On their first album, Like Pioneers presented a decent selection of Chicago indie rock, despite getting together and recording in just a few days. On their sophomore effort, that initial chemistry has evolved into a fuller, more realized sound as well as more focused songwriting. Hooks abound from start to finish, and it’s a band whose love of music carries through thusly, giving Oh, Magic an exuberance that’s pretty infectious. 

Dope Body is a Baltimore four-piece with a slew of low, sludgy, heavy, depressed grunge anthems under its belt. For all these negative adjectives, Natural History is an invigorating listen, which may say as much about today as it does about the band. When frontman Andrew Laumman quips, “I’m just talking shit,” after the rousing chorus of “Do what you wanna do / See what you wanna see / Go where you wanna go” (“Road Dog”), you can’t help but chuckle. It’s like Queens of the Stone Age if they actually were stoners. “Beat” then follows with the Henry Rollins spittle of “Hey, you talking to me? / I didn’t think so.” Throughout, the album spends 40 minutes just begging for a fight before...

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El-P is out for blood on Cancer for Cure, another blast of aggressive, lo-fi, impossibly complex rap from hip-hop’s problem child par excellence. The album mixes dense, message-driven lyrics with deep, dark beats fuzzed to all hell. Raps like, “Live on a high metal big burner bunts and combust into something and so on fuck it,” on album opener “Request Denied,” take one breath to spit and about a half hour to unpack. The album is dense but the wordplay drives towards a purpose, describing a sleepless city of bizarre problems and bizarre characters. What makes the album shine is El-P’s production, which is both claustrophobic and lyrical. Hits like “Stay Down” pair cannon-like drums and...

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For years, Mount Eerie (essentially Phil Elverum, with help from some friends) has occupied a hard-to-classify space in music, and Clear Moon delivers another album of epic and atmospheric songs. At their core, though, is always songwriting that rewards close listening; from frequently existential lyrics to layered arrangements, the album is full of moments of sonic beauty. The album begins with “Through the Trees pt. 2,” which builds in volume and instrumental intensity until everything disappears, save a softly strumming guitar and Elverum’s earnest voice stating, “From now on, I will be perfectly clear.” It’s these perfect moments of clarity that are all the more impactful in the...

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If you’re not from the Land Down Under, then you haven’t been able to get your hands on Kimbra’s full-length debut—not legally, anyway—for a while. However, those lucky Aussies and Kiwis have been taking in Vows since last year and the rising pop chanteuse has already earned herself a coveted ARIA Award for Best Female Artist to display atop her mantelpiece. But while most Statesiders probably recognize Kimbra from her poignant guest vocals on Gotye’s massive cut “Somebody That I Used to Know,” this record reinforces the accolades and proves that she’s genuinely got it in her own right. From the R&B slow jam “Something in the Way You Are” to the Midnite Vultures-like funk of “Come Into My...

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This Brooklyn-based trio needed only a year and a half to switch from the ’80s new wave that permeated its 2010 debut, Amoral, to the sweeping, ethereal combo of ’90s shoegaze and laid-back ’60s pop on follow-up True. The band also made the move to Slumberland Records—fitting, based on name alone. Lead single “Totally True”—the record’s loveliest moment, with silky vocals and the soothing jangle of guitar—offers up the same hypnotic daze brought on by a carefree doze under the spring sun. True’s mood ramps up a third of the way in, after the ominous vibrations and ghostly whispers on interlude “Lavender Forces” leads into more aggressive drums and guitars, but the focus always remains on...

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How strange can Britain’s buoyantly dramatic Keane be if the Tom Chaplin–led quartet is still pounding away on its grand pianos and howling woefully about busted romance and ruinous celebrity? Actually, in a relief from the Alan Parsons Project–like bombast of their Perfect Symmetry album (oy), the Keane ones have returned to the rich luster of their first album’s compositional craft and found youthful zeal, as opposed to weariness (“You Are Young”), hopeful emotionalism (“Silenced By the Night”) and cool confident melodies with effortlessly and theatrically arching bridges as their guide. If you’re looking for the quartet’s usual twist in its sobriety, there’s a Sondheim-ian feel to...

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Grand expectations often lead to disappointment. But with Simian Mobile Disco, having high hopes isn’t exactly out of order. As a follow-up to 2010’s sinister compilation Delicacies, Unpatterns stands decidedly in a shadow. The repulsive glory that was the video to “Sweetbread” may never again be attained, but that’s not an excuse for the pallid “Seraphim” as this album’s single. It sounds less like an electronic order of angels, and more like Layo & Bushwacka!, surprisingly. 

Considering the typical working clip of stone breed rock musicians, Tim Presley is in the fervent process of bucking trends. Over the past 15 months, his White Fence has burst the continuum wide open with a tachycardic EKG of output whose jerks and palpitations echo the stooged-out guitars on “Long White Curtain.” To review the gamut, in less than a year and a half the Fence has followed up its terrific debut (Is Growing Faith) with a collaborative LP intersected by Ty Segall (Hair) and now a behemoth double album. (Segall has been on a bona fide tear of his own, to boot.)

As for the record in question, a seemingly hasty release for such a bulbous piece is more than justified. In fact,...

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There are two colors to the English sky—“grey” and “night”—and on The Ghost in Daylight, Nick Talbot trains his eyes on the mesh where the two meet. Talbot’s fifth record as Gravenhurst finds the Bristol-based songwriter pushing together pastoral folk with pasted-on noise rock and nostalgic Britpop. Talbot is a master sequencer, brave enough to match finger-plucked acoustic ballads with eight minutes of shoe-wave, and what holds the album together isn’t so much the individual songs but a purposeful, ever-present murkiness. It’s there out front in the blurry instrumental “(Carousel Interlude),” and it implies itself gently in “The Foundry”’s rolling acoustic lines. The ambient material...

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