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"

5. Major Parkinson - Blackbox

Pretty cool cover. Actually I really really like it.

Major Parkinson are a Norwegian seven-piece rock band with a thoroughly unique sound. Outrageously underrated, they're relatively unknown even here in Norway. I first took note of the name back in 2008, when the song "197" became a minor minor hit. It has Kaizers Orchestra-esque Eastern European-sounding scales, beats and instruments, adds in some very proggy riffs and odd time signatures, and overall has an extremely dark flavor, largely thanks to singer and main songwriter Jon Ivar Kollbotn's deep, gravelly vocals. It's a combination that sounds unlikely to succeed, but it's a solid winner of a song. However, they never got big, and I never played their other music much, but they're now ten years on from their self-titled debut album, and I'm starting to realize that this band is probably one of the better things to come out of this bumpy country the last decade and they're still maturing. Blackbox is their fourth and newest album, and it's an absolute stunner.

It's lamentable that Major Parkinson's wonderful music is too weird to earn them a living, but also awesome that they're ambitious and creative enough to have pushed on and now actually released four albums. They managed it in part through fantastic fundraising videos, like the one above for Blackbox, the sequel to the hilarious "The fundraiser song" that they made for their third album, Twilight Cinema. Those videos happen to serve pretty well as an introduction to the band, both in terms of style, instrumentation, and it actually helps to know the face of the person singing those absurd vocals. The flamboyance, darkness and humour goes hand in hand, and the result is entirely lovable.

On to Blackbox. It's epic, dark, grandiose, intriguing, magical and intense. The two highlights are undoubtedly the two 10-minute tracks "Isabel: A report to an academy" and "Baseball", but the opening and closing duos are also fantastic. The production is incredible the whole way through, and helps the record sounds cohesive and flow as one piece, despite big differences between the songs. There's lots of very gypsy violin, very majestic brass, very metal drums, some flute, harp and other very pretty chamber music moments, some saloon piano, some castanets I think, some ompa organ, and countless other musical elements that all flow together in a wondrous cacophony. There's hardly a straight 4/4 beat anywhere on the album, but there's also no shortage of crowdpleasing moments like awesome modulations and catchy hooks. For examples of almost all of the above, look no further than the album centerpiece "Baseball". And it's all so, so fun.

Opener "Lover, lower me down!" is a slow burner with a long instrumental intro, intensifying as Kollbotn's incredible vocals come in, and intensifying further as a female chorus echoes the synth line from the introduction halfway through. As the song climaxes with an ever more distorted guitar line, crazier drumming and the chorus' dramatic return, it transitions abruptly into track 2, the addictively rhythmic "Night hitcher" (I've had that 10-beat rhythm stuck in my head for weekends at a time). The two songs flow so well and also share so many thematic elements that they might as well have been one 10-minute track.

We then get the first of two relatively toned-down acoustic interludes. "Before the helmets" introduces the whispered mantra "You must believe in magic", and although I have absolutely no idea what Blackbox is really about, the lyrical fragments that do stick out convey utterly magical imagery. There are salamanders, fluorescent skies, black confetti, gleaming pantaloons, tesla coils, and lots of other words that send the imagination running wild. The keywords recur just often enough to create the illusion of a cohesive story... I'm not sure there is one, but it doesn't really matter. It works really well, like on both of Kaizers' triologies.

What's up with the baseball stuff?!

Four of the tracks feature Linn Frøkedal on guest vocals. It's a great addition, providing much-needed contrast to Kollbotn's dark singing; Major Parkinson should just get a full-time female vocalist. But I do find myself wishing, basically every time, that it's Susanne Sundfør singing. I'm sorry, the moody soundscapes are just perfect for her, and simply imagining her voice over "Isabel" or "Blackbox" gives me goosebumps. Frøkedal's more restrained performance does feel slightly underwhelming in the context of the epic music.

More light criticism: The one song I'm not too big a fan of is "Madeleine crumbles". Its very poppy riff sticks out a little too much on the record, and although it only shows up at the very beginning and the end of the song, it's just a little too much. The song in between is good, but slightly less amazing than the other tracks on the album.

But all in all this album is jaw-dropping, in the best possible way. An incredibly creative and thrilling work of art. Give these guys a listen, you deserve it as much as they do.

Best tracks: "Baseball", "Night hitcher", "Isabel: A report to an academy"

6. Dirty Projectors - Dirty Projectors

Dave Longstreth, the eccentric mastermind behind Dirty Projectors, is one of the most creative, ambitious and talented musicians I know of in the indie rock/pop world these days. His music is delightfully odd, off-kilter, and occasionally it's also very enjoyable (on other occasions, not so much). After his longtime bandmate-then-girlfriend Amber Coffman (whose charm and show-stopping backing vocals many claimed was part of the key to Dirty Projectors' success) left him/the band in 2013, the heartbroken Longstreth has responded in the only way I ever expected him to: With a truly unique, epic, fascinating breakup album.

Dark. Is it the logo of Bitte Orca with shoe marks on it or something?

It's telling that Longstreth, now that he's once again completely a one-man band, makes the seventh album under the Dirty Projectors moniker self-titled. Dirty Projectors is really not very flattering at all; the lyrics are painfully honest, seemingly unfiltered from a mind full of anger and resentment towards Coffman, alternating between self-doubt and self-aggrandizement, and with some lines that are frankly quite hideous. I'm reminded ever so slightly by Benedict Cumberbatch's character as Sherlock Holmes, the genious/madman with a hyperactive mind who understands nothing of human emotion and insults everyone he meets. But Longstreth also offers lots of beauty and wisdom on DP, he is after all an artist, who connects with emotions on a very deep level, and now has more fuel for his lyrics than ever before. Longstreth's lyrics and singing have never carried much weight to me - he's such an emotive musician that it never mattered that I couldn't tell you what a single one of the fantastic songs on Bitte Orca are actually about. But now they do, and while his singing hasn't exactly gotten any better ('idiosyncratic' is a nice way to put it), the raw, honest, intensely relatable (to us weirdos, anyway) lyrics on DP add a thrilling new dimension to Dirty Projectors' catalogue.

"Press photo". It's a shot from the "Keep you name" video.

Enough about the lyrics. You come to Dirty Projectors for the music, and what Longstreth has done this time is quite fascinating. He's changed his sound completely - but his style is so recognizable, so inimitable that I barely noticed. One of my very favorite guitarists has made an album almost entirely without guitar, and I barely noticed. Dirty Projectors is full of organs, horns, fuzz-bass, industrial percussion, heavy influences from r'n'b and hiphop, ska and reggae. Longstreth has turned to beatmaking with the same fanatic obsession and vigor that made him a guitar virtuoso. And he uses the kaleidoscopic beats just as he would his crazy guitar lines. They don't simply accompany a song, they create an impossible collage, dense and disorienting, often distracting, but when you get familiar with them they blanket the music, the weird and hurried percussion giving it all a feeling of inevitability and even purpose.

As a case study in how Longstreth's music sounds, I'll describe the first time I heard "Work together". I think the first twenty seconds of the song had me questioning twelve times what kind of a song it was. It starts with some sparse piano, with what sounds like a technological seagull in the background - the line is first somber and feels slow, then some bright, giddy chords bounce in, then some strange syncopated, jazzy scale descends, then a strange reversed effect zooms in, giving way to an ugly beat with processed vocals and choppy drums, which reveals that the final beat in the measure is an absurd auto-tuned chromatic vocal riff. When the verse finally kicks in, over a creepy organ and some hyperactive Caribbean-sounding congas or something, it's with lyrics describing Longstreth seen from the outside: "Complex plans and high ideals, but he treats people poorly / Is his ceaseless ambitiousness proxy for a void he's ignoring?". The first chorus then comes in (we're still just 30 seconds into the song) with a futuristic walking synth-bass line accompanying layered Longstreths falsettoing "How good we could have it if we worked together". It's a fascinating song, by no means an easy listen, but completely captivating. It's as if the schizophrenic music serves as illustration to why their relationship didn't work, purposefully. Though it's hard to tell whether that's the case, or if it's the only kind of music Longstreth can (be bothered to) make. "Maybe love is competition that makes us raise the bar and better ourselves" he sings. Sounds like a charming fellow.

On many of the other songs, though, Longstreth has actually toned down himself down a notch. DP is by far his most mellow album, with a lot of beauty and serenity. It's borderline sappy at times, as such an album should be, but the leftfield musical antics keep things interesting for me all the way through. From the somber opener "Keep your name" (a stunning stylistic curveball à la "Everything in its right place") to the epic "Whiter shade of pale"-alluding closer "I see you", Dirty Projectors is a rock solid album, easily on par with Bitte Orca. The Kevin Parker-esque singular focus and musical perfectionism pays off just as on Tame Impala's Currents. All nine songs have a very distinct sound, and the only time the album loses a bit of urgency is in the scatterbrained second half of "Ascent through clouds". But even that bit is pretty cool, and a necessary transition before the relative radio-friendliness of "Cool your heart", with Dawn Richard on guest vocals sounding strangely similar to Coffman on Swing Lo Magellan.

"Up in Hudson" got an amazing music video in November. Colors and noses unlike anything I've
seen before. Just realized that the filmmaker, Isaiah Saxon, also made the wonderful videos
to Panda Bear's "Boys latin" and Björk's "Wanderlust"!

Dirty Projectors is an entirely new sound both for Dave Longstreth on his eighth full-length album, and for the long legacy of break-up albums in general. It's not always pretty, but it's a sentimental and memorable emotional ride, and only slightly less musically thrilling than his previous work. The eight-minute chronicle "Up in Hudson" is among his best in both respects. In total, it's a victory of an album.

Hear: "Up in Hudson", "Cool your heart", "I see you".

7. Fleet Foxes - Crack-Up

Not sure. It's rugged and majestic and beautiful, but it strangely doesn't grab
my attention. Am I too cynical in thinking "Pretty landscape, so what?"?

Fleet Foxes sure took a turn for the artsy and interesting. Their self-titled debut and Sun Giant EP in 2008 became so popular that suddenly everyone was doing the 60's hippie-folk thing. But Robin Pecknold and company had much larger ambitions, as their second album Helplessness Blues documented. Lacking another "White winter hymnal" or "Mykonos", and also a bit more lacking the zeitgeist, Fleet Foxes bid mainstream success farewell but kept enjoying critics' high praise. The music was complex and impressive, but with the highs way too high and the lows way too low for it to be suitable as background music on summer evenings in the park (which was how their earlier output was, er, used), I didn't find myself playing it much. Although I did latch on to a couple of the songs at the time, I certainly haven't craved another album of their introspective, grandiose, complex folk-rock in the years since. I didn't really notice that the band took a break. But when "Third of May / Odaigahara" was released last year as the first single from their upcoming new album, I of course had to give it a try. It's a nine minute long multi-part opus, and this time around I was prepared for the right kind of "listening experience". And what an experience. It's a beautiful, emotional, hard-hitting piece, and the production on the track is amazing, but what really made it stand out for me was the live video below, showing both the passion and the sheer skill of Pecknold, guitarist Skye Skjelset and bandmates, where they play the hell out of that huge song in one raw, intimate and energetic take. My faith in Fleet Foxes is again as strong as ever.

And the album did not disappoint. After a few more very strong singles, Crack-Up fulfilled my every expectation and them some. It's been a slow grower, but the whole thing is incredibly beautiful, so every listen is a joy. The vocal harmonies we love are as stunning as ever; the production is incredible throughout, and the soundscapes are rich, warm and full of meticulate detail. The polyrhythms abound and make the music wash over you. It's an immersive experience - surprisingly much so, actually. Aside from "Third of May", most of the songs are 3-4 minutes long and seemingly poppy in format. But even the most verse-chorus-verse-chorus tracks here can hardly be called pop songs. They're full of sudden dynamic shifts and jarring contrasts. But rather than keep you on the edge of your seat, this intensity helps the immersion even more. The 11 tracks on the album also play beautifully as a whole. Many of the most impressive moments are the seamless transitions between the tracks - something Spotify unfortunately messes up slightly. Maybe this is one to consider for my new vinyl player.

Here are some of the thing I enjoy most on the album:

The high harmony that enters at 2:08 of "If you need to, keep time on me", after the little bridge thingy. There's a tonal shift there and then that soaring, lovely line. I look forward to it the whole song.

The Song Exploder episode about "Mearcstapa". It's a great track, but hearing Pecknold talk about how it's built up layer by layer is super intersting. I wouldn't say it increases my appreciation of the track, actually it's almost the opposite, as if a bit of the magic is taken away... but it sure was a fun podcast!

The strange arpeggios in the bridge of "- Naiads, Cassadies". Between the main piano riffs there are these really fast, dissonant couple of arpeggios. They're clearest at 1:53, 1:58, and there's one in a different key at 2:03. They're so cool. The transition from the main section to the bridge is so smooth and pretty, and these weird little jitters add just enough unexpected dissonance to keep you on your toes. Very original and cool effect.

The subtle, but moody and slightly ominous string quartet playing throughout "I should see Memphis" reminds me ever so slightly of Jonny Greenwood's string compositions for film music and on Radiohead songs like "Faust arp" and "Glass eyes". As in these cases, the graceful strings lift the unassuming, gentle acoustic guitar song to great emotional heights in a very different way than the bombastic songs elsewhere on the album.

Fleet Foxes back in the day. Say what you will, but they defined an aesthetic.

I haven't touched much on the lyricry on the album, because frankly I don't really understand it. Pecknold's lyrics are beautiful, but full of deeply buried references. He annotated the lyrics to "Third of May / Odaigahara" on the lyrics website Genius, and it's an interesting read. The song is dedicated to bandmate Skye Skjelset, and former fleet fox Josh Tillman (now performing solo as Father John Misty) tweeted that the song "made me cry honest to god" and that Pecknold is "one in a mill". High praise from the usually cynical and dry-witted superstar, but he's absolutely right.

Hear: "Third of May / Ōdaigahara", "I am all that I need / Arroyo seco / Thumbprint scar", "Mearcstapa".