / just to prove I'm / not a coward / I will put them all in / Judas cradle / just to show them a god incarnate". As the ever-present and now also ominous flute returns, the chant of "where's the loyalty?" has me shivering wondering what will happen next. I think "Horology" provides some hints.

This is from the hilariously horrible "Rattlesnake" green-screen video. Lead single
off Flying Microtonal Banana, last year's second-best King Gizzard release.

There's so much to say about each song that it doesn't make sense to go through them all, but it's hard to know what to leave out. In general the instrumentals might be catchier than the songs themselves, the vocals mostly being rhythmic devices, scattering imagerial keywords staccato across the beautiful soundscapes. But the lyrical themes do bear a lot of weight when combined with the albums Nonagon Infinity and Murder of the Universe, invoking many of the same storylines, and while the connections aren't all clear, there is a mutant robotish human being (is this Han-Tyumi?) with superpowers including a fourth type of color receptors in his eyes. There's a race of people who are most definitely dying, and another (more tetrachromatic mutants?) taking over (this storyline is vaguely being recounted at the end of the album, "Tetrachromacy", "Searching" and "The fourth colour"). There are oppressive rulers, and conspiracies agains them. And god knows what the nightmare-inducing character pictured on the album cover and described in disgusting detail on "Horology" is doing.

Anyway. Polygondwanaland is an utterly captivating album, for new and old Gizzheads alike. For longtime fans of it's an excellent development of their sound, incorporating the best elements from all their various experiments the last years. And for newcomers (or those who didn't like the intensity of Nonagon Infinity, the silliness on Murder of the Universe, the chillwave jazz on Sketches of Brunswick East or the less focued psychdelia of their older work) it serves as an enjoyable and accessible introduction to KGATWL's weird world. It's only 43 minutes long, and goes down really well in one short sitting. I think the only reason it's not at the centre of this flow chart is that it hasn't had enough time to mature among the fanbase yet.

Best tracks: "Crumbling castle", and it makes no sense to hear the others in isolation, but maybe "Deserted dunes welcome weary feet" and "Loyalty" are especially good.

3. Everything Everything - A Fever Dream

Apparently they took their name from the first words on Radiohead’s Kid A, but despite what you might expect from me I first heard this factoid after becoming fans of Everything Everything.

This Manchester rock quartet have a unique and compelling sound, and while the first element that stands out is the incredibly over-the-top vocals (apparently lead singer Jonathan Higgs discovered his singing talent after attempting to sing like Thom Yorke and failing, another factoid that I was unaware of at the time of my introduction to the band), what drew me in the most was the exciting genre blend of busy math-rocky rhythms combined with super joyous, catchy pop hooks. My introduction to the band was their 2015 single “I believe it now” (which really doesn’t sound anything like Radiohead at all), a simple, slick, ingenious pop song which circulated heavily in my brain for months and years. I put on their previous album Get Free, which certainly showcased their unique sound, but got a bit stressful and obnoxious for my taste. I was therefore excited to not only check out last year’s A Fever Dream, but even more so to acknowledge that they’d really distilled their sound to the bare, thrilling essentials, and put together a spectacular and razor sharp album to boot. With A Fever Dream, Everything Everything create a pop symphony, music that bites you and demands attention at first, but thrills and rewards on repeat listens, and they put it on a cohesive, bordering on concept album, with dark lyrical themes and enticing unanswered questions. Hats off!

Dark cover. I feel like the idea was better than the execution.

The fairly straightforward pop songs are what carry the album on the first few listens. “Desire”, “Can’t do” and “Run the numbers” all pick up where “I believe it now” left off, with huge choruses and relatively simple song structures, keeping Everything Everything’s characteristic chaotic rhythms and busy guitar lines to a minimum. Occasionally the math rock shines through though, like on late-album highlight “Ivory tower”, and the extended outros to opening cut “Night of the long knives” and title track “A fever dream”, and I just appreciate these sections even more on repeat listens. Finally, the necessary breathers on the album with relatively gentler pace reveal themselves as some of the brightest gems now that I’ve played the album to bits. Songs like “Big game”, “Good shot, good soldier” and “Put me together”, exploring the full range of their dynamic capacity, from ethereal ambience and soothing crooning to beautiful crescendos to manic climaxes, really showcase Everything Everything’s versatility and matured songwriting. These songs are experimental, exciting and dramatically different from anything else I listen to, but simultaneously easy on the ears, flowing beautifully in the context album – no easy feat.

The lyrics on the album are not to be passed by either. As the title suggests, they are much more sinister than the music, and the contrast is an effective one. Societal divides, the current political and sentimental landscape, and generally a pretty depressing outlook on our future are the main themes. "Desire" might sound like the title is meant as "Lust", but you realize that the song could rather have been called "Greed" after the opening phrase "I want this planet and I want it now". Other themes haven't popped out at me before reading up on it now, but "Big game" is undeniably a Trump diss written in Trump's own kindergarten style, and "Run the numbers" reads as quite a painful pro-Brexit song (the pain being in 'us sensible people' failing to understand the anger and reaction of 'the others'). On the more personal side, songs like "Good shot, good soldier" manage to combine this critical outlook on world order with internal crises, in frankly quite an overwhelming way. The repeated howls of "I've been sleeping!" on "Put me together" really drive home the message of the album, and while I kind of wish it would offer some advice other than A) hope it's just a dream you'll wake up from, or B) ask for help from God, I don't feel that a lack of Confuscian wisdom subtracts from my experience.

Fashion isn't one of their strengths. That's OK.

The two final songs are by far the least exciting on the album. I guess they provide some relief after the intense “Ivory tower” and some emotional closure from the heavy lyrical themes, but I tend to play them much less. However, a companion EP A Deeper Sea was released this spring, with two remixes and two new songs, whereof especially “The Mariana” is a worthy addition to the album’s magnificent oeuvre.

A Fever Dream is one of those delightfully creative pop albums that just brims with ideas (I get vibes from of Montreal, Grimes, or Janelle Monaé's best), and then manages to rein them in just enough. While it's impossible not to be pulled along by their enthusiasm, it could have been too much and gotten exhausting after a while. Alternatively the restraint could have just made it dull, but this album ends up hitting the sweet spot in between.  It becomes more than a showcase of creativity, succeeding in forming a focused, coherent and important statement.

Wallowing in despair has seldom been as much fun.

Best tracks: "Run the numbers", "Ivory tower", "Good shot, good soldier"

4. St. Vincent - MASSEDUCTION

St. Vincent doesn't have an album called ARTPOP (Lady Gaga does, strangely), but she might as well have. The six capital letters perfectly describe what St. Vincent does for a living. She channels current pop culture, twists it through her own musical, historical, poetic, personal lens, and can as one of very few high-profile female musicians present an entirely uncompromising piece of modern art. Her latest album, MASSEDUCTION, is far and away her most POP and least ART album yet, but that's not a bad thing. It's an album that feels urgent, important, and fun at the same time. Global and intimately personal at the same time, like only the greatest ones do.

Yikes. It's garish as hell, but also eye-catching.

A detour away from the album review:

I've seen St. Vincent live twice. The first time was when she warmed up for Grizzly Bear in Oslo in 2009. She was alone on stage with a Bernhoft-like setup: a couple guitars and a looper pedal. I hadn't heard of her before, but this would have been just after the release of her second album, Actor, the last before she officially became the most hyped indie artist in the world, and certainly the last tour where she was just the opening act. I was impresed and charmed, but not blown away, and the Grizzly Bear show is certainly what sticks today.

The second time was in November last year. It was my last night in St. Louis, and my flatmate James came with me to the show. I still have confused sentiments about the show: Annie Clark was all alone on stage, wielding just her guitar, supported just by unseen instrumentals playing like karaoke tracks, for two hours. She stood in front of four curtains in various locations onstage, and I kept expecting some grand theatrical reveal, but it never came. The first half of the show was old (pre-MASSEDUCTION) material, and the second half was MASSEDUCTION played in full, from start to finish. During this section she was backed by some roof-height visuals playing behind her, showing grotesque, voyeuristic video clips such as ultra close-up, ultra slow-motion loops of Annie eating a slice of cake. Again, mixed emotions. But I think the most suprising aspect of it all was just how bare and stripped-down it was. MASSEDUCTION sounds rich and maximalistic, the kind of album that could have been performed with a full band and a crew of backing dancers. Instead it's just the instrumentals just as on the album; only St. Vincent's live vocal and guitar improvizations jacked up in the mix. I think the result can best be described as a very modernist, slightly absurd, quite provocative and immensely successful critique of pop culture.

St. Vincent dressed as a toilet at a 2016 show.

Back to the album review:

The album opens with "Hang on me", whose deliberate restraint and touching intimacy immediately grabs my attention. It lures me in to St. Vincent's world and prepares me for whatever may come next, like the openers on the best albums from Perfume Genius ("I decline", "Otherside") or Susanne Sundfør ("Darlings", "Mantra"). And in all these cases, the tension built from the subtle opener makes the thrill of the banging second track ever so much stronger. "Pills" is an awesome pop song, not stopping after the infectious first three minutes, but morphing over to an epic, Pink Floyd-alluding coda.

The streak continuous for three more very uptempo tracks cementing the album's aesthetic, all a perfect blend of sexy pop hooks and futuristic rock with lots of angry guitar work, gender-bending lyrics and some really awesome transitions. Then comes the quiet piano ballad "Happy birthday, Johnny", which again beckons us to come and sit extra close while Annie sings to whomever ("Johnny's just Johnny. Doesn't everyone know a Johnny?"). It's the third in a 'trilogy' of St. Vincent songs referencing Johnny, the previous of which was the stunning "Prince Johnny" off her self-titled album. It reaches an emotional climax when Johnny sings her own name back at her, and I'm left wondering whether Johnny is meant as an aspect of Annie herself.

The second half of the album features two excellent songs that deal with the dodgy dynamics of her relationship with troubled actress Cara Delevigne, "Savior" and "Young lover", both dramatic, candid and ultimately touching pop songs. Annie's lyrics have always struck a particular emotional chord in me with her frequent mention of household appliances and everyday trivialities, like kitchen floors, bathtubs, carpets et cetera. Although you could jokingly start a "St. Vincent lyrics generator" soon just about slouching around different places in your apartment, they add to the intimacy of the slightly glossy songs.

"Fear the future", the angriest and heaviest song on the album, is really good, and together with "Young lover" (with its fantastic high note) really strengthens the back end of the tracklist. Unfortunately there are some slower songs towards the end that I don't care for quite as much as, say, "Seven crossed fingers", the closer on her self-titled album. But "Slow disco" is very pretty and has some absolutely lovely and very organic, expressive live strings, constrasting with the synthy feel to many of the other tracks.

All in all, MASSEDUCTION is rock solid and a triumph. St. Vincent is a fascinating artist through and through. A completely self-built female rock star, she's had to earn her status time and time again, her more eccentric facets being easily dismissed as pretentious and irrelevant. As if her back catalogue isn't already strong enough, MASSEDUCTION is St. Vincent proving for the umpteenth that the she is a stellar musician, and every eye turned her way is well deserved.

Best tracks: "Young lover", "Pills", "Hang with me", "Happy birthday, Johnny"