With the renewed interest in the ’80s, Manchester, Joy Division, etc., it’s peculiar we don’t hear more about James. Though active long before, it wasn’t until 1992’s Seven and 1993’s Laid, the latter produced by Brian Eno, that the world—namely America—took notice of James. However, it seemed that it was too little too late. They’d peaked, and they’d soon again disappear from the charts. After a brief hiatus in the early 2000s, James have returned to deliver their second studio album in two years. Actually two mini-albums, The Morning After the Night Before finds the band sounding ageless and totally self-assured. The sound is big and it’s inspired. Frontman Tim Booth grapples with...

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For Azure Ray’s long-awaited fourth album, the newly-reformed duo again employs hushed electronics and whispered vocals to build its collection of sad songs. For a band with a more abundant output, such recycled energy would be a pity. But it’s been seven years since Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink uttered a peep as Azure Ray, so instead of being tired, Drawing Down the Moon feels loaded with nostalgia, like being welcomed home by an old and very heartsick friend. And by the time Taylor timidly asks a would-be lover, “If I could give this a shot, could you?” on standout track “On and On Again,” it’s a fact: Time has not diminished Azure Ray’s ability to craft songs that are both bittersweet...

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With so much of today’s music echoing the past, it’s difficult to tell if The Vaselines are timeless or just outdated. Listening to Sex with an X is like entering a Technicolor time warp, and the Scottish pop outfit’s sophomore LP—20 years after the release of Dum-Dum—reminds us just how vintage the ’80s really are. Variety is not so much a priority for the band as is foot-tapping appeal: the hooks are catchy and the lines are even catchier, like the title track’s singable mantra, “It feels so good/It must be bad for me.” Yet as delectable as the melodies are, Sex with an X seems like it’s all been done before—and in fact, we know that it has. “I Hate the ’80s” lifts the album from its...

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With an album cover that sports a shark flying into an office building, Black Mountain is making a statement to which you better be paying attention. The Canadian quartet’s third release is different than its earlier material and like the album’s cover, the music has evolved to the point where you have no choice but to take heed. Though the sound varies from song to song, “Old Fangs” showcases Black Mountain’s familiar formula with hard riffs, a driving bass and haunting space synths that compliment Stephen McBean’s booming vocals and Amber Webber’s smooth voice. Folk-inspired songs like “Rollercoaster” and “Buried by the Blues” and raw guitar-driving rock jams “Let Spirits Ride” and the...

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Public Strain is Women’s second record after a wonderfully confusing debut…and it provides no answers to our persistent questions: Is this pop or noise, ambient or rock? Most importantly, are Women exorcists or ghosts? What we do know: The quartet wrangles feedback, dissonant strings and Krautrock thump into surprisingly manageable songs, finding the types of hooks that both stick in your ear and leave claw marks. “Drag Open” is a jagged 2003-N.Y.C. kiss-off; sweetly cooing “Penal Colony” recalls The Shins. But still, what sort of guitar-rock band inspires tender songs about penal colonies and finds single tones, like on “Bells,” and lets them hum uninterrupted? Public Strain evokes such...

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It’s not even 30 seconds into the new record from Sweden’s Dungen when a flute melody pipes in—for some, this could be a deal-breaker, for the rest, it’s a welcoming return to greatness. Over the course of over half a dozen albums in the past decade, the band has created its own sub-sect of psychedelic rock music. Fusing the fuzzy, melodic, and rhythm-driven sounds of early progressive rock records (before the overt noodling) with a harmony-rich sound akin to a band like Teenage Fanclub, Dungen’s sound is equal parts pastoral and wildly raucous. Skit I Allt digs deeper into these patchworks with an ear of layered precision that would make even J. Dilla proud. And with the bent-notes, twin...

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It seems it’s only a matter of time before Brandon Flowers realizes his dream of a full-scale Broadway production on the subject of Las Vegas; perhaps a real American love story buried beneath layers of neon, harlots and sin. In the event that this dream never comes to fruition, he can find solace in that the score that’s already written—his first solo album, Flamingo. Pairing synths with Springsteen is a formula that’s worked well for The Killers’ frontman before, but here the Lanois production begins to grate amongst the constant God imagery and every third line being a cliché (e.g., “the house will always win”). Few moments redeem, such as the gospel choir on the sneaky “On the Floor,”...

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Of all the current ’80s revivalist acts, Chromeo is probably the most unapologetic, which in many ways makes it the most loveable. 2007’s breakthrough Fancy Footwork served as the hip music-loving world’s official introduction to the tongue-in-cheek-electro funk-duo composed of one part Arab (P-Thugg) and one part Jew (Dave 1). Chromeo’s latest, Business Casual, finds the synth-wizards fully immersed in their musical time machine and the results are better than one would expect given a gimmick which should have worn thin after album one. Even if the influences are so obvious they aren’t worth mentioning, the songwriting is sturdier here: Kick-off single, “Don’t Turn the Lights On,” is the...

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For artists of a certain caliber, it’s always difficult to tell if their new work is actually disappointing or just disappointing within the scope of their back catalog. Example: while Magic may not stand out within the Bruce Springsteen collection, it would certainly have been a feather in Jesse Malin’s hat. Likewise, Grinderman 2 is a great album by most standards. By Nick Cave’s standards, however, the man responsible for Prayers on Fire, No More Shall We Part and even the first Grinderman record, it doesn’t quite live up to its promise. Cave’s lyricism is as strong as ever, landing perfectly somewhere between the worlds of Neil Gaiman and Tom Waits. The playing isn’t lacking either;...

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Antony Hegarty is an odd duck. His curious appearance, hulking and androgynous, gives way to even more curious music—darkly beautiful orchestral pieces suspended somewhere between the theatre and the cathedral. Trapped in a perpetual state of emotional vulnerability, his obsession with the environment in 2009’s The Crying Light has transitioned into Swanlight’s explorations of life and death. Divisive warble restrained, the tender compositions take center-stage, making for 11 satisfying tracks. Swanlights’ emotive explorations unfold slowly, transitioning from the tension-building crawl of opening track “Everything is New” to the stripped down guitar-and-voice of “The Great White Ocean.”...

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