October 2018 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record in October 2018. 

Beak – >>> (Temporary Residence)

As a key member of Portishead, Geoff Barrow has made three of the greatest British records of the last 25 years. Problem is, those three albums are spaced pretty evenly over those 25 years, and there’s no sign of a new one any time soon. What else does Barrow get up to in his spare time? Since we last heard from Portishead, on 2008’s Third, Barrow has turned his attention to this project, which is not that much more prolific: a debut in 2009, a second album in 2012, and here we are six years later. Much like that last Portishead record, Beak draws heavily on German art rock of the ’70s, primarily the group Can: funky live drumming with droning analog synths, pulsing bass and icy, new wave guitars. It’s entrancing, mysterious and magical, with a warmth that comes from its old-school approach: this very much sounds like a live group of mad scientists tripping over wires, playing synths on the verge of breaking down. No digital trickery here. It’s a matter of time before they’re tapped to score a dystopian sci-fi suspense flick. (Oct. 12)

Stream: “The Brazilian,” “Brean Down,” “RSI”

Cat Power – Wanderer (Domino)

A friend posted this Facebook status after Cat Power’s Toronto show earlier this month: “Cat Power was the worst show I saw in 2002. Cat Power was the best show I saw in 2018.”

Cat Power’s Chan Marshall has a terrible reputation as a live performer, for reasons that once had everything to do with a combination of crippling anxiety and alcohol. But she went into rehab more than 12 years ago, and since then survived a major health scare, while putting out two of the most confident records of her career. Wanderer is her first album in six years, and first since becoming a mother.  “I’m a woman of my word, haven’t you heard?” she asks, on a duet with Lana Del Rey—a major star who owes more than a bit of a debt to Marshall.

If 2012’s Sun was a daring pop album, featuring Marshall playing most instruments in the full-band arrangements herself, Wanderer finds her stripping down to mostly just her piano and guitar. It’s that sparseness that drew fans to her in the first place, whether on the stark 2000 album The Covers Record or the languid Memphis soul of 2006’s The Greatest. It’s that intimacy in which her voice truly shines, in which she found a kinship with blues, country and folk artists of the past; there is a timelessness to “Wanderer” that serves it very well—even on, in fact, especially on, the solo piano recasting of Rihanna’s “Stay.”

Every time you think Cat Power might fade away into oblivion, she surprises you yet again. Wanderer is no exception. (Oct. 26)

Stream: “In Your Face,” “Stay,” “Black”

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Distant Sky EP (Bad Seed Ltd.)

Against all odds, 61-year-old Nick Cave keeps getting more popular, year after year. His goth-tinged, death-obsessed, tortured-writer shtick should be getting tired by now; indeed, many of his songs border on camp. But for a guy who was always harrowing to begin with, his live shows have become even more intense, in ways that only a veteran performer like Cave and his band can do. Even if his records are increasingly subdued—like 2013’s Push the Sky Away and 2016’s Skeleton Tree, recorded after the death of his teenage son—the fury and chaos he’s capable of conjuring live is something to behold. So while he prepares for his first tour of hockey rinks—he played Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena on Oct. 28—Cave has released this EP, featuring one track from each of his last two records, and two tracks that have provided the climax in his live sets for the past 30 years (!): “Mercy Seat” and “From Her to Eternity.” If you’re late to the game or sitting on a fence, “Distant Sky” is as strong a testament as any to Cave’s powers. (Oct. 12)

Stream: all of it

Cher – Dancing Queen (Warner)

Why on Earth does this exist? Disclosure: I’m a huge ABBA fan, albeit one who has zero desire to see them do a hologram tour and who has boycotted Mamma Mia! since its inception. Their music is their legacy, and their music is perfect: why mess with it? Cher has a cameo in this year’s Mamma Mia! sequel, a cameo that was so well received that someone convinced her to record a full album of ABBA songs, which now sits beside the two official Mamma Mia! film soundtracks (and more than one theatrical cast recording) as completely unnecessary. Cher’s is particularly galling, however, because the arrangements are so faithful—only the occasionally modern drum machine and the singer’s now-trademark use of Vocoder AutoTune—that these are not cover versions; they’re merely poor facsimiles. Cher herself is far from being in fine voice, which just makes the whole affair no better than a bad night at a karaoke bar. Avoid at all costs. (Oct. 12)

Stream: “One of Us,” “SOS,” “The Winner Takes It All”

Friendly Rich & the Woodshed Orchestra – The Leonard Cohen Sweet (The Pumpkin Pie Corporation)

Only the trickster known as Friendly Rich would open what is ostensibly a tribute to a songwriting legend with the line, “I took all of Leonard Cohen’s money / because of all the pain he put me through.” This five-song suite, featuring five different lead vocalists, might not be what you expect it to be, but it is an inspired and multi-sided look at the singer’s legacy, from his relationship to Montreal, to his time meditating on a mountain outside L.A. The Woodshed Orchestra, led by drummer and bon vivant Dave Clark, provide playful and jazzy orchestral colouring. The only complaint here is that it’s too brief: the cast of musical characters assembled here—and their collective sense of absurdism—means that there’s a whole lot more they could do with this subject. (Oct. 5)

Stream: “The Unforgotten Truth,” “Down from the Mountain,” “Oh Montreal”

Kalle Mattson – Youth. (Arts and Crafts)

Kalle Mattson made a splash with his 2015 video “Avalanche,” in which he walked through re-creations of his favourite album covers, spanning 40 years of rock music. He’s a twentysomething songwriter who’s been known to fetishize the past, either that of popular culture or his own personal history. On Youth., he writes about being on the cusp of ever-delayed adulthood, that weird purgatory period where one is no longer a student and not yet a married homeowner with a steady job (granted, that’s largely unobtainable for most demographics now, not just those 25-35). Mattson’s melancholy voice is well-matched for the subject, as are the musical textures he uses to evoke the feeling of emotional displacement. There’s an obvious debt to the indie side of Swedish pop music (Lykke Li; Peter, Bjorn and John), as well as the cinematic electronic instrumentals of Tycho. The core of every track, however, showcases his old-school songwriting chops; you could recast any one of these tracks in any genre you want—which Mattson did, releasing the acoustic demos as bonus tracks. But the studio choices here are all very deliberate: Mattson doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as a folk singer. Nor will he be after this, which is a major leap forward for the songwriter. (Oct. 26)

Stream: “Kids on the Run,” “Ten Years Time,” “Back to the Start”

August 2015 reviews

The following reviews ran in the Waterloo Record.

Highly recommended this month: Destroyer

Highly recommended, reviewed earlier: Torres

Well worth your while: Gypsophilia, Kalle Mattson, Lindi Ortega, Tony Wilson 6tet

Mac DeMarco – Another One (Captured Tracks)

If Tom Waits’s piano has been drinking, Mac DeMarco’s guitar is totally wasted, dude. Of course, Waits is actually a fantastic piano player, and DeMarco, behind his goofball image, is an accomplished guitar player. It takes skill to sound that bad. No, just kidding—the guy can play, it’s just that he chooses to play in a way that sounds like his guitar is being detuned on every note, and play through guitar pedals unearthed in a closet that’s been sealed shut since 1988. This eight-song album is DeMarco’s 10^th release in the last six years, and as the title suggests, sounds like it was written and recorded in a week—which it was. There’s something to be said for immediacy and consistency, but one can’t help but wonder what delights DeMarco will conjure if and when he branches out and hunkers down. (Aug. 13)

Download: “The Way You’d Love Her,” “A Heart Like Hers,” “No Other Heart”

Destroyer – Poison Season (Merge)

Vancouver’s Dan Bejar has now put out 10 albums as Destroyer. The last one, Kaputt, was a commercial breakthrough of sorts, which led to bigger venues and audiences for the often-reluctant performer. But that came out four years ago—an entire “indie rock generation,” in Bejar’s words. "I assume people who listened to Kaputt have completely stopped listening to music, if I'm familiar with how things work,” he told Canadian Press. "So I've almost arranged it so I cannot bank on any previous success."

Poison Season, then, sounds like Destroyer’s Greatest Hits—though surely unconsciously for such a contrarian. Every stage of his ever-evolving sound is here: the glam rock of 2001’s classic Streethawk or his work with New Pornographers (“Midnight Meet the Rain”), the smooth, saxophone-inflected new wave of Kaputt (“Archer on the Beach”), the loose, rambling folk rock of Rubies (“Solace’s Bride,” “Times Square”). The band Bejar assembled for Kaputt and took on the road for two years is on fire here: trumpeter JP Carter (Dan Mangan), saxophonist Joseph Shabason (Diana), Black Mountain drummer Josh Wells and long-time collaborators Nick Bragg (guitar), David Carswell (guitar), Ted Bois (keys) and John Collins (bass). This band got booked into jazz festivals for a reason: each is a remarkably expressive player, and Bejar’s songs give them plenty of room to provide delicate splashes of colour—or a full-on assault, as on the three-chord stomper “Dream Lover.”

Primarily, however, Bejar revisits the lush orchestrations of 2004’s Your Blues—only that time he was utilizing only MIDI synths. Now he employs live orchestration, and it works beautifully, particularly when paired with just piano and percussion, as on “Forces From Above,” proving that Poison Season is hardly just a journey to the past: it’s about Bejar—an artist who muses openly, on and off his records, about the frivolity of the music business and insecurity about his own muse—being completely comfortable in his own skin, finessing the finest points from his discography and pushing toward the future without changing the core of what has made him so compelling for the last 15 years. (Aug. 27)

Download: “Dream Lover,” “Archer on the Beach,” “Girl in a Sling”

Gypsophilia – Night Swimming (Forward)

As the name would suggest, this Halifax seven-piece has a thing for Django Reinhardt and Roma melodies in a jazz context. But there’s a lot more than that going on here than some of the finest players on the East Coast engaging in a genre exercise: there are Latin rhythms, distorted electric guitar and violin leads, torchy blues that would impress Timber Timbre, cinematic textures and other elements that make this a thoroughly modern recording. Made at Joel Plaskett’s studio by producer Joshua Van Tassel (Great Lake Swimmers, Amelia Curran), this is their fourth and most accomplished. They have four ECMAs under their belt, but it’s time the rest of the country caught on. (Aug. 20)

Download: Boo Doo Down, Insomniac’s Dream, Night Falls and You Need Company

Hudson Mohawke – Lantern (Warp/Maple)

Ratatat – Magnifique (XL/Beggars)

Subjectivity is everything, but especially in music. We all have singers whose talent we can recognize but whose actual voice drives us crazy, whether it’s Joni Mitchell or Tom Waits or Drake or anyone in between. We don’t talk as often about the timbre of instrumentation as being our breaking point—except when I run screaming from the sound of Elliott Randall’s guitar on Steely Dan’s “Reelin’ in the Years.”

That sound in particular comes to mind on Ratatat’s fifth album, one that doesn’t stray from their modus operandi of melding ’70s classic rock guitar with modern electronics to make zippy, danceable, instrumental pop songs. But that tone, that one guitar tone, the automatically harmonized guitar lead, threatens to distract an otherwise decent collection, one almost as strong as their third and best album, LP3. They bounce from slamming electro a la early Daft Punk to dreamy Hawaiian interludes and a lot of it works. But as soon as they hit autopilot and turn on that guitar harmonizer, it’s game over.

I have a similar reaction to the frequency of the synths on this second album by Scottish producer Hudson Mohawke, which appear to be all treble, no mids, and minimal bass. (Yes, I checked my stereo and tried different headphones.) Think of the most garish sounds employed by Eurotrash EDM—and then turn up the treble some more. Surely this cannot be the future of electronic music, or of Warp Records. Which is too bad, because Mr. Mohawke (real name Ross Birchard) is full of intriguing ideas that even his terrible equipment can’t hide, which is why he’s been tapped by Kanye West, Drake, Pusha T and Azealia Banks for beats in the five years since his debut album. None of those artists return favours here, but he does land Miguel, Antony Hegarty and Jhené Aiko—even though those are among the least interesting tracks here. (Aug. 6)

Download Ratatat: “Cream on Chrome,” “Drift,” “Nightclub Amnesia”

Download Hudson Mohawke: “Lil Djembe,” “Indian Steps (feat. Antony),” “Scud Books”

Rochelle Jordan – 1021 (Protostar)

Now that even Tom Cruise is excited about the new Weekend album, here’s a Toronto R&B artist who’s been overlooked in the past year, when Drake and his crew continue to define the city to the rest of North America. Rochelle Jordan relocated to L.A. with her long-time collaborator KLSH, but she still sings about cruising down the 401, and has a faithful cadre of critics from her hometown hyping her every release. She has a stronger voice than this downtempo material would suggest; one senses that she’s dialling back her powerhouse capabilities to focus on a hushed, late-night, chilled-out vibe, even when hip-hop producer Rich Kidd enters the equation. The production owes a debt to ’90s R&B but also today’s next wave; Jordan has as much in common with FKA Twigs as she does Aaliyah (the most common comparison point). The next time someone talks up “the 6ix” without mentioning anyone outside the OVO crew—especially ladies like Jordan and the equally underrated Merna—they’re only telling half the story. (Aug. 6)

Download: “What the Fuss,” “Day Ones,” “Ease Your Mind”

Kalle Mattson – Avalanche (Home Music Co. Records)

Earlier this summer, beloved Winnipeg veterans the Weakerthans announced that they had formally split (no surprise, really—it had been eight years since the release of their last album). Soon enough, the new EP by 25-year-old Ottawa-via-Sault Ste. Marie songwriter Kalle Mattson arrived, and the vocal, lyrical and melodic resemblance between him and the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson is uncanny—so strong that the last time I reviewed a Mattson record I spent most of the review talking about it. And yet here I am again, writing a review that Mattson will most likely want to crumple up and throw across the room. But I mean it only as a compliment, especially when the arrangements surrounding his songs here occasionally aim for synth-driven, anthemic bombast and Coldplay choruses. (There’s even a song called New Romantics. It does not, thankfully, nod to Spandau Ballet or Duran Duran). When he dials it down for an acoustic ballad with harmonicas and pianos, Mattson and his backing band—which includes Drake collaborator Colin Munroe and Kathleen Edwards sideman Jim Bryson (who once made an album with, um, the Weakerthans) conjure tasteful atmospherics and percussion that pull his folk-pop into the 21^st century. With only six songs on this EP, Mattson doesn’t waste any time: every one’s a winner, every one should be on the radio, and it buys him a lot of time. With an EP this good, he can take as long as he wants to put out a full-length. And I swear that next time I’ll no longer be talking about that band from Winnipeg. (Aug. 20)

Download: “Avalanche,” “Lost Love,” “Baby Blue”

Lindi Ortega – Faded Gloryville (Last Gang)

Lindi Ortega is all of 35 years old, And yet, in the liner notes to this, her fourth album, she admits to having a mid-life crisis and wondering whether she should soldier on.

Ortega has faced tough times before: she struggled for 10 years on the Toronto scene, playing traditional country music and singing her guts out—Ortega possesses one of the most remarkable voices, in country music or otherwise, to come out of this country in a long time. She started getting some lucky breaks about five years ago, is now living in Nashville, and Faded Gloryville was recorded with some of the finest producers that friendships can buy: fellow Torontonian Colin Linden (Bruce Cockburn, the TV show Nashville), the Alabama duo of Ben Tanner (Alabama Shakes) and John Paul White (the Civil Wars), and Dave Cobb (Sturgill Simpson, the upcoming Corb Lund record).

For a woman who burst on the scene with rockabilly drive and a helluva holler, Faded Gloryville is unusually subdued and downtempo. “I will not forget the good old days when I was driven by my will / and I won’t get back all the dues I paid here in Faded Gloryville,” she sings on the title track, the sound of an older, wiser woman taking stock. She still has swagger, of course, and the last third of the album, the songs recorded with Cobb, revisits the hard-living, bad-ass characters in which Ortega specializes. A cover of the oft-covered Bee Gees song “To Love Somebody,” recorded in Muscle Shoals with Tanner and White, brings some R&B to the table, but hardly seems necessary when the rest of the record enhances everything Ortega already does so well. (Aug. 27)

Download: “I Ain’t the Girl,” “Faded Gloryville,” “Run-Down Neighbourhood”

Slime – Company (Weird World/Domino)

Will Archer started playing music as a teenager as a drummer in a Rage Against the Machine cover band; he thought all electronic music was bogus and fake. He’s obviously come around; his work as Slime fits easily alongside the likes of Jaime XX or Caribou or James Blake or FourTet, with whom he shares a love of live instrumentation and found-sound samples. The word “organic” is one of the most overused terms of the last 10 years, rendering it virtually meaningless, and yet Slime’s intersection of traditional instrumentation and electronic manipulation, though hardly novel—Nicolas Jaar’s 2013 album as Darkside is another kindred spirit—still sounds fresh in Archer’s hands. (Aug. 13)

Download: “Striding Edge,” “My Company,” “Liquorish”

Tony Wilson 6tet – A Day’s Life (Drip Audio)

It seems odd that Vancouver, the most expensive city in Canada, one which most aspiring rock musicians have fled, boasts such an impressive jazz and improv scene—and most of the key players can be found in this band. Guitarist Tony Wilson has been a bandleader for more than 25 years, and here he rounds up trumpeter JP Carter (Fond of Tigers), violinist Jesse Zubot (Tanya Tagaq), jazz superstar cellist Peggy Lee, Russell Sholberg on bass and drummer Skye Brooks for a walk through the wild side—or more specifically, Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, a troubled neighbourhood of beauty and despair and lost dreams, where Wilson once lived; the (non-autobiograhpical) album is meant to be the tale of a crack-addicted musician busking on East Hastings, based on a 2012 Wilson novella. Not that you’d infer that by just listening, necessarily, but no matter. The songs here boast strong melodic leads, delicate textures, occasional bursts of noise and strong composition to which these sensitive players bring their top game. Zubot and Lee in particular shine, partly because it’s unusual to hear both violin and cello together in a jazz band where they’re lead players, not texture, but also partly because those two are capable of anything. Carter, too, stands out by not only being the sole wind player, but by running his trumpet through distortion and effects, as he does with Destroyer and Dan Mangan and myriad other projects. Wilson himself is the consummate bandleader, setting the stage and letting everyone shine equally. The guitarist is incredibly prolific, and this humble reviewer can’t lay claim to knowing even a fraction of his oeuvre. But it’s hard to imagine a better introduction than this. (Aug. 6)

Download: “A Day’s Life,” “The Morn’ in Blues,” “The Long Walk”

March 2014 reviews

I’ve had a grumpy month. It’s March. Earlier I was blown away by Calgary upstarts 36?, and Kevin Drew’s second solo album is one of the strongest records he’s ever made. But other than being unable to resist the charm of Pharrell Williams—especially in a month devoid of anything resembling warmth, either emotionally or meteorologically—this month had some slim pickings.

Highly recommended: Pharrell Williams

Worth your while: Many people will tell you that I’m dead wrong about The War on Drugs.

These reviews appeared in the Waterloo Record and Guelph Mercury.

Barzin - To Live Alone in That Long Hot Summer (Monotreme)

Barzin got his start as a singer-songwriter when he was living in Guelph, back in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, when his voice never rose above a whisper, when his drummer only ever played with brushes, when the other musicians accompanying him rarely played more than one note per bar. Not much has changed, except that his recordings are remarkably more confident and accomplished—especially this one, his first in five years. (Barzin’s release schedule is even slower than his tempos.)

Sympatico Toronto pals Daniela Gesundheit (Snowblink) and Tamara Lindeman (The Weather Station) lend a hand on backing vocals, as does Barzin’s most faithful champion, Tony Dekker of Great Lake Swimmers. After more than a decade working with the exact same template, one that invokes candlelight, red wine and some tattered books of poetry, Barzin’s writing has shed the clichés and repetition of his earlier material, and he’s found some extremely sympathetic players to add accordion, cello and clarinet, as well as a subtle but extremely effective drummer.

He couldn’t have titled the album more perfectly: it’s the sound of melancholy and ache when the weather is suited for nothing more than extreme sloth. The music itself, however, is anything but lazy. (March 20)

Download: “All the While,” “In the Dark You Can Love This Place,” “Lazy Summer”

Johnny Cash – Out Among the Stars (Sony)

In the years preceding and immediately following his death in 2002, Johnny Cash seemed to have a “new” record out every couple of months: an actual album here, a reissue there, maybe a box set or two, and then the inevitable scraping of the bottom of the barrel: endless outtakes packaged as new material. So what fresh hell is this?

Out Among the Stars is a previously unreleased album, but it doesn’t come from a mythologized part of Cash’s career: this is not from his Tennessee Two days, nor from his Folsom Prison comeback period, nor from his Rick Rubin-assisted final victory lap. This was made during his lowest commercial slump: the early ’80s, when he considered himself “invisible” in his label’s eyes; they dropped him after rejecting some of the material that appears here.

Cash’s brand of country may have not been commercial in the early ’80s (despite the fact that Bruce Springsteen was going through a big Johnny Cash phase, first with Nebraska and then with the top-10 single “I’m On Fire”), but it holds up well. Cash was never one to chase trends, so you won’t find him falling prey to any of the sonic traps that shackled so many of his contemporaries. Out Among the Stars only features two Cash originals, but the rest of the track list is written by then-current songwriters, and devoid of well-known songs, with the sole exception of a cover of Hank Snow’s “I’m Movin’ On,” as a duet with Waylon Jennings.

Considering the glut of Johnny Cash albums on the market, you could do far worse than stumbling across this one. Then again: considering the glut of Johnny Cash albums on the market, one can’t help but wonder if anyone but the most diehard completest will consider this essential. (March 27)

Download: “Out Among the Stars,” “Baby Ride Easy” (with June Carter Cash), “If I Told You Who It Was”

The Heavyweights Brass Band – Brasstronomical (Lulaworld)

This Toronto ensemble wins this year’s Most Improved Award, hands down. Simply being a New Orleans-style brass band doing covers of Lady Gaga and Justin Bieber songs is a shtick that only goes so far, so the arrangements had better be whip tight, and the delivery full of verve and spark. On the debut, that wasn’t the case. Here, it most definitely is. Covering the Rush instrumental “YYZ” is not a task to be taken on lightly; completely reinventing it and owning it as your own is a whole other kettle of fish. Sousaphone player Rob Teehan tackles Geddy’s Lee’s insanely bass line with aplomb, while saxophonist Paul Metcalfe somehow captures every minute detail of Alex Lifeson’s guitar. Recasting rock songs is not their only forte here: they also take on a sensual Erykah Badu ballad, a song by Toronto jazz legend Jane Bunnett, and they invite Jamaica-to-Toronto R&B master Jay Douglas to sing one of their originals. It’s those originals that set Heavyweights apart these days: Metcalfe and trumpet player Jonathan Challoner each deliver punchy tunes that showcase the best this band is capable of. Coming soon to a summer jazz festival near you. (March 6)

Download: “YYZ,” “Booze Hounds” (featuring Jay Douglas), “Telephone”

Kalle Mattson - Someday, The Moon Will Be Gold (Parliament of Trees)

The Weakerthans, one of Canada’s most beloved bands, only put an album once in a blue moon; it’s now been seven years since Reunion Tour. Mattson, an Ottawa-via-Sault-Ste.-Marie singer-songwriter, bears a remarkable vocal resemblance to the Weakerthans’ John K. Samson, and his backing band (which includes Cuff the Duke’s Paul Lowman on most tracks here) likewise applies pop-punk drive to nerdy, wordy folk songs. And, like the Weakerthans, Mattson pulls it off far better than you would ever expect (and, although you wouldn’t guess it from this review, he does so without constantly inviting comparisons over the course of the album). He also does it with trumpeter JF Beauchamp adding majesty and melodic thrust over the raging guitars. Producer Gavin Gardiner (The Wooden Sky) knows when to let the songs breathe, when to let the band rock out, and when a flurry of guitar feedback serves and excellent purpose. Drummer Kyle Woods also deserves a nod for his sympathetic performance. This is Mattson’ third full-length album; it’s clearly the one where he comes into his own. (March 6)

Download: “Hurt People Hurt People,” “A Love Song to the City,” “Darkness”

The Notwist - Close to the Glass (Sub Pop)

One of my favourite music writers once complained that listening to Radiohead was a joyless exercise akin to being “on the Internet reading debates about the Internet”—the implication being that the music was too impressed with itself and its importance, and devoid of actual ambition or emotional resonance. Germany’s The Notwist have garnered their share of Radiohead comparisons ever since their 2002 album Neon Golden became a sleeper cult hit, with its mix of balladry, hints of blues riffs and plenty of bleeps and blurps. Close to the Glass is only their second album since then. It would unlikely impress anyone who shared the above opinion of Radiohead. 

The stereotype of German music is that it’s emotionally detached and deadpan; The Notwist live up to that reputation, and then some. When the band is on hiatus, its members have a variety of experimental side projects. When they get back together here, they sound bored out of their minds, like they’re punching the clock with some pop songs that will fund their true labours of love. There’s something wrong when the most raucous song is about a seven-hour drive: It’s called, you guessed it, “7-Hour Drive.” The weirder they get, the better: the title track sounds like a sexless Teutonic take on Jamaican dancehall, while “Lineri” is an entrancing instrumental that benefits greatly from not having Markus Acher’s mumbling over it. (March 13)

Download: “Kong,” “Close to the Glass,” “Lineri”

Angel Olsen – Burn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar)

Why would you burn your fire for no witness? Are you trying to hide something? Are you a recluse? Is there a deep loneliness inside of you that recoils from human contact?

The latter would seem to apply to this Asheville, N.C., singer-songwriter, whose voice alters between defeated and yearning. On the tracks where she provides the sole accompaniment, she sounds almost frightened, spooked, like Julie Doiron or Cat Power in a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For at least half the record, however, she employs a Chicago garage-rock duo, Lionlimb, who give her an emotional lift and colour in the corner of her songs with surprising subtlety. Producer John Congleton, who also helmed the all-out sonic attack of St. Vincent’s new album, knows exactly when to leave Olsen alone, and never tries to dress up her arrangements. Yet even when she shows signs of extroversion, Olsen still casts a lonely figure that still sounds like a 27-year-old who’s been beat down by too many crappy retail gigs and dubious relationships. How much you enjoy this record may well depend entirely on how far away you are from your own 27-year-old’s existence. (March 6)

Download: “Forgiven/Forgotten,” “Lights Out,” “White Fire”

The War on Drugs – Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian)

Much like the real-life war on drugs, this War on Drugs—a Philadelphia band led by Adam Granduciel—is hopelessly lost. They packed up their van, drove it to the middle of a former industrial town in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania on a cloudy summer day, set up shop and started daydreaming while playing their instruments. That’s what it sounds like, anyway: aimless, carefree, pleasant yet melancholic and in a constant state of anticipation: surely, something is about to happen. It has to. Because nothing’s been happening now for a long, long time. Sometimes that can be its own pleasure. Others, it’s just plain tedious or, worse, imperceptible. Invisible.

For some mystifying reason, people who should know better—i.e. everybody who’s ever written about this band—compare The War on Drugs to Bruce Springsteen. Apparently the mere presence of a saxophone in a rock band gives people strange ideas. Tom Petty also pops up quite a bit. But comparisons to these greats only make sense if you imagine those artists showing up in the studio baked out of their minds, with no songs in mind, telling their ace bands to drive the same groove deep into the night—and hey, while you’re there, boys, take some time to gaze at the stars.

Granduciel is a passionate frontman, even when he’s doing a strange Bob Dylan impersonation, and he’s a guitar noodler par excellence—if you’re into noodling. This is his band; other members have come and gone. No wonder: they could all be easily replaced by machines, as the arrangements consist largely of metronomic beats devoid of dynamics.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you’re looking for music to ignore—like High Fidelity’s Rob Gordon does in the novel and film that most War on Drugs fans know all too well—then this is your band. Lost in the Dream is—well, dreamy. And lost, in the Chet Baker sense of “Let’s Get Lost.” Maybe it’s an album that encapsulates hollowed-out, Rust Belt America, devoid of hope and lulled into an opiate state by the distraction-industrial complex—a timely soundtrack to accompany George Packer’s book The Unwinding. Or maybe it’s just an album where not much happens at all. (March 27)

Download: “An Ocean in the Waves,” “In Reverse,” “Red Eyes”

Pharrell Williams – G I R L (Sony)

Pharrell is a happy guy. You probably knew that already, because of his 2013 smash single, “Happy,” from the Despicable Me 2 soundtrack. He performed it at the Oscars last week, even getting Meryl Streep up to dance. He looked happy. He sounds happy. He should be. And you will be, too, after you hear the most joyous pop album in ages.

As a producer, Pharrell has shaped the sound of pop and hip-hop over the last 15 years, having been responsible, behind the scenes, for dozens of hits. G I R L is sunny-day funk par excellence, making Justin Timberlake’s recent records sound bloated and excessive, imagining what Michael Jackson would sound like if he fronted a tight five-piece band rather than an orchestra of rock and R&B players. 

Pharrell puts the vocals and the beats first, and fills in every other element sparingly, less they distract from the groove and melodies. Even on “Gust of Wind,” with guest robot vocals from Daft Punk and featuring a string arrangement by bombastic soundtrack composer Hans Zimmer, can barely be accused of bloat. 

"Happy" is undeniably a catchy song, but the real winner here is "Hunter," impossibly funky and deliciously libidinous, where the riff is shared by a synth clavinet and a slap bass (with another, deeper bass adding maximum effect with a minimum number of notes). Like “Get Lucky,” the chord progression never changes, but it doesn’t have to: the groove is killer, and Pharrell is full of casual swagger and seemingly improvised, ridiculous lyrics (“Duck Dynasty is cool and all / but they got nothing on a female’s call”).

Being who he is, Pharrell could easily have stuffed his album with A-list guests. He doesn’t have to: Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys show up, but they’re barely noticeable. If he’s out to teach us anything here, it’s that simplicity is the key to happiness. (March 6)

Download: “Happy,” “Hunter,” “Come Get It Bae”