In May 2011, Foxygen’s Sam France and Jonathan Rado nervously handed off a CD-R of their homemade miniopus ‘Take The Kids Off Broadway’ to producer and visionary Richard Swift after his performance in a Lower East Side club. The duo, who had just mixed and burned the disc that very night, had been devotees of Swift’s outsiderpop oeuvre since high school, when they first began recording their own pubescent forays into oddball rock ‘n’ roll (at least a dozen records were finished before they graduated high school). Foxygen left the venue that night unsure whether Swift would truly listen or sling the disc into a dumpster on his way out. In fact, Swift flipped for Foxygen’s bugged out, esoteric majesty and called upon them immediately to say as much.

Eight months later, Foxygen was holed up for a week-long recording session at Swift’s neo-legendary National Freedom studio, creating what has become ‘We Are The 21st Century Ambassadors Of Peace & Magic’, a precocious and cocksure joyride across California psychedelia with a burning, bursting punk rock engine.

The songs were written in an inspired fury just after ‘Take The Kids…’ was complete, pouring from their hands and mouths. Foxygen believe that each song was a message of peace delivered from cosmic beings who used France and Rado as their messenger vessels.

Bubbling beneath their supreme melodic instincts, there’s a wild, nervy energy and a raw musicianship that makes Foxygen incapable of doing anything exactly straight. They somehow pack a host of musical left turns, lyrical non sequiturs and decades-spanning bridges into industry preferred 3 - 4 minute gems that are at both reinvention and memorial.

‘Hoyas’ by S. Carey is a hospitable statement about love, longing and the celebration of knowing it well.

You will find the familiar S. Carey modern classical repetition pushed into the vernacular of electronic music and beat making. This is the warmest electronic music you'll ever know. The beats swing, stutter and pulse while each instrument retains a heightened awareness of its form and function within the larger family of voices.

Each of Hoyas’ songs has its own personality, each part inseparable from the body, and while the results might be surprising to some, they shouldn't be.

S. Carey has historically illustrated a very rare breadth as an artist, not only as a member of Bon Iver, but on recordings of his own, whether from his debut full-length, ‘All We Grow’, performing cover songs, or in remix work.

With Hoyas, Carey's uncontainable talent is hard at work exhibiting some of the deeper colour palettes that music can offer. But most impressively, Carey's talent can now be seen to be growing by leaps and bounds. His range as a singer is progressing into much bolder territories, as evidenced not only on Hoyas’ albums but on the Bon Iver at AIR Studios recordings, where just his voice, Justin Vernon's voice and two pianos mesh perfectly to create an unforgettable performance for the ages.

The shimmering sound of Sharon Van Etten's Jagjaguwar debut album, 'Tramp', both defies and illuminates the unsteadiness of a life in flux. Throughout the 14 months of scattered recording sessions, Van Etten was without a home - crashing with friends and storing her possessions between varied locations. The only constant in Van Etten's life during this time was spent in Aaron Dessner's garage studio.

A two year journey brought her to that point of instability. Upon the release of epic (Ba Da Bing; 2010), Sharon Van Etten surprised the music world with a touching embrace. Having established herself as a reliable performer around New York, and coming off the release of her spartan first effort, 'Because I Was In Love' (Language of Stone; 2009), Van Etten created a short album of diverse songs connected by a shared goal of expanded sound and her unmistakable voice. Fans quickly picked favorites, discovered their choices changing, then changing yet again. That is the magic of epic; the intricate, understated record covered so much ground within its 33 minutes, it required more than an initial half hour to absorb. Since epic's release, she has opened the Pitchfork Music Festival, played The Hollywood Bowl with Neko Case and at Radio City Music Hall with The Antlers, sung on new records for Beirut and Ed Askew, and collaborated with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and Megafaun on the Songs Of The South project.

Dessner, a member of The National, heard Van Etten early on, and in collaboration with Justin Vernon, performed a cover of "Love More" at the 2010 MusicNow Festival in Cincinnati. Van Etten heard about this and contacted him. Almost immediately they formed plans to work together, with Dessner offering both a location for Van Etten to record new songs, as well as the opinions of a wise producer.

Now, one year later, Van Etten unveils Tramp, an album showcasing an artist in full control of her powers. Tramp contains as much striking rock (the precise venom of "Serpents," the overwhelming power of "Ask"), as pious, minimal beauty (the earnest solemnity of "All I Can," the breathtaking "Kevins," "Joke or a Lie"); it can be as emotionally combative ("Give Out") as it can sultry ("Magic Chords"). Contributions from Matt Barrick (Walkmen), Thomas Bartlett (Doveman), Zach Condon (Beirut), Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak), Julianna Barwick, and Dessner himself add a glowing sheen to the already substantial offering.

Van Etten has travelled far, and if her displacement took an emotional toll, she offset those setbacks with a powerfully articulated vision. And so, once again, each listener will discover their own moments along the way, and the debates as to the best song start anew.

STAFF COMMENTS

Laura says: This is Sharon Van Etten’s third album, but even if you’ve missed out on her previous two, you really can’t afford to let this one pass you by. With The National’s Aaron Dessner at the controls, and an impressive cast of contributors, including Julianna Barwick , Zach Condon (Beirut), Bryce Dessner (The National), Matt Barrick (The Walkmen) and Jenn Wasner (Wye Oak) she has created an absolutely stunning album. Dressner’s production creates the perfect space within her songs for her vocals to really shine, whether they’re stark acoustic tracks ("Give Out", "We Are Fine") or powerful atmospheric rockers ("Serpents", "All I Can") or ones that fall somewhere between the two ("Leonard") the range of her voice covers everything from fragile and fractured, to strong and defiant, somewhere between Cat Power and PJ Harvey. Add to that, superb emotive songwriting and you have all the ingredients for a truly wonderful album.

TRACK LISTING

1. Warsaw
2. Give Out
3. Serpents
4. Kevin’s
5. Leonard
6. In Line
7. All I Can
8. We Are Fine
9. Magic Chords
10. Ask
11. I’m Wrong
12. Joke Or A Lie

First release on Jagjaguwar from Wolf People – an alchemist’s compendium of English classic rock that has been doused in wine, its pages left red-stained, blurred and melded in the most interesting ways.

Tidings collects the band’s UK-only, out of print 7”, reconstructing the psych-rock gems with a seamless nest of field recordings and winding tape.

These recordings form the prehistory of a band that have recently garnered a reputation for blistering live performances around the UK: Wolf People have supported Dinosaur Jr, Tinariwen, Witchcraft, Sleepy Sun, Malcolm Mooney and Voice Of The Seven Woods amongst others.

“The new kings of English Psyche-Folk” - Classic Rock.

TRACK LISTING

1. Season Pt. 1
2. Black Water
3. Interlude: Plains/Banjoe
4. Cotton Strands
5. Interlude: Circle/Viking/Colours
6. Storm Cloud
7. Interlude: Grandfather
8. Interlude: Scraps
9. October Fires
10. Interlude: Mercy Fragment
11. April
12. Untitled
13. Interlude: Cotton Fragment
14. Empty Heart
15. Season Pt. 2

This 1988 LP is the final recording by the original line-up, and it opens with one of the greatest songs ever written! "Freak Scene" was massive in Manchester (just like everywhere else, I guess) in 1988 and the video for this perfect track was shot in John Robb's garden in West Didsbury! It's worth the price of the album alone. The rest of the tracks although perhaps never quite scaling those unbelievable heights, are some of Dinosaur's best work, fantastic song after fantastic song. J. Mascis had single-handedly resurrected the guitar as a freewheeling transcendental instrument, hurrah!!!! It was just a shame that the band hated each other, and this was to be their last as this line-up, but there can be no better way to go out than this. A true stone-wall CLASSIC!!!!

TRACK LISTING

Freak Scene
No Bones
They Always Come
Yeah We Know
Let It Ride
Pond Song
Budge
The Post
Don’t

Coming out of Massachusetts in 1985, this album brought the young, socially inadequate and self-absorbed J.Mascis dimly into focus. Dysfunction always rocks and J's solution / release was to build a wall of noise, with unbelievably loud guitars which were sometimes hazy, sometimes sprawling. The results were mesmerising. Like an East Coast version of The Meat Puppets, there was loser folk mumblings mixed with lo-fi hardcore mixed with psych-metal mixed with nervy U.K new-wave and even Goth! Add Neil Young guitar sprawls and bingo: this is music you've never heard in your life before. This debut is ramshackle and hotch-potch in places, but beneath the noise there's plenty of clever songs mixing pretty melody with brutal power.

TRACK LISTING

Forget The Swan
Cats In A Bowl
The Leper
Does It Float
Pointless
Repulsion
Gargoyle
Severed Lips
Mountain Man
Quest

Peter Wolf Crier’s second album ‘Garden Of Arms’ is a document that paints a vivid portrait of all the pain and beauty of growth.

The duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen transformed the fuzzy distortion, rolling and crashing drums, and laser-focused purposefulness into an intensely dynamic yet supremely polished album. The lead off track, ‘Right Away’ best exemplifies the band's new direction, a dense and jarring embrace of the immediacy of real personal connection.

TRACK LISTING

1. Right Away
2. Beach
3. Having It Out
4. Krishnamurti
5. Cut A Hand
6. Settling It Off
7. Hard Heart
8. Haunt You
9. Loud Enough To Know
10. Never Meant To Love You
11. Wheel

‘Your Past Life Is A Blast’ is the third single from ‘I Am Very Far’ from Okkervil River. The release of this single coincides with the band's late festival season appearance at End Of The Road.

“The goal was to push my brain to places it didn't want to go. The idea was to not have any idea – to keep myself confused about what I was doing,” frontman Will Sheff says about Okkervil River's newest album. The resulting record is a startling break from anything this band has done before. By turns terrifying and joyous, violent and serene, grotesque and romantic, it's a celebration of forces beyond our control.

‘Gold Faces’ is an exclusive new non-album song.

Taken from the new album ‘I Am Very Far’, ‘Rider’ was recorded by a massive version of Okkervil River – two drummers, two pianists, two bassists, and seven guitarists, all playing live in one room.

The band then spent a week of live-in-the-studio marathon sessions, performing a single song obsessively over and over for as many as 12 hours at a time to capture just the right take.

Okkervil River have thrown away all maps and compasses but they continue to chart their way, unblinking, toward destinations unknown.

“The noise they make is thrilling. ‘Rider’ is like Bowie’s ‘Panic In Detroit’ re-tooled in the anthemic manner of Springsteen or Arcade Fire, a bold unfurling, a majestic racket” – Uncut.

TRACK LISTING

Rider
I Guess We Lost

"I Am Very Far" is a startling break from anything this band has done before. The band’s Will Sheff emerges not only as a songwriter of the highest caliber, but a producer and arranger of singular vision. "I Am Very Far" is monolithic and darkly ambiguous.

Sheff contributed vocals to The New Pornographers’ album "Together", wrote a song for Norah Jones’ "The Fall", and helmed the Roky Erickson record "True Love Cast Out All Evil", for which his album notes received a Grammy nomination.

The writing process for "I Am Very Far" produced 30 or so songs, which he narrowed down to 18, recorded in a series of short, high-intensity sessions, each in a different location, each employing completely different methods than the one before it.

For songs like "Rider" and "Wake And Be Fine", Sheff gathered together a massive version of Okkervil River – two drummers, two pianists, two bassists, and seven guitarists, all playing live in one room – and led them on a week of live-in-the-studio marathon sessions, performing a single song obsessively over and over for as many as 12 hours to capture just the right take.

"Wake And Be Fine" is the first single from the forthcoming "I Am Very Far" album from Okkervil River.

Work on "I Am Very Far" started after a year spent on other projects. Band member Will Sheff contributed vocals to The New Pornographers’ album "Together", wrote a song for Norah Jones' "The Fall", produced an upcoming album for the Brooklyn-based band Bird Of Youth, and helmed Roky Erickson's acclaimed "True Love Cast Out All Evil" with Okkervil River. (Sheff’s liner notes for said album earned him a 2011 Grammy nomination.)

TRACK LISTING

Wake And Be Fine
Weave Room Blues

"Constant Future" is the career-defining statement from Brooklyn-based noise-pop trio Parts & Labor. The album's 12 tracks deliver the bare essentials of modern art-punk: synthesized keyboard riffs distorted into oblivion, percussion pummeled hypnotically, crackling drones that haunt and soothe, fearless melodies hollered skyward.

Their last release, 2008's acclaimed "Receivers", saw Parts & Labor blasting off in all directions and creating collage art from hundreds of fan-curated samples. But fifth album "Constant Future" finds them crashing back to Earth, focusing pointedly on what they do best: unique, electronic landscapes melded with buzzing, anthemic hooks.

Parts & Labor have distilled the lessons and experiences of nearly 10 years as a band into a catchy, blown-out masterwork.

Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Mogwai, Sleater- Kinney, MGMT) co-produced and mixed the album with Parts & Labor.

"No Witch" is The Cave Singers’ rock record. Laid to tape with dark wizard producer Randall Dunn (Black Mountain, Sunn O))), Boris), "No Witch" is grander and more lush than The Cave Singers' previous efforts. It's also a nervier, scrappier affair: greasy guitars buck and rear up; Eastern influenced blues snake through songs; gospel choirs rise up like tidal waves.

There are big, grinning nods to "Beggars Banquet" - era Stones, the best of Mellencamp / Tom Petty (‘Clever Creatures’) and the juke joint legends of Mississippi like Junior Kimbrough and RL Burnside ("Black Leaf" and "No Prosecution If We Bail"). Of course, it’s all filtered through that particular, magical Cave Singers formula: Pete Quirk’s reedy, behind-the-beat delivery and existential wordplay, Derek Fudesco’s lyrical guitar runs and drummer Marty Lund's no nonsense rhythms.

"No Witch" is a new found sheen to the aura that made The Cave Singers' music so special to begin with. All told, there's treasure to be found here for the biker gang weekender, the double rainbow chaser and all that falls in the valley between them.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gifts And The Raft
2. Swim Club
3. Black Leaf
4. Falls
5. Outer Realms
6. Haller Lake
7. All Land Crabs And Divinity Ghosts
8. Clever Creatures
9. Haystacks
10. Distant Sures
11. Faze Wave
12. No Prosecution If We Bail

This exclusive 12” from Okkervil River precedes a brand new album. One for the fans, this superbly showcases the gorgeous sounds of Okkervil River.

Formed 12 years ago and having released five albums, Okkervil River have built a unique position in American independent rock.

The band’s music has been described by Uncut as “a delirious mix of Sheff's myriad influences - the Velvets, Stones, Faces, Dylan, Bowie - that brilliantly examined notions of identity, celebrity, loss, reckless living, and who some people become when being themselves is no longer who they want to be.”

As if the A-side of this wasn't great enough, they cover Best Coast's "Sun Was High (So Was I)" on the flip. Grab one quick.

"New Chain" is the debut long-player from New York's Small Black. Richly coloured and thickly layered, it is an absorbing, eclectic and obsessive body of work. The Brooklyn group have succeeded in melting together locked and popped drum-shudder, gauzy spirographic synths and subtly contagious, half-remembered melody into ebullient bursts of evocative, subliminal and thoroughly modern pop. The songs are equally informed by the rhythmic bounce and stylistic swagger of more left-leaning contemporary radio rap and R'n'B as it is the submerged kaleidoscopic swirl of the early 4AD dream factory.

Formed at the tail-end of 2008 as a bedroom recording project, Small Black first made waves with their eponymous debut EP. Recorded in the attic of singer Josh Kolenik's uncle's remote Long Island beach-house/surfboard workshop, it served as an ideal introduction to the group with its pulsing patchwork synths and addictive, stay-gold hooks that seemed to unfurl themselves gradually over repeated listens. Slightly more immediate and polished than its predecessor, Small Black's new album "New Chain" remains a continuation of this contrasting ethos - a delirious smudging of the lines between melancholy and nostalgia, tension and celebration, unabashed pop music and experimentation. 'It's always been a question for us', explains keyboardist/songwriter Ryan Heyner, 'of how much to push it, how much to reveal. I find a lot of the best music creeps up on you'.

"New Chain" was predominantly written, recorded and fully realized in the seclusion of sleepy, suburban Delaware, where bassist/songwriter Juan Pieczanski spent his childhood summers., and then mixed by Nicolas Vernhes (Animal Collective, Dirty Projectors) at his Rare Book Room studio in New York City. The group spent the hours in Delaware as Kolenik says 'trying to take the excitement and stimulus of NYC to a place far from distractions, where it could be organized properly'. The effect of the transposition between city life and the isolation could explain the way the record's full-blown party jams are tempered with weirder moments of longing and enigma, and conversely, how its more discordant, foggy moments conceal huge moments of melody.

A thinker's party record? A party-hardy thinker's record? Not sure. All we know is that New Chain is one of the most involved, intriguing and effortlessly human collections of organic pop music you're likely to hear this or any other year.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Evoking the dreamy pop delights of the 4AD label back catalogue this is an effortlessly beautiful and sumptuously rich album.

"Wilderness Heart", the new album by Black Mountain, is packed with succinct rock songs that pulse and pound with startling precision: it pummels you and you ask for more. This is arguably the band's tightest, most concentrated venture, but there's still plenty of raw rock energy at work. 'It's our most metal and most folk oriented record so far', McBean says. 'I'm not gonna say it's our best record or the album that we always dreamt of making 'cause that's what everyone says. It's all about where we were at the time the machines were rolling. You can't control the electricity or how your limbs were moving that day. You have to erase the visions and just go along for the ride'.

A little over a year after releasing "In The Future", their critically and commercially celebrated sophomore effort, Black Mountain started building "Wilderness Heart" on the west coast of America. With Randall Dunn at the helm (Sunn O))), Boris), London Bridge Studios in Seattle saw a portion of the construction with songs "Old Fangs," "Let Spirits Ride," and title track "Wilderness Heart" among others. The preponderance of recording was held with D. Sardy in Los Angeles at Sunset Sound, which has captured tracks from The Doors, Ringo Starr, the Rolling Stones, and more. L.A. – with its tacos and sunsets, starlets and hills and post-Deco kitsch – was a considerable inspiration. 'Just being under the influence of one's surroundings, as we were while recording in L.A., had a tremendous impact on the process and the way we play. Consequently, the LA sessions have a free and summery vibe. The Seattle sessions, made in the grey, rainy environs that we're used to up there, have a chillier, more claustrophobic feeling', Wells explains.

'It's a Black Mountain pop record, which is to say it's nothing like pop at all', Wells says. 'This was the fastest record we've ever made. We're used to spending a lot of time deliberating over the songs and spacing out recording sessions over years. Start to finish, this album was made in four months, which is something like a miracle for us. We've never worked with producers before and that was a challenge; for us to let go and let two outsiders into the process, D. Sardy and Randall Dunn – it took some growing for us to be truly open, but this album is all the better for it'.

The band cites a slew of disparate influences – New Order, King Crimson, Studio 54, Alex Chilton, sunshine, Janis Joplin, Please Kill Me, Shirley Collins, Mickey Newbury, jalapeño salsa, Night of The Hunter, Cactus Taqueria, Funky16Corners podcasts, Dennis Wilson, the house blowing up in the desert at the end of Zabriskie Point – but, as Schmidt points out, 'Who knows how these things connect with the holistic mix of often dissonant forces that become Black Mountain?'

The debut album from S. Carey, "All We Grow", is the result of a young lifetime spent immersed in music. As a band member of Bon Iver from the very beginning, Sean Carey witnessed a flip of his formal training to step firmly into a worldwide-touring rock band. His performance degree in classical percussion from the University of Wisconsin - Eau Claire and his love for jazz drumming prepared him for a central role in the inspiring force of the Bon Iver live show.

"All We Grow" is a convergence of Carey's Waltz For Debby-era Bill Evans inflected jazz tendencies, and traditional rock band experience, taking leads from Mark Hollis' Talk Talk. It also retests the waters of modern classical composition, investigating the moodiness generated by percussive repetition in a manner familiar to fans of Steve Reich. In his downtime on tour with Bon Iver, Sean would spend time pining for his soul-mate's arms, and in that context, dreaming and composing. During infrequent tour breaks at home he would patiently record these pieces, adding layers each time. Two years later, the parts converged to make an album.

For as much room to breathe as Carey allows his compositions, there are incredibly dynamic moments of bombast held right next to moments of subtle depth and texture. Engineered by Jaime Hansen and Brian Joseph, intermittently at home and at April Base (Justin Vernon's studio outside Eau Claire), "All We Grow" is an all-encompassing headphone experience as intimate as chamber music and as ambitious as a symphony. A classic album born without expectation and met with adoration - a cathartic result of Carey's extraordinary and vibrant life experiences that resonates loss, dreams and heart in a manner so instantly relatable, you feel as though you can touch it.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Being a band member of Bon Iver has clearly rubbed off on S. Carey. A subtly stunning and beautifully lush debut album, total ear candy for the headphone listener.

"Inter-Be" is the debut album by Peter Wolf Crier, the Minneapolis-based duo of Peter Pisano and Brian Moen. The album was born on a single summer night when Pisano felt a torrent of creativity after what had felt, to him, like an interminably long dry spell. He shared the songs with Moen, and over the months that followed, at Moen's home, these rough-hewed tunes became what they are now: a confident collection of songs, but deceptive in that their very guts still reflect the thoughts of a man in transition.

Pisano's is not a new songwriting voice. He is best known for being part of the Wars of 1812, an ascendant Wisconsin-bred quartet. Their first album together, Status Quo Ante Bellum, was more than just an album. It was relocation and aspiration and Pisano's lyrical Eden. As the Wars went on hiatus, Pisano continued to hone his craft, keeping his days full as a teacher at a small private school while fine-tuning, at night, the songs that would soon become Inter-Be. Feeling confident in the songs, Pisano approached Moen, a seasoned drummer and engineer best known for his involvement in Laarks and Amateur Love. After being asked to add some percussive elements, Moen added his thundering drum rolls and perfectly timed fills, but he also added something much more: a melodic soundscape that would complete the evolution of the songs. So was born the partnership that is called Peter Wolf Crier.

When Ryan Olson decided to make a record with Solid Gold members Zack Coulter and Adam Hurlburt, it was clear to them what the result would be: a collection of drugged-up keyboards and slick bedroom production almost exclusively inspired by 10cc's "I'm Not In Love". To be fair, they weren't entirely off. What they didn't know was that it would spiral into a project of epic proportions, enlisting the talents of over 25 musicians from various scenes around the country, relocating the base of operations from Olson's Minneapolis bedroom/studio to the Wisconsin-based studio April Base, and the genesis of a musical family, Gayngs.

From the moment anyone heard Olson, Coulter, and Hurlburt's rough version of their first composition "The Gaudy Side of Town," they wanted in on it. To most of the players involved, this genre of music was quite foreign yet entirely familiar. Olson knew this, and began calling upon an eclectic cast of contributors whom he thought would share his vision, and relish in the idea of exploring uncharted musical territory within them. The first people to join the cause were North Carolina's Megafaun (Joe Westerlund, Brad Cook, Phil Cook), and with them came Ivan Howard (The Rosebuds), and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon and Mike Noyce. By mid-2009 the studio sessions were becoming more and more frequent, bouncing back and forth between April Base and Olson's bedroom. In Minneapolis, Olson brought in Rhymesayers rapper P.O.S and his fellow Doomtree artist Dessa, psych-rockers Jake Luck and Nick Ryan (Leisure Birds), song-birds Channy Moon-Casselle and Katy Morley, jazz-saxophonist Michael Lewis (Happy Apple, Andrew Bird), retro-pop duo Maggie Morrison and Grant Cutler (Lookbook), and slide-guitarist Shön Troth (Solid Gold).

Vocally, Gayngs is a triumph. Zack Coulter (Solid Gold) shines from the jump, floating over the record with his airy, haunting melodies. Fans of Bon Iver will recognize Vernon's familiar falsetto, but will flip when they hear his Bone Thug's-style R&B. Ivan Howard sounds right at home with his sensual and breathy leads, while P.O.S. abandons his genre entirely for a soul inspired tenor. With over a dozen people contributing vocals, its incredible how cohesive the album sounds.

After a year of tracking and mixing, Gayngs is officially ready to release the album, entitled "Relayted". The initial goal was achieved perfectly, yet "Relayted" sounds refreshing and modern. With each song written at 69 BPM's, and tripped-out transitions from song to song, it is truly an audio experience from start to finish.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: Deep and beautiful word-of-mouth smash that's united indie-kids, balaeric-heads and general lovers of all things groovesome and melodic.

The winter of 2008/2009 found old friends Ryan Heyner and Josh Kolenik holed up in the attic of Uncle Matt's Long Island home. Those cold weekend days saw Small Black drinking Crystal Light, watching Waterworld, and plugging away on their casios and samplers, while Kolenik's uncle shaped surfboards in the basement.

After months of thawing out, the band emerged with one of 2009's catchiest debut releases. "The Small Black EP", as it is called, melds strange beats, dreamy synths, tape hiss and laid-back melodies into pop jams. Teaming up with longtime collaborators Juan Pieczanski and Jeff Curtin, the band then fleshed out their bedroom sound, combining both live and sampled drums, live bass, keyboards and samplers for their live performance.

Described by Pitchfork as 'absurdly addictive' and 'soul-stirring', the band self released the EP via their own imprint CassClub in October 2009, along with a documentary-style music video for "Despicable Dogs", featuring Uncle Matt. They quickly followed it up with a UK single for "Despicable Dogs" (on Transparent) and a split 7-inch with like-minded artist Washed Out (on Lovepump United). Now 2010 sees Small Black teaming up with Jagjaguwar for a deluxe re-mastered release of their debut EP with two extra songs added, "Kings Of Animals" and "Baby Bird Pt. 2".

There is a war now. The message has been sent through short wave in code. The Besnard Lakes twisting chronicle, or fever dream, of spies, double agents, novelists and aspiring rock gods has turned violent. Loyalty, dishonor, love, hatred all seen through the eyes of two spies, fighting a war that may not be real. One follows the other as they receive coded messages and spread destruction. The city is burning, and it's to the benefit of music obsessives everywhere. Once again, the husband-and-wife duo of Olga Goreas and Jace Lasek has crafted a majestic, sprawling vision of guitar bombast and captivating pop experiments.

"The Besnard Lakes Are the Roaring Night" calls upon the influence of ELO and finer parts of the Alan Parsons Project in its orchestration. Still helped by the Ghost of Beach Boys Past, the album is more Dennis Wilson than Brian, and more Peter Green Fleetwood Mac than Lindsay Buckingham. That said, standout track "Albatross" has all the swagger of a Stevie Nicks-led Fleetwood Mac classic or Roy Orbison re-imagined as a rollicking, snakeskin-booted Mazzy Star - dousing it all in gas and throwing the match as we hear its tale of Vancouver's skid row and its inhabitants.

The album is a dark bliss-out that folds the eerie guitar epics of the Montreal band's breakthrough into a wall of affected drones and atmospherics, but with a toughened immediacy and grit that gives the form a much-needed shove over the cliffs, making for a haunting, provocative swan dive into the crushing tide. 

Moonface’s "Dreamland" record features approximately 20 minutes of music on a single side of a 12” LP.
This record will be accompanied by a dream journal insert on which the music is based.

Once again proving himself a master of minimalist composition, Youngs also takes leaps forward as a lyricist on "Under Stellar Stream", reminiscent of the list incantations of Allen Ginsberg. With this comes a change in Youngs' voice, now less pleading, deeper and more assured. In these atonal, spatial arrangements, each phrase is granted the room to work into the cerebral cortex.

Volcano Choir is an assembly of Wisconsinites Jon Mueller, Chris Rosenau, Jim Schoenecker, Daniel Spack, Justin Vernon, and Thomas Wincek. You might find these old friends also frequenting records and stages under different monikers, Collections Of Colonies Of Bees and Bon Iver. The collaboration predates the meteoric rise of Justin Vernon's Bon Iver project, with original songwriting dating back to the summer of 2005, right around the time the Bees first toured with Vernon's previous band DeYarmond Edison.
While entirely a studio record, the collection doesn't suffer from the overburdens of a digital pile up or over-thinking. Rather it breathes and convulses in equal measure, radiating an inherent dynamism found only in the voluntary bondage of intimacy. With influences ranging from David Sylvian and Steve Reich to Mahalia Jackson and Tom Waits, it might be more accurate to say the group's influence is music itself. You can hear it in the care and real love generously applied to each moment of "Unmap". With the vibe of some intimate backwoods gospel, plus a spirit of patience and thoughtful repetition, the music of Volcano Choir is as dynamic as it is lovely.

Lightning Dust are Amber Webber and Josh Wells, two fifths of critically acclaimed prog and spiritual pioneers, Black Mountain. "Infinite Light", Lightning Dust's sophomore album for Jagjaguwar, finds the duo calling upon the powers of classic pop arrangements and making the most of five days with a Steinway Grand piano, Lightning Dust have delivered a cosmic record about the adventure in finding love and the journey in losing and rediscovering 'the light'. While "Infinite Light" is definitely more layered and lush than previous efforts, Lightning Dust's minimal aesthetic works well in the economy of musical theatre, an influence for the record, wherein each song's movements aim to be more inspiring than the one before it. And this is suiting in that the album is a nod to 'the light of inspiration' that inspires us to keep dancing, creating and loving in spite of an encroaching darkness. It's a reminder that what makes the mountains so very, very black is a distant light somewhere on the other side.

"Outside Love" is ten songs of love and hate that read like a Danielle Steele romance novel but that would probably make for bad television. "Outside Love" is the third album by Pink Mountaintops, AKA Stephen McBean, who has slowly emerged as a distinctive voice and a very special contributor to the North American songbook. A veteran of the Vancouver/Victoria punk rock scene, McBean is best known for his contributions to acclaimed rock band Black Mountain, as principal songwriter, guitarist and co-vocalist. The ten songs on "Outside Love" are about or influenced by weddings in Montreal, winter, Pink Floyd's "The Final Cut", Christmas albums, that one Exile song and that one Echo and the Bunnymen song, the Bermuda Triangle, being depressed in the sunshine, people who haven't made out yet but will in the future, The Everly Brothers, clowns in the ceilings, and bedrooms where skinheads used to live. The album features contributions from members of A Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Destroyer, Jesse Sykes, Sunn 0))), Whiskeytown, Jackie O Motherf**ker, The Organ, Black Mountain, Lightning Dust, Superconductor and many more. Mixed by John Congleton (Modest Mouse, Explosions In The Sky and many others).

The debut album by Women was recorded over four months on ghetto blasters and old tape machines in Chad VanGaalen's basement, an outdoor culvert and a crawl space. Sometimes light and spacious, at other times eerie and dense with an ominous weight, this self titled album touches upon Velvet Underground, Swell Maps or This Heat while not really having any obvious precursors - a lo-fi masterpiece cloaked in layers of vibrato and guitar wash. Noisy and claustrophobic songs smash through junkyard trash brawls while others lift and soar across the landscape of 50s-informed pop; a contradiction and an enigma, the debut album by Women will find its way onto summertime pool break-in boombox mixes and the turntables of record store devotees.

Bon Iver welcome's in the new year with this EP featuring four brand new unreleased tracks including current live favourite "Blood Bank". The four song "Blood Bank" collection continues down the path forged by 2008's critically acclaimed "For Emma, Forever Ago". From the title track's remembrance of the winter warmth we seek, to the summer love tribute of B-side gem "Babys", Bon Iver's snow-blanketed harmonies live across the seasons. Both expansive and intimate, these four songs explore the darker and lighter natures of the seasons and what they signify, and offer a dynamic glimpse into the natural energy and refined craftsmanship that characterize Justin Vernon's music.

Brooklyn noise outfit Parts & Labor has dramatically altered their wall-of-sound: Their fourth album, "Receivers", finds P&L focusing on open spaces, longer movements, expansive arrangements and loftier goals. On eight epic tracks, "Receivers" showcases the band's catchiest and darkest moods to date, reveling in a growing dynamic sensibility only hinted at in their previous work. Though they've maintained their love affair with glitchy oscillations and anthemic vocals, they are now utilizing the full possibilities of a band that was once a scrappy punk trio, and now a mature art-rock quartet. It's a heady mix of psych, noise, and pop influenced by the arty minimalism of Wire, the surreal pop of early Eno, and even the spaced out psychedelia of "Dark Side"-era Pink Floyd. To flesh out the roar of "Receivers", P&L's founding members Dan Friel (vocals, electronics) and BJ Warshaw (vocals, bass) recruited drummer Joe Wong and guitarist Sarah Lipstate. Wong's motorik style perfectly complements the band's bombastic drone with uniquely repetitive rhythms augmented by jaw-dropping, furious fills. Lipstate implements a noisy-yet-folky guitar technique tinged with experimental electronics, cassette tape manipulations, and bowed double-neck guitar.

Third album from Wilderness, inspired by the collaboration with visual artist Charles Long. "(K)no(W)here" has been conceived as one musical piece with eight identifiable parts. Wilderness hold true to the idealistic notion that sometimes music and art can stand for itself – whilst the world doesn't need the music of Wilderness (or any other artist), it deserves no less than a Wilderness without ornamentation or hyperbole. The album features gorgeous packaging designed by band member James Johnson, who designed the covers of previous Wilderness albums.

With his most ambitious record yet, Spencer Krug (also of Wolf Parade and Swan Lake) emerges as a special kind of songwriter, inspiring devotion and fanaticism.

"Mapmaker" is the second Jagjaguwar/Brah album from Brooklyn noisepunks Parts & Labor. Expanding on the soaring melodies and cracked electronics of 2006's "Stay Afraid", P&L explores a wider array of berserk, malfunctioning instruments and intricate, pummeling rhythms. These twelve political/personal anthems about ambition and distraction boast bigger choruses, denser drones and shinier hooks. Adding new textures to Parts & Labor's searing pop-squall, the album features guest spots from flautist/megaphonist/vocalist Natalja Kent (of The Good Good) and guitarist Joe Kremer (of labelmates Pterodactyl). Opening surge "Fractured Skies" features a horn section (led by P&L's BJ Warshaw on sax) billowing up through the kaleidoscopic fuzz of electronics. Track 10 is a distorted-toy-keyboard take on the classic Minutemen antiwar spiel "King Of The Hill". Parts & Labor cite the following bands as influences and are totally cool with you name-checking them: Hüsker Dü, Sonic Youth, Boredoms, Minutemen, Neutral Milk Hotel and Amps For Christ.

Swan Lake is the new band featuring Daniel Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown) and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes). "Beast Moans" is Swan Lake's debut record featuring, among other things, beast moans, starling voices, cobra hi hats and arpeggiating pianos. The songs are great weaves, showcasing the famous and very distinctive songwriting styles of the trio.

Stephen McBean has been in numerous groups over the last two decades including most recently of course, Black Mountain. With "Axis Of Evol", his current project, Pink Mountaintops' second full-length record, McBean has once again created something much greater than the sum of his influences. It begins with a forboding spiritual called "Comas", the kind that McBean and only a very few other songwriters of this generation could pull off. It includes the tone-setting lyrical phrase 'I have been wrestling a dead angry deer, and she is still with me after all of these years'. The record then almost immediately ramps up into a thumping, buzzing, blissful haze, at various parts sounding like the Velvet Underground or Spacemen 3 or the Jesus And Mary Chain circa "Psycho Candy". And at the end, the album then segues into a hypnotic, Smog-like meditation called "How We Can Get Free". Throughout the record, McBean sings about love and war, the love of war, and the war of love; on the body, on the mind and on the soul.

The Skygreen Leopards primarily focus on a surreal form of multi-layered folk-pop recorded on an old reel-to-reel housed in a moldy trailer on the back of a horse ranch. 12-string guitars, banjos, dulcimers, Jew's harps, organs, maracas, mandolins, harmonicas, ocarinas & reed flutes harmonize with the field-recorded songs of birds, barnyard animals and insects. This hedge of sounds is the backdrop for Quinn and Donaldson's mythological rants and hazy melodies.

Black Mountain is Matthew Camirand, Stephen McBean, Jeremy Schmidt, Amber Webber and Joshua Wells. Their debut self-titled record charts territories unknown yet remains grounded by the roots of classic rock and roll. It is easy to discern these roots: Black Sabbath, The Velvet Underground, The Rolling Stones, Jefferson Airplane, Animals-era Pink Floyd, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin and Can. Principal songwriter Stephen McBean's vocals are a smoother, bluesier amalgam of the voices of Neil Young, Mick Jagger and perhaps a James Brown loaded on cough syrup. And when Amber Webber's voice joins Stephen's, the combination brings to mind the potency and chemistry of Richard and Linda Thompson singing together on "Shoot Out The Lights". Musical comparisons aside, the Black Mountain full-length is one part protest song, one part pop-cultural commentary, and one part sick-grooverock casserole peppered with mesmerizing ballads and intoxicating ditties. Black Mountain features former and present members of The Pink Mountaintops, The Black Halos, Dream On Dreary, Sinoia Caves, and Orphan.

Richard Youngs has been making music for over two decades. "The Naive Shaman" is his seventh album for Jagjaguwar, and is a deeply personal work. The opening track "Life On A Beam" combines a modal vocal line with throbbing sonics and non-linear percussion. Elsewhere a plaintive voice threads itself through frosted atmospherics. At the core of the album is "Sonar In My Soul", a bass loop onto which are collaged strangulated guitar, singing and more singing. The second half of the set contrasts "Once It Was Autumn", a succinctly crafted dub chant, with the epic "Summer's Edge II", whose sprawling 16 plus minutes anchor a floating vocal melody and free-flowing drums with fuzzed bass octaves. At a time when he has increased his commitment to live performance, Richard Youngs has paradoxically produced an album that explores recording technology as an instrument - a work where song is modulated by sound.

This quartet's self-titled debut conjures images of "Metal Box"-era John Lydon fronting Savage Republic or Explosions in the Sky. Cascading guitars build into the most beautiful pop epiphanies, as though the Edge were leading a modern day Popol Vuh up the mountain before us. Wilderness's debut is the culmination of three years steady work by four dear friends. Their songs touch on numerous themes like living through the end of capitalism, the beauty inherent in beauty, staring at the sky, listening to the woods, feeling the landfills topple and swell, vibrations in the market place, collective brain harvesting and the absolute falling all around the opinionated as the opinionated fall all around the absolute.