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".

8. Portugal. The Man - Woodstock

Portugal. The Man (I hate the punctuation!!) have been around for over a decade now, releasing a steady string of pretty great psychedelic rock records. They haven't really been on my radar before this year, when a larger number of friends have been recommending them, so I decided to give them a listen. I put on their newest album, Woodstock, and immediately loved it. Little did I know that it was quite a radical departure for the band and rather poorly received by longtime fans of the band. Here I'm just reviewing Woodstock on its own terms.

It's in your face, like much of the music, and their first album cover without any
psychey hand-drawn elements to it.  

Rock music hasn't been up to much the last ten years. The exciting diversification of indie rock was probably the most recent wave where actual new things were added to the rock music canon. Unfortunately, the great bands that emerged in this era still stand quite alone on top (and are starting to fade), and nothing new has really replaced it. In contrast, hip-hop, r'n'b and electronic music have all merged, morphed and developed into new exciting genres, with or without the help of all kinds of tropicalities, 30's-flavored jazz vibes, trip-hop chill, and other flavors that you wouldn't think should blend very well. So it's not surprising that this bunch of rockers from Wasilla, Alaska on their eighth album decided that they didn't need to play rock music any more. Woodstock is still blissed-out feelgood music like P.TM's best, but it sounds modern rather than grounded in the 60's or 70's. It's full of old r'n'b samples, guest rappers, irresistible pop hooks, funky synths, and still features plenty of lo-fi acoustic guitar with that beloved, around-the-campfire feeling. And so Woodstock was much more than I expected - an interesting, varied, progressive album that is most of all heaps of fun.

I was surprised to come to St. Louis this fall and find that "Feel it still" was absolutely ubiquitous. I guess it wasn't too unexpected that P.TM were bigger in the States than in Norway, but they still feel pretty underground to be played in a taxi or a supermarket - to the point that I was thinking "wow, this must be a really cool/indie taxi, supermarket etc.". But I quickly realized that "Feel it still" was just that big of a crossover hit, picked up by any which mainstream radio station. However, unbeknownst to these radio playlisters, there are any number of songs on Woodstock that could be just as big a hit. If I were to guess last summer "which song on Woodstock is a huge hit in the US right now?", I could just has weel have guessed "Easy tiger", "Rich friends", "Tidal wave", "Live in the moment", "Keep on" or even chillwave-contribution "So young". In other words, Woodstock is consistently catchy and radio-friendly, and in a better world it would have eight radio hits rather than just the one.

Cool cats. Are they hipster Starks?

Woodstock is only 10 songs and 38 minutes long, but it's a perfect little package of alternative rock for 2017. Where previous P.TM albums are so nostalgic they could have soundtracked "The boat that rocked", Woodstock's Richie Havens-sampling opening track reminds me most of Kanye West's "Ultralight beam". That sound of a real rock band unabashedly embracing all these other genres is so refreshing and fun. For all the danceable beats here you won't find a single drum machine, it's all live and very, very creative drumming. The vibe of each song is very different, the band never claims that one sound is better than the other, they just toss in a bunch of things they like, and the result is a colorful collage that uses its diversity as a strength rather than turning in to a mess.

Woodstock is probably the most instantly and easily likeable you'll find on this list, so without further ado - go listen, enjoy.

Hear: "Tidal wave", "Number one", "Keep on".

9. Janove - Artisten & Marlene

Janove is the singer and frontman of my former favorite band, theatrical ompa-rock gods Kaizers Orchestra. Kaizers called it quits in 2012, after a streak of 8 amazing, eccentric and completely unique albums. The three first were thematically connected, vague concept albums, creating a tantalizing cast of characters and rich, evocative imagery from a mafia-like resistance movement during the second war, and a creepy mental hospital after. The stories weren't always possible to follow, relying instead on the power of suggestion to draw fans deeply into their absurd world. On the three last albums, the Violeta Violeta trilogy, the story arch is much more clearly spelled out, and I found the excitement of following the characters' fate to go well with the increasingly theatrical and bombastic music. Janove was always the dominant head of the six-headed Kaizers monster, but on the final instalment in the trilogy, Violeta Violeta vol. III, we hear only Janove's work. Written as a full-on rock opera, it leans more heavily on the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra. Janove was always the most ambitious one, restlessly aiming bigger and better, and towards the end (such as on VV vol. II) weirdly enough, Kaizers had started to sound "too small" for him.

Very beautiful. Also very much like Kaizers' Violeta Violeta covers,
which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

On Artisten & Marlene, his first solo venture (aside from the pretty but relatively unremarkable singer-songwriter album Francis' Lonely Nights in 2006), Janove continues his maximalist approach. It's a logical progression from VV vol. III, just with a new band and a new cast of characters. This time around we're following ballet dancers, a French girl and a Russian boy, who met as children and feel a sort of magical collection through the rest of their lives and keep dancing for each other. The lyrics don't really form a complete story arch, rather they become a thematic background that brings the music more weight and context, kind of in the way that the old Kaizers-universe did. Images are repeated, phrases reused, sometimes lazily, but it kind of works. The band is hard-hitting, musically excellent, and clearly having a lot of fun: Former Kaizers warm-up act Micke Lohse (aka. Micke from Sweden) is on piano, Matthias Hellberg on guitar, and the rhythm section is Gulleiv Wee (of The September When) on bass, Børge Fjordheim (of Cloroform, amongst others) on drums. They sound just as comfortable following Janove's whims whether it's towards hiphop, funk, polka, heavy rock, country or classical.

The single covers are really cool, too. This is for
"The world is going to hell, tralala".

My favorite songs are the most epic ones. Repeated modulations, dizzying emotional heights and piling on the goosebumps is the recipe for success here. As much as Janove likes a simple pop song, he is a true music nerd and a master of rhythm, melody, complex chord progressions and harmony. Some of the songs on Artisten & Marlene are a bit too simple for my taste, and the album doesn't deal well with restraint (the quiet closing track is really forgettable - for quiet it has to be as huge as "Mine siste berømte ord" ("My last famous words") ). I also really dislike the opening track unfortunately. It sets the stage for the story and the sound for the album, but it feels more like a placeholder, or an ouverture: all bombastic wrapping but no content. It's just Janove going "who-oah" and thinking he could get away with putting a half-finished song here.

But the album is 15 songs long, and really hits its stride from song 3 to 14. These are almost all top-grade Janove songs, and while I do understand the criticism that he should have distanced itself more from Kaizers, I think it just goes to show how much he actually was in charge of the Kaizers circus towards the end. The last five years have been tough for those of us craving more Kaizers, and I am super excited about Artisten & Marlene. This is so solid that it could have been just as big of a success as Violeta Violeta. There are plenty of songs here with room for oil barrels and crowbars, if the other guys want to come out of omparock retirement, but it sounds so great that I don't find myself missing them. I love the variation in genre; from the Eminem-flavored "Trixing & fixing" or the rockabilly explosion "Me vokser aldri opp" ("We'll never grow up"), to the krautrock-tinged "Aldri la de tru de er bedre enn deg" ("Never let them think they're better than you"), and "I natt blir du fri" ("Tonight you'll be free") reaches its peak when the amazing disco synth riff finally kicks in. The diversity of influences is part of the reason the album works so well. For being so long, it's a huge credit that it's not at all a slog to get through, and that's thanks to some brilliant transitions, and the totally different feels on many songs. And the variation doesn't make it a mess, rather it keeps things interesting.

Promo pics for Janove are much more awkward than the über-cool Kaizers badassery.
Painful!

This is a terrific album by one of my favorite artists (I'd say "Norwegian" artists, but no, I really am that much of a fan). Janove is still going strong - and has another brand new album out January 18th!!

Hear: "Vår uendelige sang" ("Our endless song"), "Trixing & fixing", "Perler & svin".

10. The Shins - Heartworms

Super awesome cover. On par with of Montreal's best. The mix of nightmare
and bubblegum cartoons reflects the music, too.

The Shins was never a band that was on my radar. They've been around since the early 2000's, releasing fairly popular indie rock, and I may or may not have heard some of their songs. I don't know what made me take note of their new single "Dead alive" released late last year, but it ended up on my playlists and I grew fond of its bittersweet bubbliness and catchy marching-beat refrain. When I saw that the new album was out, I put on the first song with quite moderate expectations, but it blew me out of the park. From its intro of jangly guitar, cowbell and du-du-duuh to its final bright major chord, "Name for you" is overwhelmingly entertaining, stuffed full of giddy ideas, constantly grabbing my attention with a new hook every second. I've played it over and over and over, and I still absolutely love it.

Only lead singer and songwriter James Mercer remains of The Shins' original lineup. There are other newer members listed, but I think they're more touring musicians than anything else. So, on Heartworms James Mercer offers his very own charming, leftfield pop vision in kind of the same way that Grimes did on Art Angels, or Kevin's barnes did on false Priest. Those are two of the albums that first spring to mind when I play Heartworms, and they're all filled with unabashed falsetto fun, layers upon layers of elements of the kind that bandmates or executive producers might gently suggest are getting to be a bit much. It's interesting because of how unique and still how catchy it is. The dark soundscapes but convincing hooks on "Painting a hole" make it feel like it's soundtracking a surreal and action-packed dream, one where you're discovering a technicolor world full of confusing scenes and weird creatures. "Cherry hearts" also immediately transports me to a fantastic, otherworldly place, although I'm not super excited about the chorus the tenth time I hear it. "Fantasy island", however, is totally loveable, probably my second favorite song on the album and one that never fails to make me smile. Mercer's wonderful vocal performance (you may also have heard him sing as half of the duo Broken Bells) lifts this and many of the other songs on here to that one extra level.

So you were curious about what the singer from this album was doing these days? He's releasing
his own music as The Shins, and it's way less sterile and stylish than this glossy thing. It's way more fun.

The record's few breathers are much needed and also work well. When listening to the almost bubble-gum pop of the title track, "So now what" and the other songs mentioned above, it's easy to forget that Heartworms is the work of a 46 year old indie rock lifer. But when the refreshingly synth-free "Mildenhall" lilts along over a familiar Americana groove we're brought back to the live stage, and I love the beautiful closing track "The fear", which goes slightly experimental with psychedelic downtempo jams and baroque strings. The only songs I don't care much for are the ones that fall between the two chairs. "Rubber ballz" has quite nice, sombering lyrics and a neat drive to its verses and chorus, but they don't balance well at all with the intense bass/vocal riff that keeps popping up. I'm also a bit ambivalent about the unexpected emo-rock revival of "Half a million", and it doesn't quite commit fully to the sk8er pastiche (perhaps a good thing), so this one also falls a bit short.

Despite these two tracks back to back, the record totally gets away with it thanks to the closing four song streak being even more awesome than the opening. Heartworms makes me dance like noone's watching, makes me smile on the gloomiest of days, listening to other pop music on the radio lately has had me wishing I was listening to Heartworms.

Hear: "Name for you", "Fantasy island", "Heartworms"

More very good: Honorable mentions 2

Makthaverskan - Ill

Cool logo and cover, but tellingly it's confusingly similar to their other albums;
 I always have to double-check which of the covers it is.

Young Swedish dream-rockers Makthaverskan ("she who is in power") channel the new-wave post-punk scene of the 80's to much better results than should be expected from a group of millenials from Gothenburg. Growing their fan base very gradually over the 8 years since their debut, Makthaverskan had the pressure on them with the long-awaited Ill. I and many others have been hotly anticipating the new album, especially since the amazing lead single "Witness" was released already in 2015. If Ill could even come close to matching that urgent, super-catchy song, it was bound to be good. And while I'd still say "Witness" is maybe the best song on here, Ill does very often come close to the same ecstatic levels, and is an impressive album.

While Makthaverskan's sound is nothing completely new, they are a very fresh breath on 2017's music scene. How's this for a statement: I don't think I can hear a single synth or keyboard on this entire album. The five-piece are fronted by songwriter and singer Maja Milner, whose voice is as beautiful as her style is raw and desperate. Her shrill but always melodic screams are one of Makthaverskan's main selling points, and she's packed away none of the power on Ill. I don't know she can sing a song like "Siren" in the same evening as "Witness" and "Asleep" (off II),  but she looks almost comically unaffected when performing live (on video - I've unfortunately yet to see them myself), seemingly bored by the trivial sounds she's producing. (The videos also reveal that there's a fair bit of studio magic behind making their punk lineup sound good on record, but I don't mind it when it sounds as good as this.)

In addition to Milner's singing, Andreas Wettmark's intense drumming and the intricate, interweaved bass and guitar lines all contribute to making Ill a riveting and thrilling listen. As do the lyrics (also Milner's), although I wish they played more on the political agenda of feminism and anti-consumerism that's occasionally alluded to, rather than the main focus on love and heartbreak. The 10 songs are all strong and none of them feel unnecessary, a major step up from I and II. The only thing limiting Ill's longevity is the lack of dynamic variation. The album does shift throughout in tempo and feel, providing breathers where necessary while maintaining urgency, but the overall sound becomes homogeneous pretty quick. And it's not clear where they're going from here, however good they may be a fourth album of the same stuff isn't necessary. Still, Makthaverskan are totally worth hearing if you haven't yet, and Ill is a great place to start.

Hear: "Witness", "Siren", "Leda", but I could just as easily have chosen "In my dreams", "Vienna", "Eden", "Days turn into years" or"To say it as it is".

Grizzly Bear - Painted Ruins

I worked on it, but really don't like this cover. I can make out a windowsill, and
maybe stones at the bottom. It's neither aesthetically pleasing nor challenging.

At their best, Grizzly Bear are one of my very favorite bands. When their four unique voices harmonize to a heavenly choir; when Chris Taylor's strange array of unnamable instruments melts my ear; when Daniel Rossen's meandering guitar lines take another surprising turn; when Chris Bear's ever-mutating drumming delicately shifts the rhythmic center; when intricate polyrhythms propel the song towards its next sections... I enjoy Grizzly Bear's music most when I pick it apart, analyze it to bits, understand why they do what they do and why it works. Their songcraft is meticulous - they don't have the strongest pop sensibilities, but their songs conjure up feelings because they build them up brick by brick to have that desired effect.

Which may be part of why they called their new album Painted Ruins, released a full five years after their previous: I get the sense that they were stuck with a pile of rubble, bricks and pieces that they couldn't figure out how to build into a new album. 2009's Veckatimest is perhaps their finest work to date, a delicate and beautiful composition full of fascinating music-theoretical experiments as well as powerful pop hooks. Shields, released in 2012, found them firing on all cylinders, and buries some of the detail under walls of sounds and rocking crescendoes. While it's a fun and exciting album, it also felt like a bit of a dead end. So I actually wasn't too hyped for Painted Ruins when it came out. Did I need a new Grizzly Bear album in 2017?

Well, Grizzly Bear seem to have rebuilt their own sound, so to say, on this album. It has the volume and intensity of Shields, as well as Veckatimest's ornate instrumentation and wide dynamic range. I'm partial to the understated "Wasted acres" and "Systole", gentle (yet interesting) sketches who whisper their story, in more of a Yellow House way. Elsewhere, Grizzly Bear add an ever so slight industrial tinge on songs like "Three rings" and "Aquarian". These less pretty textural elements feel like a new side of Grizzly Bear (compare to the beautiful ostinatoes in the second part of an old one like "Ready, Able"), and this willingness to add something that is neither bombastic nor beautiful is a strength on Painted Ruins. There's enough both beautiful and bombastic here - "Four cypresses", "Losing all sense" and "Neighbors" all sound amazing and are easily on par with Grizzly Bear's best - but the discomfort that permeates Painted Ruins is what keeps the album interesting for me. All in all it's a more than worthwhile addition to their catalogue - and considering the band in question, that's quite high praise.

Hear: "Three rings", "Systole", "Mourning sound"

Susanne Sundfør - Music For People In Trouble

Susanne's covers have never been too interesting. The same goes for this one.

Susanne Sundfør shouldn't need much introduction at this point, but she maybe does anyway. She's a singer-songwriter from Haugesund, Norway, and she's got one of the most beautiful and unique voices I know of. She writes great songs and I've been a huge fan of hers ever since debut album ten years ago. Amazingly, each of her albums since then has been a bigger leap forward than I thought was possible for one artist, and she did three of them. From the folk-pop of her self-titled debut, she explored a dark, electronic, moody soundscape on her second album The Brothel and made it clear she was in an entirely different league than her Norwegian contemporaries. With 2012's stunning The Silicone Veil and 2015's ecstatic Ten Love Songs, as well as guest features on some of Röyksopp, Kleerup and M83's very best songs, she's established herself as a world-class pop artist. It's been an amazing journey to follow.

But no matter how impressive her artistic development has been, she's always seemed awfully uncomfortable in the limelight. I've felt like she's been using pop music mostly as a tool to just get famous enough that she can do what she likes. That may seem a harsh criticism, but even her most joyous songs can't hide that there's a deep melancholy behind them. Despite the awesome recordings and performances, there's an uncomfortable dissonance when you see their shy and awkward creator. And so it's almost a relief that Sundfør for her new record has stripped back all the showbiz, and released what feels like a truly honest, heartfelt album. The result is unique and captivating.

Calling it a return to her roots feels wrong since she's such a completely different artist now than when she started, but Music For People In Trouble certainly has more acoustic guitar and less synths than anything she's put out since her debut. She's also added a bit of an americana sound with steel guitar, banjo, and the occasional jazzy clarinet or saxophone. The album is intensely dark even in its breeziest sections, only comforting you because you desperately need it in these troubled times. She insists it's not a political album, but it's hard to interpret the spine-tingling highlights "The sound of war" and "Mountaineers" in any other way. Both include spooky drone passages (on "Mountaineers" courtesy of John Grant) that contrast eerily with Sundfør's crystal clear vocals. Other songs look inward, focusing on overcoming emptiness, love and loss. The main theme that stands out is the hope and brightness that comes from acknowledging the darkness, whether it's personal or global.

Some may see it as her worst release yet, others as by far her best. Personally I don't know how I would rank it. Music For People In Trouble is not catchy, but it is truly remarkable.

Hear: "Undercover", "Mountaineers (feat. John Grant)", "Reincarnation".