2020 odds 'n' sods

Before posting my top 40 of 2020, here are 10 other records I enjoyed this year that deserve to be in the time capsule: mostly either by promising newbies or vets who continue to surprise. 

Destroyer – Have We Met (Merge). Come for John Collins's impeccable and interesting production, which is an '80s throwback that improves considerably on the original era. Stay, if you like, for Dan Bejar, who's more miss than hit this time out; some of his weaker lyrical moments prevent me from loving this more than I do, because musically it's one of his strongest. 

DijahSB – 2020 The Album (independent). "It's time for me to become a household name," this Toronto rapper told Xtra recently. Why not? This is a bright, bold, funky record with serious flow, an album made for the dancefloor that never falls into trap. Musical positivity abounds, even when the lyrics are brutally honest about the chronic pitfalls of poverty ("I'll Pay You Back on Friday," "Broke Boi Anthem." 

 

Dana Gavanski – Yesterday Is Gone (Flemish Eye). Here's what I wrote earlier this year: No wonder this odd little record is so fascinating: it was born in Vancouver, Montreal, the Laurentians, Banff, Toronto, and Serbia. Gavanski packs a lot of work, discipline and experience into her debut album, which fits into a lineage that spans Nico to Aldous Harding (and FWIW I’m not a fan of the latter). It’s unassuming at first, with subtle arrangements and Gavanski’s deadpan voice somewhat off-putting. But the intimacy and delicacy of the instrumentation ultimately draw you in; every tiny production decision here is very particular and deliberate, creating a world you want to inhabit on a lazy afternoon. Fans of Jennifer Castle should be paying attention. 

 

Magnetic Fields – Quickies (Nonesuch). With 28 songs in 47 minutes, there's not much time to dislike anything here—though there are definitely a few duds—and Stephin Merritt is up to many of his best tricks. Who else could spin a relationship metaphor from "Kraftwerk in a Blackout"? And I'm kind of surprised that "The Day the Politicians Died" ("billions laughed and no one cried... celebrations spread worldwide") didn't get more play in this hellish year.

 

   

Jon McKiel – Bobby Joe Hope (You've Changed). If this record sounds like a long-lost '60s pop gem, that's because it kind of is. McKiel lives in Sackville, N.B., where he bought an old analogue reel-to-reel tape recorder from an online seller. The recorder came with some tapes. On one of those tapes were isolated tracks: instruments, vocals, and even one complete song. McKiel took the tracks to Jay Crocker, a.k.a. Joyfultalk, and chopped them up into pieces from which McKiel then wrote his own songs, collaborating with an artist he never met and never will. The result is hazy, psych-folk pop rich with mystery.

 

 

Terrell Morris – Lavender (Blakk Velvet Arts). Multi-dimensional Toronto R&B/hip-hop, silky singing voice, decent rapper,  but most important a breadth of styles heard over the course of this album. Opening track "Winterfall" ("Fuck I hate the winter / damn I love the fall" speaks to me) spends half its running time with Morris accompanied by only a solo alto saxophone. The more contemporary "Roxy" features a video co-starring 2019 longlister Sydanie. "Play the Fool," primarily a solo acoustic guitar track, puts him in Bahamas/Kiwanuka territory. "Got the Love" is a Kaytranada-esque pop song. "Renaissance" is in super-smooth Sade territory. Fans of fellow Torontonians Junia T, Keita Juma, Charlotte Day Wilson, Daniel Caesar et al should be tuning in. 

 

 

Sneaks – Happy Birthday (Merge). "Tell me, do you want to go out tonight?" HELL YES O GOD PLEASE MAKE THIS LOCKDOWN END. (Safely and scientifically, of course.) Sitting somewhere between early Solange and Le Tigre with some 80s Detroit techno in the mix, this DC artist's fourth album ("I'm not overrated / I'm not underrated / I'm just slightly sophisticated") would have sounded great after last call at your local, but in 2020 it became a soundtrack to driving around desolate streets late at night remembering what was. 

Charles Spearin and Josefin Rusteen – Thank God the Plague is Over (Arts and Crafts). So, yeah, about that title: this was recorded in a 16th-century chapel in a tiny Italian town ravished by the Black Plague, and the titular phrase was 400-year-old graffiti on the wall. Spearin (Broken Social Scene, Do Make Say Think) and Rusteen (a Swedish violinist who's played with Ane Brun) improvised in this chapel every day during an artist's retreat set up by Feist, on nyckelharpa and violin. There are ghosts in this music, and two strangers who don't speak the same language found common ground among them. 

 

Tricky – Fall to Pieces (False Idols). I only check in on Tricky every few years, but the success of Backxwash (with whom I'd love to hear a collaboration), the continued influence of Billie Eilish, and other elements in the zeitgeist made me realize how much we still hear 1995's Maxinquaye every day, in different ways. What I hadn't realized is that he lost his 24-year-old daughter in 2019, and wrote a memoir about his tumultuous life later that year. This new record is very much a 21st century blues album, particularly the raw "Hate This Pain." Most of it is sparse, lovely, and features Polish vocalist Marta. It's his 14th album. I don't claim to be intimate with every minute detail of his discography, but I'd hazard a guess that this is one of the best. 

 

William Tyler – New Vanitas (Merge). I'm not going to the U.S. anytime soon. I'm not going anywhere soon, for that matter, except the furthest reaches of my imagination. For those journeys, Nashville guitarist William Tyler makes great driving music. It's vivid and meditative music, but always seems to be in motion, full of changing landscapes and small details spotted at the side of the road. And whereas someone like Julianna Barwick--whose music served a similar function for me this year--seems to reside in fantastical places, Tyler sounds rooted in the natural world, or at the very least in the quotidian corners of your neighbourhood you never noticed before you were forced to explore them when the world collapsed around you. 

 

 

February 2019 reviews

These reviews ran in February in the Waterloo Region Record.

The Bangles / The Dream Syndicate / Rain Parade / The Three O’Clock – 3x4 (Yep Roc)

Yes, the Bangles are back. And yes, it’s a nostalgia trip. But it’s not what you were expecting.

The L.A. band had a string of Top-10 hits in the mid- to late ’80s, but most people don’t know that they were spawned from a broken social scene that called itself the Paisley Underground, including the three other bands reassembled on this album of new material. (Most people, including me until recently, also don’t know that Bangles’ bassist Michael Steele was in the original lineup of Joan Jett’s Runaways.) While the Bangles went pop, the Dream Syndicate were underground favourites, particularly their album The Days of Wine and Roses. Rain Parade featured Dave Roback, who later formed Mazzy Star. The Three O’Clock were signed by Prince (you know, the guy who wrote “Manic Monday”) to his label, Paisley Park. The collective influence could be heard in artists ranging from R.E.M. to Lenny Kravitz.

“3x4,” which had a limited-edition Record Store Day release in November and is now widely available, finds the old friends back together and covering each others’ songs. Those 12-string electric and acoustic guitars have been dusted off, those four-part harmonies have been whipped into shape, and everyone plays and sings with the vim and vigour they had 35 years ago. It’s particularly great to hear the Dream Syndicate’s Steve Wynn sing the Bangles “Hero Takes a Fall,” an unflattering song written about him.

No, there’s no “Eternal Flame.” But the spark that started this fire is still alive. (Feb. 15)

Stream: “That’s What You Always Say” by the Bangles; “Hero Takes a Fall” by the Dream Syndicate; “Getting Out of Hand” by the Three O’Clock

Broken Social Scene – Let's Try the After EP Vol. 1 (Arts and Crafts)

Speaking of 2000s nostalgia, Broken Social Scene—the band of a thousand false breakups—gets silently stronger all the time. It’s almost as if 2002’s “You Forgot It In People” was a fluke, because their records have been stronger in this decade than during their supposed prime. This four-song EP hedges their bets and plays to their strengths, which is a solid, if uncharacteristic, decision. For a band known to throw everyone and everything on every track, a little less goes a long way. (Feb. 15)

Stream: “Remember Me Young,” “1972,” “All I Want”

Don Brownrigg – Fireworks (independent)

It was 12 years ago that this Newfoundlander, based in Halifax, put out an album called Wander Songs, on the same label that brought us Great Lake Swimmers. Wander Songs was a tiny, perfect collection of sad folk songs, tied together with Brownrigg’s warm, empathetic voice. There was one album between now and then, but Brownrigg’s ventures outside the Maritimes, as far as I know, few and far between. So it’s a delight to reconnect with his charms on this new record, which is so good that he even manages to breathe new life into a cover of Suzanne Vega’s “Tom’s Diner”—a bold move that would overshadow most songwriters’ entire records, but not this one. (Feb. 22)

Stream: “From You,” “Nowhere At All,” “Room for Me”

The Cosmic Range – The Gratitude Principle (Idée Fixe)

I, for one, am grateful that U.S. Girls’ Meg Remy hired this band to help shape her 2018 masterstroke In a Poem Unlimited (which was my choice for album of the year—sorry, Grammys). I’m also grateful that Matthew “Doc” Dunn, the bandleader, decided a few years ago to pivot away from an avant-garde scene that seemed to want to purposely alienate its audience, and start setting his brand to exploratory experimentalism to (somewhat more) accessible psychedelic jazz grooves. Just like obvious influence Sun Ra, space is the place for this band—not that there’s much space to be found in the layers of texture created by such a large and talented ensemble. Not that it matters: more is more with this band, where instruments habitually wander away from traditional sonic expectations. On “The Observers,” a keyboard solo—I think it’s a keyboard?!—that sounds like someone strategically releasing air from a balloon in the most musically way possible. Strange and trippy times call for strange and trippy music, so might as well head out to the Cosmic Range. (Feb. 15)

  

Stream: “Breathing Water,” “The Observers,” “The Gratitude Principle”

Theon Cross – Fyah (Gearbox)

I don’t listen to a lot of bands with tuba players. (Maybe I should.) It’s safe to say, then, that I’ve never listened to a solo album from a tuba player who goes out on their own as a leader. There’s a first time for everything.

Theon Cross rocks the sousaphone in fiery British jazz quartet Sons of Kemet, who put out one of the best albums in any genre in 2018, Your Queen is a Reptile. The live show was even better. The star of that band is saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, but live it became obvious that every member there more than pulls their weight.

Here, Cross hooks up with two other standouts of the vibrant London scene: saxophonist Nubya Garcia and drummer Moses Boyd. While there are some tracks that resemble Sons of Kemet’s Caribbean/New Orleans mashup, Cross also dips into slinky funk—an extended tuba solo on “Letting Go” is set to a beat akin to Bill Withers’s “Use Me”—rock rhythms (“Radiation”), smooth(er) jazz (“CIYA”), and deliriously dextrous Afrobeat (“Candace of Meroe”). 

This could well send me down a rabbit-hole shaped like a tuba. Or not: because I can’t imagine any tuba album being better than this. (Feb. 22)

Stream: “Activate,” “Candace of Meroe,” “Letting Go”

Joe Jackson – Fool (Ear Music)

It’s been 40 years since Joe Jackson’s debut album, Look Sharp, and so he’s celebrating with a tour featuring that and four albums representing each of the three subsequent decades—1982’s Night and Day, 1991’s Laughter and Lust, 2004’s Rain, and this new album. It’s a good gimmick, and helps casual fans overlook the many misses in Jackson’s career, which equal in number to his hits—and by “hits,” I’m referring to artistic peaks rather than commercial ones.

Look Sharp was and is a burst of snarky guitar-driven pop energy, informed by punk, new wave and ska. It’s a sound he rarely returned to after 1979, until 2003’s surprisingly strong throwback Volume 4. Fool has much more in common with the other aforementioned albums: piano-based, often ornate pop with Latin influences. Jackson’s critics claim he’s too clever for his own good, but so what? Yes, he’s always sounded like a grumpy old man—even 40 years ago—but his piano playing and the stellar cast of musicians he surrounds himself with, including stalwart bassist Graham Maby, consistently elevate even his weakest material.

Fool is not going to win Jackson any new fans, but it’s more than enough to satiate the faithful and hold its own in a set list peppered with favourites. Which, with rare exceptions, is all any artist of his vintage can ask for. (Feb. 1)

Stream: “Strange Land,” “Friend Better,” “Fool”

LCD Soundsystem – Electric Lady Session (Sony)

Since this band “broke up” in 2011, there’s been a 5LP live album to go with a concert film, a lukewarm “comeback” record in 2017, and now a “session” album featuring the live band playing 60% of that last studio record, along with three covers. On paper, at least, LCD Soundsystem is running on fumes at this point.

That said: their output in the mid-2000s still sounds untouchable, and there’s an incredible chemistry between them that is evident here. To its credit, this set doesn’t recycle the songs fans have heard 1,000 times before (“Get Innocuous” being the sole exception, and it’s not like that’s even in their top five most-beloved tracks). It breathes life into some of the mediocre material from the last two records. Most important, the covers are all a delight, whether they’re morose and goth (the Human League’s “Seconds”), joyous (Chic’s “I Want Your Love”) or both joyous and morose, as on the essential take here on Heaven 17’s “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thang,” on the latter two of which keyboardist Nancy Whang takes the lead vocal.

Come for the covers, stick around to hear a band losing their edge but defiantly soldiering on. (Feb. 15)

Stream: “You Wanted a Hit,” “I Want Your Love,” “(We Don’t Need This) Fascist Groove Thing”

Elizabeth Shepherd – MONtréal (independent)

Every so often a profile will run of an artist, in which they confess they were ready to abandon their creative pursuits entirely out of frustration, but decided to give it one more go. The resulting work is the best thing they’ve ever done. That’s true of the new album by Canadian jazz singer/songwriter/keyboardist Elizabeth Shepherd.

The musician was schooled in Montreal but made her name in Toronto (one of her previous albums was called Parkdale), and moved back to Quebec after having a child, living in the Laurentians north of Montreal. Her tribute to the titular city is based on interviews she did with various locals of different background, who provided her with oft-untold stories, including those about Indigenous, black and LGBTQ communities in the city. It also gave her an excuse to track down one of her heroes, jazz piano legend Oliver Jones. She used all that material not only to write the 11 songs here, but to make a coffee-table book and short films for each song.

The result is much more than a high-concept make-work project. Shepherd sounds entirely on top of her game here, on every level—her instrumental skills, both delicate and funky, are always a delight—but particularly when she sings en français.

If she does decide to call it quits, she’ll do so while she’s ahead. But this suggests she has a lot more to give. (Feb. 8)

Stream: "Our Lady," "Jedlika," "Suits and Ties"

Royal Canoe – Waver (Paper Bag)

If you caught Terra Lightfoot’s Longest Road tour earlier this month, you saw the astounding singer Begonia. She’s part of a thriving Winnipeg scene in which Royal Canoe—featuring her songwriting partner Matt Schellenberg—is a central part. Royal Canoe is a synth-heavy, prog-pop-R&B combo that lies somewhere between the wigged-out funk of Beck (to whom they once paid a concert-length tribute) and the avant-garde whatever-it-is that Tricky does (they’ve toured with him) to the jazz groove of BadBadNotGood (no connection there, to the best of my knowledge). Superior musicians all, they truly find their groove on this, their fourth full-length (and their fourth record label) in the last 10 years, on which their pop skills move to the forefront, without sacrificing the egghead jazz-school chops that make them who they are. (Feb. 22)

Stream: “What’s Left in the River,” “Black Sea,” “Ashes, Ashes” (feat. Nnamdi Ogbonnaya)

 

William Tyler – Goes West (Merge)

Tyler is a Nashville guitarist, recently relocated to L.A. (hence this album title), whose instrumental music conjures the vast expanse between the two cities. He’s a fine finger-picker in both folk and classical continuums, whose meditative music draws from jazz, electronic composition and, yes, “new age,” a much-maligned musical genre of the ’80s that’s been critically rehabilitated in recent years--including by Tyler himself. He links the works of Windham Hill artists like Michael Hedges and George Winston with the decidedly less commercial and more outre work of Takoma Records’ John Fahey and Robbie Basho. In a lovely article for the website Aquarium Drunkard, Tyler writes about the link between the two camps: “Just because one group of artists sold millions of records and the other championed his own brand of joyful disruption, and at times toiled in obscurity, doesn’t mean that they weren’t and aren’t all united in a kind of strange outsider brotherhood. I like to think of all of this music being connected by something other than ‘new age’ … I think of it as ‘cosmic pastoral.’” Suitably, then, the acoustic-guitar-based Goes West (as opposed to Tyler’s earlier, electric explorations of psychedelic Americana) sounds like the soundtrack to a documentary about an abstract painter of Arizona landscapes. And reading his essay while listening to this music inspires curiosity about all of Tyler’s forebears. The man is as much of a deep thinker and historian as he is a composer and master instrumentalist. (Feb. 8)

  

Stream: “Alpine Star,” “Not In Our Stars,” “Rebecca”

June 2014 reviews

Highly recommended: Meridian Brothers, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Jack White, Slakah the Beatchild

Can’t believe I missed this in 2013: John Grant

Worth your while: everything else

The following reviews originally ran in the Waterloo Record.

  

Fatima Al Qadiri – Asiatisch (Hyperdub)

Born and raised in Kuwait, currently living in London and New York, Fatima Al Qadiri has never been to China. Yet she’s fascinated by the music of that country—more specifically, how the rest of the world understands Chinese music: its tonalities, its scale, how it’s been interpreted by Western ears over centuries. She describes Asiatisch as “a virtual road trip through imagined China.”

What a Chinese musician might think of this, no one’s bothered to ask; Qadiri was raised literally in between China and London—to which her style of electronic music owes its largest debt, specifically her icy, noir-ish labelmates on the Hyperdub label—so she’s arguably more entitled to this exploration than, say, some white guy from Wyoming.

The politics of her approach aside, Asiatisch is bewitching and fascinating, both melodically and texturally. This is not beat music; Qadiri opts for a more cinematic, dreamlike approach. She also has a penchant for unfashionably out-of-date synths, i.e. ones from the late ’80s, which fit her contextual motif perfectly: the sounds that are too cheezy to be either vintage or forward-looking are perfectly in line with the anomaly that is current Asian pop music, which appropriates many of Western pop’s worst habits 20 years later.

That manifests itself in the bizarre, ersatz cover of Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U,” sung by guest vocalist Helen Feng. Rather, it’s not exactly a cover: it’s titled “Shanzai,” for one thing, and takes just enough liberties with the melody that it might withstand a court challenge for plagiarism. It’s disorienting, haunting and oddly beautiful: no wonder Qadiri chose it as the opening track, setting up the rest of her conceit perfectly. (June 26)

Download: “Szechuan,” “Wudang,” “Shanghai Freeway”

John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts (Nevado)

I don’t normally review albums more than a year old. But I had never heard of John Grant before now. Or maybe I had: Pitchfork and Mojo and The Guardian and Sinead O’Connor and Elton John are all huge fans; O’Connor has covered him, and Elton John invited Grant to be on his self-curated tribute to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Grant’s non-descript birth name doesn’t do him any favours in the recognition department. What makes more of an impression than anything else is the phrases tumbling out of his mouth, articulating the unthinkable—comparing a lover’s silence to Agent Orange—and using words like callypigian (look it up, it’s a good one).

In an album chock full of quotable moments, nothing beats this chorus, set to a tune worthy of Tom Petty: “I am the greatest motherf--ker that you’re ever going to meet / from the top of my head down to the tips of the toes on my feet / Go ahead and love me while it’s still a crime / don’t forget, you could be laughing 65 per cent more of the time.”

This baritone bear of a man, a failed alt-rock musician from Colorado who relocated to Iceland (where he wrote that country’s 2014 Eurovision entry), pens lush ballads and electro pop, both equally strange and profane, that sound like no one else—except perhaps a strange amalgam of Buck 65 and the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt. Maybe Pink Floyd and Kraftwerk setting Lou Reed diaries to music, only with a much greater sense of melody. Maybe—nope, I can’t do it. John Grant is a rare and beautiful bird. End of story. His name and face might be easily camouflaged in the crowd, but these are songs you will never forget. (June 19)

Download: “Blackbelt,” “GMF,” “You Don’t Have To”

Hedwig and the Angry Inch – Broadway Cast Recording (Warner)

The greatest rock music of our time debuted 15 years ago off-Broadway; the 2001 film, starring creator John Cameron Mitchell, became a cult hit, and this year a Broadway remount of the show, starring Neil Patrick Harris, nabbed four Tony awards: hence this new cast recording.

“It’s funny how things work out,” Mitchell told the Toronto Star last week. “The original show was never a big money-maker, the movie was initially a flop, although Hedwig is always playing somewhere around the world. It’s so popular in Korea they even had a TV reality show to pick the next Hedwig in the last production.”

The story of Hedwig is threadbare: its appeal lies entirely in the title character, a failed glam rock singer who suffered a botched sex-change operation, and her relationship with a protégé who steals all her songs and becomes a star. Hedwig is both hilarious and tragic, but it’s the songs—by Mitchell and Stephen Trask—that transform it from a curiosity into a triumph. There’s already a cast recording from the off-Broadway version, the soundtrack to the film, and a tribute album (Wig in a Box) featuring Cyndi Lauper, Rufus Wainwright, Spoon, Sleater-Kinney and more. Do we need to hear these songs again?

Yes. For all its cult popularity, Hedwig still needed a proper, modern recording. The tribute album, worthy as it is, is more interpretive than reverent. The energy of the band here is more pronounced here than on either soundtrack featuring Mitchell, and the production is full of punch. Perhaps needless to say, Tony winner Harris is fantastic, as is his female foil, Lena Hall. As a bonus, there’s one new song, “When Love Explodes (Love Theme from Hurt Locker)”: “Love can be scary in the hurt locker / it’s tender and it’s raw and filled with shock and awe / and we will be consumed when love explodes.”

Every one of these songs deserves to be an American classic, and this is the recording to make the case. Hair? Tommy? Jersey Boys? American Idiot? Please. Hedwig rules them all. (June 26)

Download: “Tear Me Down,” “Wicked Little Town,” “Wig in a Box”

Hamilton Leithauser - Black Hours (Ribbon)

Some voices are too big for rock’n’roll. Hamilton Leithauser certainly had sublime moments as frontman for the Walkmen, but at some point the bombast started to sound suffocating. Here, on his solo debut, Leithauser and Walkmen guitarist Paul Maroon strip everything down and steps into noir-ish cabaret mode (hence the title, no doubt), adding marimba and the Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman on backing vocals when they see fit. Given room to roam over this moody, often atmospheric collection, Leithauser proves what a remarkable vocalist he truly is. He only disappoints on the tracks that sound merely like the Walkmen unplugged. Someone send this guy to Broadway. (June 12)

Download: “5 AM,” “The Silent Orchestra,” “Bless Your Heart”

Corb Lund – Counterfeiters Blues (New West)

Corb Lund and his Hurtin’ Albertans are a barn-burning live act, and have been for more than a decade. This is their first live album—of sorts. With seven fine albums behind him, Lund is consistently converting new fans—many of whom surely don’t know where to start with his back catalogue. Counterfeiters Blues is not a live album, but it finds Lund and his band revisiting his two bestsellers—2002’s stone-cold classic Five Dollar Bill and 2005’s Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer—by recording selected songs from them live at Memphis’s fabled Sun Studios (former home to Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.).

These are songs that these boys know inside out—and it shows. Playing the title tracks and crowd-pleasers like “Shine Up My Boots” or “Roughest Neck Around” is surely little more than muscle memory by now, but it comes off as a lot more than that. You could argue that these veterans were in awe of their historic surroundings in Memphis, but the truth is that they probably sound like this every night. This is a well-oiled machine that gets better with age, especially guitarist Grant Siemens.

Lund doesn’t need a nostalgia trip; his last album, 2012’s Cabin Fever, was easily one of his best. But this collection, which accompanies a television special about the session (included with the CD), is a welcome treat for fans old and new. (June 19)

Download: “Hair in My Eyes Like a Highland Steer,” “(Gonna) Shine Up My Boots,” “Truth Comes Out”

Meridian Brothers – Salvadora Robot (Soundway)

Your summer should sound like this: drunk, demented, delirious—and South American. This is what your World Cup party feels like after your underdog team beats all odds and you find yourself using a vuvuzela to imbibe multi-coloured sugary drinks you’ve never seen before, kissing people in the street and waking up in a strange part of town.

Elbis Alvarrez is the one-man operation from Bogota calling himself Meridian Brothers. On his third international release—not counting his side projects, including the mind-melting Los Piranas—he mashes together every equatorial genre of music (cumbia, calypso, reggae, samba) and escorts you through a funhouse of mirrors. Whether you dance or just sit there dazed is up to you.

Alvarrez has a simple methodology: set up a killer percussion track, employ minimal rhythm guitar, and then wig out on either processed lead guitar or fuzzy organs that sound like bees—all while cackling maniacally. Evil genius, or just plain genius? Maybe just the album of the summer. (June 19)

Download: “De Mi Caballo Como Su Carne,” “Un Principe Miserable Y Malvado,” “Balie Ultimo”

Shi Wisdom – Stranger Things Have Happened (independent)

Perhaps the most underrated Canadian hip-hop record of 2013 was Water, by Toronto producer KJ, where the dark, ominous beats put to shame the considerably more acclaimed work of Drake and The Weeknd; together, they all make Toronto seem like one spooky place. Now comes singer Shi Wisdom, with KJ behind the boards, and she injects some badly needed estrogen into the scene. Her ultra-cool coo is nothing short of chilling on “Young Gunner,” a harrowing tale of urban violence; that track alone should catapult her into the larger consciousness. But she has a softer and sultry side, too, one that aspires to be “sipping champagne on a yacht”—even if her uneasy aural surroundings suggest that to be more aspirational than immediately attainable. With a voice like that, however—and with KJ in her corner—surely it’s only a matter of time. (June 12)

Download: “The Key,” “Fly Too,” “Young Gunner”

Slakah the Beatchild - Soul Movement Vol. 2 (BBE)

Hip-hop has been sounding a lot less funky lately—thanks, Drake and Kanye. “Old school” no longer means a throwback to the ’80s or the Golden Age of the early ‘90s; by channelling the broken beat movement and neo-soul of the early 2000s, Toronto producer Slakah the Beatchild—on whose previous album Drake was a guest MC—now sounds positively retro, and better for it. The first lyrics you hear come from MC Spek Won, setting the tone: “Starts with a boom, ends with a bap, it’s in between the boom and the bap is the gap / in between the gap is where the magic happens / a chemical reaction.”

The last Slakah record came out under his rock/pop guise, the Slakadeliqs; it landed on the Polaris Prize long list and got a fair amount of attention, but I found it limp and uninspired. This, however, proves that he’s much more than just a genre dabbler; these tight and jazzy grooves, many of which turn themselves inside out over the course of a track, are the product of a serious vision. Guest vocalists include powerhouse soul sister Tanika Charles, newcomer Ayah and the long-lost Glenn Lewis, but they all take a back seat to the beats—and the Beatchild. (June 12)

Download: “Stompthatflo” (feat. Spek Won), “Something About Her,” “Love Fool” (feat. Tanika Charles)

William Tyler – Lost Colony EP (Merge)

If I told you this was an instrumental guitar rock record, I wouldn’t blame you for running away screaming. The genre is usually the domain of masturbatory showboaters who just don’t know when to shut up and sit back. Nashville’s William Tyler, however, is a much more delicate man than that. Having grown up as a young wunderkind playing sideman in older people’s bands (Lambchop, Silver Jews), Tyler has a deep reverence for both mainstream country (his parents are hit songwriters) and the avant-garde (he’s a big fan of Krautrock band Neu!; here, he covers a solo track by that band’s guitarist, Michael Rother). On this EP, which follows up two acclaimed albums of solo, fingerpicked electric guitar compositions, Tyler employs a backing band to allow him to explore psychedelic textures, hammer out droning power chords over a driving rhythm section, and bring the subtle virtuosity he displayed as a sideman to the forefront. Tyler’s version of Americana draws from so much more than cliché country or rock forms; this is a man whose guitar speaks many languages. (June 19)

Download: all three songs

Viet Cong – Cassette (Mexican Summer)

Matt Flegel and Matt Wallace are not Vietnamese, yet they are Viet Cong. They are also not women, yet they used to be one-half of the Calgary band Women. When they don’t claim to be anything at all, they’ve been known to be sidemen for freaky fractured folk guy Chad Van Gaalen. As Viet Cong, they play catchy, ramshackle and reverb-heavy garage rock that owes a debt to early ’80s British post-punk: opening track “Throw It Away” is a dead ringer for The Jam, while “Structureless Design” is downright goth. Psychedelic touches colour the edges, and they make the most out of their decidedly lo-fi sound. A full-length album is currently being recorded with Graham Walsh (Holy Fuck, Metz); look for it to be some of the most glorious noise of the year. (June 12)

Download: “Throw It Away,” “Static Wall,” “Unconscious Melody”

Jack White – Lazaretto (Third Man/Sony)

No artist wants to launch a new album with a public apology. A week before Lazaretto’s release, Jack White was quoted in Rolling Stone dissing various peers; this, along with messy details of his divorce last year, didn’t do well to endear him to the record-buying public. So he quickly issued a long apology on his website, claiming he was quoted out of context and has nothing but respect and/or love for those artists allegedly caught in his crosshairs. (Widely reposted, the original post in question has mysteriously been taken down.) “Would You Fight For My Love?” asks White in the title of one of his new tracks. Long-time fans may be beginning to wonder.

Maybe Jack White is a bit of an ass. Maybe he’s not. He certainly has terrible hair these days, for what it’s worth. But if we approach his music on its own terms, White gives us plenty of reason to stand by our man. His first solo album, 2012’s Blunderbuss, sounded like White suddenly liberated from the constraints of each of his other three bands; here his eclectic tastes crystallize into a far more potent punch. Country fiddles collide with blues riffs on heavy garage rock with R&B beats, and White makes it all sound effortless. (It wasn’t; uncharacteristically for White, he spent much longer than a week on this record.) He even does it while using two completely different full bands—one male, one female—each of which boasts killer keyboardists, pedal steel players and funky drummers, each of which bring out the best in him. Perhaps needless to say, his guitar sound is monstrous, and he plays with more fire than he has in ages—it’s probably the divorce talking. (The lyrics back up this thesis.)

If you only read the rock’n’roll gossip pages, you might want Jack White to fail. But once you hear this record, you can be sure that he hasn’t. (June 12)

Download: “Three Women,” “Lazaretto,” “High Ball Stepper”