A side project by Deerhunter guitarist Lockett Pundt, Lotus Plaza’s debut bears a marked resemblance to that band at first listen – a lot of shoegazey guitar work and floating, sometimes inaudible vocals – but the sonic textures here are more insistent in their dreaminess (the title track is an Eno-caliber instrumental build-up), the melodies are filled with an unexpected reverence for pop of the 50s and 60s; not necessarily better than Deerhunter, but far more focused.

Grade: 8.5 / 10

Kranky
March 24, 2009

Wolf Parader Dan Boeckner and wife Alexei Perry’s follow-up to 2007′s Plague Park is soaked in New Order-style 80′s pop, along with a healthy dose of guitar and Boeckner’s distinctively swaggering vocal style, it’s hookier and more immediately enjoyable than his Wolf Parade work and far more memorable and impressive than Plague Park but it’s style of synths and drum machines certainly isn’t going to be anything you haven’t heard before.

Grade: 7.3 / 5

Sub Pop
March 10, 2009

Beirut’s newest release is a series of two EPs: the first is a waltzy, brass-driven affair that feels like the mournful soundtrack to a funeral in some Mexican village; Holland demonstrates the true extent to which Zach Condon can stretch his talents, with a collection of bubbly electronic tracks on which he sounds far from uncomfortable.

Grade: 7 / 10

Ba Da Bing Records
February 17, 2009

Bon Iver’s first EP sees Justin Vernon out of his cabin in the woods and accompanied by a band but making similarly soulful and masterfully written tunes (the title track in particular), all be it with a more polished sound and less charm, something we’ll probably all have to get used to unless he decides to take another extended camping trip in the near future.

Kan Iver: On Blood Bank‘s closing track, “Woods”, Vernon utilizes a vocoder to augment his voice. One can’t help but think of Kanye West’s auto-tuned 808 vocals, but Vernon uses his trick inventively, turning his vocals into an instrument on a track that’s technically a capella.

Grade: 7.5 / 10

Jagjaguwar
January 20, 2009

Antony and the Johnson’s newest LP is musically not too dissimilar from 2005′s I Am a Bird Now – greeting the listener with sparse and lovely instrumentation and Antony Hegarty’s uniquely soul-shaking voice – but the lyrical focus has shifted from Hegarty’s inner-self to the natural world, without losing the massive emotional weight of his previous work, particularly on medatative album highlights like “Her Eyes Are Underneath the Ground” and the deathbed ballad “Another World”.

Grade: 8.7 / 10

Secretly Canadian
January 21, 2009

A.C. Newman of The New Pornographers has more than proven that he knows pop music and he knows how to write the hell out of it, and Get Guilty will not surprise anyone who’s heard the Pornographers or Newman’s first solo album, but that’s exactly the problem: as comforting as his brand of efficiently catchy, guitar and piano driven songs are, one wonders when – after eight years of this kind of thing – he’s going to try something new.

Grade: 6 / 10

Matador
January 20, 2009

Animal Collective have taken the melodic tones of previous effort Strawberry Jam, the sunny, beachy colors of Panda Bear’s ethereal solo album, and the liquid sounds of 2008′s Water Curses EP and built them into something more accessible, dizzying, and entertaining than any album they’ve ever made before – a captivating hour of shimmering synths, pounding beats, gorgeous harmonizing, and (gasp!) amazingly catchy hooks.

Leak Freaks: Unlike nearly every other album that comes out these days, Merriweather Post Pavilion failed to leak months in advance of it’s January 09 release date. As anticipation drew to a fevered pitch, tracks “Brother Sport” and “My Girls” leaked and Bradford Cox of Deerhunter told Animal Collective fans to “pick up instruments and make your own version of what you would want it to sound like.” The album finally leaked on December 25, providing a true Christmas miracle to hipsters the world over.

Open up your, open up your, open up your throat: One of the most startling factors about Merriweather Post Pavilion is just how damn catchy some of these songs are. If one goes back just a few albums in Animal Collective’s catalogue, they’ll find wandering, incohesive sound experiments that mostly just float from place to place. Album highlight “Summertime Clothes” has distinct verses and a lovely, catchy chorus, something quite new for the band behind it.

Grade: 9.5 / 10

Domino
January 6, 2009

of Montreal – Skeletal Lamping

October 21, 2008
Polyvinyl
Rating: 4.5 / 5

The Music Rag One Sentence Review: Unbeknownst to most music fans, all four Beatles reunited briefly in 1977 and went to Studio 54 with David Bowie, where they engaged in a sweaty, 300 person, bisexual orgy with a bunch of coked-up disco freaks, during which a woman became pregnant – of Montreal’s Skeletal Lamping was what that woman pushed out of her vagina nine months later.

Best moments: “For Our Elegant Caste” transitions between a disco chorus of “We can do it softcore, if you want / But you should know I take it both ways” and wonderfully Beatles-styled vocals. “Gallery Piece” offers some of the most hilarious and over the top lyrics found anywhere on the album: “I want to steal your things / I want to show you off / I want to tell you lies / I want to write you books / I want to turn you on / I want to make you come / 200 times a day”.

Fruit Loops: As the lyrics above would suggest, Skeletal Lamping is a filthy album. Contributing to this is of Montreal mastermind Kevin Barnes’ new Ziggy Stardust-like persona, Georgie Fruit, who is – apparently – a 40-something, black, transexual funk musician. So that’s why he sings “I’m just a black she-male!” during the song “Wicked Wisdom”. Y’know, in case you were wondering.