HeiBräu

There are sample tracks below, but you can also listen to the full albums for free using Spotify. Once it’s installed, the playlist is here.

Want a playlist? Here you go.

Listen to all of the songs in a playlist by using the above widget, or listen to them individually below. Enjoy!

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan – YT // ST

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan occupy that unique space where their stage and publicity persona is nearly as interesting as the music itself. So shrouded are their live shows that one feels at any moment, a fifty-foot robotic Geddy Lee could emerge from a fog bank, shredding on a quad-koto.

There’s a certain feeling attached to the Japanese phrase “watashi wa,” which is a phrase often used in J-pop that refers to oneself. Having absorbed hours upon hours of Japanese pop bought in downtown Osaka record stores, though, take it from me: YT // ST is hardly that self-absorbed, and J-pop detritus falls away from YT // ST like ice from an ascending rocket. It’s easily the most interesting progressive rock album in recent memory.

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan’s “Queens,” from YT // ST.

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Frank Ocean – nostalgia, ULTRA.

I kept waiting for the joke on “American Wedding” to punch. When Frank finally gave way to Joe Walsh and Don Felder’s classic twin guitar solos, it was obvious that this was actually a straight-faced sampling of the entirety of The Eagles’ “Hotel California.” The most ironic part of an R&B entry in an indie scene already draped in irony is that Frank Ocean’s uncleared sample — there is no way the curmudgeonly Don Henley would allow such pollution of his magnum opus – of a complete song is a more thoroughly and uniquely American act than the subject matter the track hits on.

The record would feel more gimmicky if the two rillest tracks, “Songs For Women” and “Novacane” weren’t all original, but still (if only in America), the pseudo-covers succeed on Frank’s own unwavering admiration of Henley, MGMT, Coldplay, and Mr. Hudson. Even if the record never sees a proper release as-is, nostalgia, ULTRA. is more than a great mix-tape – it’s another fascinating step in modern music in the internet era.

Frank Ocean’s “There Will Be Tears,” from nostalgia, ULTRA.

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Youth Lagoon – The Year of Hibernation

The videos for “Montana” and “July” go a long way toward fleshing out grainy characters in the narratives of The Year of Hibernation. Absent their charming visualizations, though, Trevor Powers’ verses still feel affecting. You can feel the weight of his hands on the keys in the swelling, eyes-closed choruses, and the gossamer chimes sound like they were lifted right out of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.  It would feel like a cheap trick that the songs almost always end the same way, if we weren’t stunned at the simple beauty.

From the get-go, the record is a slow, immersive climb toward its cathartic centerpiece, “July.” Even on either side of the apex, though, the songs are really good. They’re like a gauze slowly unraveled from around those once-stinging moments of our green judgment, having renewed them fully from callow heartaches into the happy scars of youth. Yeah, The Year of Hibernation might be a smidgen cloying, perhaps. It hardly lacks truth, however – who doesn’t remember that wide-eyed wonder?

Youth Lagoon’s “Montana,” from The Year of Hibernation.

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The Soft Moon – Total Decay EP

This record is short, as will be this synopsis: there simply aren’t another 15 minutes of music from 2011 so fantastically sinister as Total Decay.

The Soft Moon’s “Repetition,” from Total Decay EP.

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Active Child – You Are All I See

The oddly comedic video for “Playing House” is difficult to parse. It looks like Tom Krell surging in and out of a sauna while Pat Grossi daydreams about his instructor, waiting for yoga class to start. I swear, if Pat did a namaste halfway through, nobody would bat an eye.

Sadly, the clip sells Active Child well short of the tremendous emotional payload of You Are All I See. Unexpectedly, however, it actually bolsters the heart-on-sleeve mood that Grossi emanates on every minute of the record – he’s more than willing to go out on a limb for love, and more than once calls himself on his own silliness: “I trust in you / way too fast / didn’t think you’d do me like that.”

Pat Grossi will always feel like he showed up late to the party. He looks like Josh Homme’s sensitive younger brother, sings like a member of the boys’ choir he left many years ago, and finds himself juxtaposed with Joanna Newsom, who’s occupied the harpist-songwriter niche for some years now. She’s not the type to be easily unseated. Boy, though, does Grossi ever make her earn it with the poignant and unforgettable You Are All I See.

Active Child’s “See Thru Eyes,” from You Are All I See.

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Fucked Up – David Comes to Life

Ironically enough, the most notable thing about Fucked Up, a band whose lead singer routinely performs without a shirt, is their modesty. Compare them to Black Flag, Fugazi, or whoever you like – if you ask me, they issue the same unassuming look on stage as Weezer in 1994: for all the melodic guitar histrionics, there’s no long hair (save for that of bassist Sandy Miranda), no makeup, no tight leather. They’re up there in polo shirts, for pete’s sake.

A hardcore band with three guitarists all playing a Gibson SG seems just about as gratuitous as it gets. Give me a break, you say to yourself. Doesn’t Andrew W.K. do something like that? That guy hasn’t got an off switch!

Love him or hate him, those guys are just lined up on stage behind AWK, all redundantly chugging out the same four power chords. David Comes to Life, by contrast, is a layer-cake of electrified riffage. Ground zero here is “Turn The Season,” making room for a smorgasbord of three unrelenting guitar attacks in the first thirty seconds.

All this, and we haven’t even discussed the plot! But that’s best left to the listener to uncover. True, David Comes to Life is an amazing meta-story that feels fresh and familiar all at once, and that kind of writing begs explanation and laud. But beyond that, and simpler still: it is the sound of a band reaching for the brass ring, and taking hold of it.

Fucked Up’s “Turn The Season,” from David Comes to Life.

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Elite Gymnastics – Ruin 1 / Ruin 2

Elite Gymnastics go out of their way to maintain their mystique. Ruin 1‘s leadoff track “Intro” practically tells the whole story, sounding like a Miyazaki film crossed with a Final Fantasy start menu. Elite shadow their lyrics with a haze of reverb, self-promoting their twin Ruin mixtapes in their own enigmatic way by filtering the wide world of Korean and Japanese pop culture, art, and music through their gonzo Tumblr feed.

Say that all out loud, and it’s as bizarre an idea as would fit an art-house documentary, but really? The records are only — merely – one blessed frond from a flowering tree made up of immensely creative kids, each of them coping in his or her own way with the rampant bounty of the internet.

Elite Gymnastics’ “So Close to Paradise,” from Ruin 1.

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Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972

Perhaps it was the Looney Tunes we watched growing up, but you’d probably be surprised how disappointing the sound of a dropped piano actually is. Each year, MIT students hurl one from the top of a tall dorm building. Such was the concept and cover art for Tim Hecker’s latest record, but it sounds a lot more like a post-apocalyptic wasteland than the decidedly unmusical crunch of an upright hitting the pavement.

It’s often said that in music, less is more. Conversely, on this record, more is less: the barren landscape it calls to mind is mapped in excruciating, slow-motion detail with every pang of the piano strings and sonic windstorm. It’s a really tall task that Ravedeath, 1972 makes look effortless.

Tim Hecker’s “The Piano Drop,” from Ravedeath, 1972.

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Fleet Foxes – Helplessness Blues

In a phrase, Helplessness Blues is as good a reason as any to buy a really nice stereo system – it echoes with such sonic depth that unpacking it feels fresh and luxuriant each time. It’s a Catch-22, though, because it’s also the type of record that is best experienced with the sun dancing on one’s shoulders, perhaps coasting down a dirt road that ends deep in some woodsy glade. It’s something of a mystery, why the drive should have anything to offer to a record that seemingly owes so much to simpler times.

Concerning the past, however, let’s be honest about one thing: three years is far enough removed from Fleet Foxes to know that no album Robin Pecknold pens will top it. It’s still a towering, glowing pillar of beauty, and nothing short of one of the definitive benchmarks for modern folk. All that said, Helplessness Blues is a really amazing follow-up record, the kind you can put on without so much as a craving, and still get stunned silly by the cavernous harmonies and deft lyricism.

Fleet Foxes’ “Montezuma,” from Helplessness Blues.

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Cass McCombs – WIT’S END / Humor Risk

Cass McCombs’ pair of 2011 records marks the second double-release entry in this list. Elite Gymnastics’ twin mixtapes make less sense separated than together, and there’s also a certain similarity to WIT’S END and Humor Risk. Both records embody the kind of paced emotional trip that you’d expect from any good folk record, let alone a Cass McCombs LP. They also share Cass’ late predilection for long-form songs with numerous verses and bridled intensity (“The Lonely Doll” and “The Living Word,” for two).

It sounds like blasphemy, putting another folkie ahead of Robin Pecknold. There’s a certain old-style rollicking all over Humor Risk that Fleet Foxes can’t hold a candle to, though – “The Same Thing,” “Robin Egg Blue,” and “Meet Me at the Mannequin Gallery” ooze that sepia-toned shuffle of years past. Cass McCombs is the proverbial Guitar Man from the old Bread song, a prophet and pariah at once.

All this goes without mentioning the somber “County Line,” one of the finest songs released by anybody all year. What’s the average break between records, maybe two or three years? Cass McCombs dipped deep into his well of melancholy twice this year. We should be so lucky with every artist.

Cass McCombs’ “The Living Word,” from Humor Risk.

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Panda Bear – Tomboy

Is it the artist’s prerogative to please his fans? Noah Lennox, better known as Panda Bear, probably doesn’t think so. He and the other members of Animal Collective appear to be under the impression that satisfying themselves is the only way to get right the delicate feng shui of an outdoor concert. This mostly means that when you attend a Panda Bear or Animal Collective concert, it’s a setlist of deep cuts from early records, played in seemingly random order, with no regard for tension and release. Of course, I guess I went to the show for entirely the wrong reasons to begin with, since it mostly seemed like the rest of the audience wanted to trip balls and sway with the ocean of tye-dyed Dead t-shirts.

I left wondering whether I could really be enchanted with Animal Collective again. I felt betrayed, like I’d been duped into being a fan of my generation’s Phish. That seems like it’ll be really uncool twenty years down the road, even if they never print an album cover as asinine as Billy Breathes. But it wasn’t listening to all the hits they didn’t play at the show that brought me back into the fold, it was Tomboy.

This album is a tonic for a generation realizing that not every artist has to be worth seeing on stage to be worth listening to on record. I love Tom Petty, but he had it wrong about the drum machine, and whoever said that it’s not a real song unless it can be played on an acoustic can hang himself from a guitar string.

Tomboy is perhaps a divisive choice since it follows the much-admired and monolithic Person Pitch, but I simply refuse to be ashamed for loving a record this good.

Panda Bear’s “Tomboy,” from Tomboy.

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Chad VanGaalen – Diaper Island

It’s sad that an artist as creative as Chad VanGaalen, up until Diaper Island, would probably have been measured against his production job for the earth-shattering yardstick that is Public Strain, a favorite of mine from last year. But it’s actually helpful to continue investigating his contrast with Women, as in many ways he’s a more adult version of the Calgary art-rock outfit: first, he’s the solo artist to their four-piece. His work follows more traditional avenues of harmony, and Women harangue the listener with a barnacled blend of clanging guitars and yowling vocals.

When Women threatened their end with a mid-show fistfight, Chad VanGaalen threatened his artistic end with marriage and children (marooned on Diaper Island, it would seem).

All that aside, the delightful similarities they share are their unconventional promenades through the intersection of rock and post-punk, their wintry album mixes, and that distinctive and captivating detachment. Any way you want to slice it, Diaper Island is just a great rock record that consistently rewards the repeat listen.

Chad VanGaalen’s “Replace Me,” from Diaper Island.

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Holy Ghost! – Holy Ghost!

DFA have always cut a hip line with their beats. Savage simplicity in the rhythm department, and wireframe instrumentation is what we’ve come to expect. It comes as something of a surprise, then to hear rich synthesizers on tracks like “Jam for Jerry” that would threaten to envelop the gaunt mix they’ve so carefully pruned over the last decade. It’s a welcome change, one that perhaps coincides with the death of LCD Soundsystem and James Murphy’s freedom to explore more overgrown paths. But that seems to be what 2011 was all about: stepping into things that have been done before — in many cases, decades ago, in embarrassing fashion — and redeeming them.

Back in 2009, Phoenix put out a great record called Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix that was the band’s masterwork. It had fantastic singles, great deeper cuts, and a shameless upbeat nature. It was an album that proved divisive among fans when it came to the best tracks. Myself among them, in fact – I’d be hard pressed now to insist with such fervor that “1901″ is the indispensable slice it appeared to be back then (perhaps “Lasso” or “Armistice,” now?).

Like that record, there are at least two standout selections from Holy Ghost! that are begging to be pressed to seven-inch vinyl. The dance single has a stigma attached to it, though, like it spoils the rest of the record because the others can’t keep the pace. You don’t even have to have three or four great singles on your record, however, if you can just manage writing all good ones and no bad ones. If you ask me, Holy Ghost! is an archetype for the having your cake and eating it too.

Holy Ghost!’s “Jam for Jerry,” from Holy Ghost!

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Kurt Vile – Smoke Ring for My Halo

Patrick Stickles of Titus Andronicus emphatically beefed with Kurt Vile over the latter’s allowance of his song “Baby’s Arms” to be used in a Bank of America commercial. The whole exchange reeked of conversations I had with schoolmates about whether this or that band had “sold out.” I didn’t make a ton of great arguments as a kid, but I have always refused to be party to this cadre of elitists insisting that some artist trying to make some money with their art has sold out or sullied their work.

It’s ironic, though, that that conversation would have taken place about an artist with a song called “Puppet to the Man:” “well, I think by now you probably think I’m a puppet to the man / well, I tell you right now / you best believe that I am.”

While Stickles did later apologize in a heartfelt manner (“[Kurt Vile] is the new Tom Petty. I’m just petty.”), it’s funny how Vile has always been saying the same thing. The only difference is, he’s just okay with it being out of his control and understanding. He’s just trying to make it. There’s even a song called “On Tour” that catalogues the secret boredom of the road, and all of those it’s-that-time-of-night conversations. There’s an admirable humility, one that comes with adult things like age, marriage, and kids; the listener really feels it on Smoke Ring for My Halo. Kurt Vile is the everyman, hear him drawl.

Puppet to the man, perhaps, but a sellout he is not.

Kurt Vile’s “Puppet to the Man,” from Smoke Ring for My Halo.

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M83 – Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming

If you ask me, the double album is a risky gambit. It’s rare enough that an artist can pen with that kind of bounty. It’s rarer still that they can pare down that bounty effectively such that the resulting tracklist is still twenty-two songs in length. Such is the nature of things, though. It wouldn’t be the first time an artist made the best album of their career (Saturdays = Youth) and felt there was nowhere to go but up – bigger, grander, and longer.

This sounds damning with faint praise, so let’s set the record straight. Is Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming a failure of any sort? Lord, no. It has its flaws, like all records, but so does Physical Graffiti, and look where that record’s resting in the scheme of things. It’s amazing and shouldn’t be missed.

Every few years, Hollywood finds reason to blow an unbelievable amount of money to produce a star-studded holiday movie like New Year’s Eve. Like the aforementioned, usually they’re constipated, depressing caricatures of real life.

But what if they didn’t have to be? What if they could be everything they aim for?

Imagine all of those stars, the fantastically wide scope and tall budget, and all of the glitz, happiness, wonder, and excitement the films paw at. Envision the intertwining plots that inevitably tie off neatly with a bow. Now, imagine that’s how life really is, and it’ll all happen to you when you grow up. That idea pretty neatly outlines the perimeter of Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming. I, for one, would like to ennoble the artist that thinks emotional utopia is a waiting reality. I don’t think Anthony Gonzalez fancies himself a filmmaker, he just appears to believe that hope is a decision.

In short, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming is M83′s Sgt. Pepper’s. The best part is, the comparison doesn’t stop there. How many people do you know who can agree on their favorite Beatles record?

M83′s “Claudia Lewis,” from Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

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Yuck – Yuck

There’s been a lot of words spent in pursuit of the fact that Yuck remind people of 80s and 90s lo-fi greats. Dinosaur Jr., The Pixies, Sonic Youth, Superchunk, even Gin Blossoms – you name it, the comparison has been made. Amusingly, I suppose the thing all this talk best highlights isn’t the easy (and valid) comparisons. It’s that many of the music writers grew up under the influence of these enduring greats (well, maybe the jury’s still out on the Gin Blossoms). That was 20 or 30 years ago, though. Long enough for a bunch of British 20-year-olds to have never heard of any of those American bands.

You know what they sound like to me? A really talented band who wrote an album’s worth of songs that should be catchy and original to any generation. Happily, Yuck stands as testament to the fact that often enough, the best records are not the ones that innovate the most cleanly.

Yuck’s “Holing Out,” from Yuck.

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St. Vincent – Strange Mercy

Strange Mercy is terrifically oblique, and that makes me want to write strange and sinuous things about it by way of response. I’ll just come out and say it, though: Strange Mercy is easily one of the best records this year because it’s so brilliant in it’s indirectness – it’s actually rewarding in its difficulty, as opposed to, say, the aforementioned Phoenix record, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, which is rewarding in its complete ease. There were hints of that furled approach to songwriting on Marry Me and Actor, but Strange Mercy is the best iteration yet. For that reason, it’s also unsurprisingly Annie Clark’s best record.

Strange Mercy is a pop record in the form of a nautilus. Or better yet, a fractal that seems to descend into infinity – it must be unpacked layer by layer, listen by listen. And nobody can unpack it for you. It’s an enigma that can only be puzzled out by plumbing it oneself.

Some people got down to Lana Del Rey this year. If you ask me, I’d take the screeching guitar solos and ghost choir over a pair of pert lips in a floor-length gown any day of the week.

Strange Mercy is the found scraps on the cutting room floor. It’s the gnarled, zombified survivors of a fifty-car pop pileup, arms extended, walking toward the camera in slow motion. It’s terrifying and enthralling at once.

St. Vincent’s “Surgeon,” from Strange Mercy.

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Wild Beasts – Smother

Wild Beasts can blindside newcomers. There’s a certain comfort to the dovetailed guitars, but as soon as he starts in with that pinched vocal…

I am here to tell you that the investment is more than worthwhile; these songs practically moan with carnality. This is an album to romance a lover to, provided they aren’t creeped out by Hayden Thorpe’s unmistakable falsetto.

It almost seems like some kind of unwritten law that the moment falsetto starts to border on melodrama, it should be categorically shunned. Stay on for a few tracks, however, and see if you aren’t won over by Thorpe’s theatrical emotion. See, also, whether more names don’t start coming to mind: Prince, Thom Yorke, Antony, Robert Plant, Jonathan Meiburg, Jónsi – the list of canonized tenors is long indeed, and Smother practically demands membership.

Wild Beasts’ songwriting guile is expanding still outward, and Smother makes for a fine follow-up to the excellent Two Dancers.

Wild Beasts’ “Loop the Loop,” from Smother.

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Thee Oh Sees – The Dream / Carrion Crawler

If there were one last great record made that abused the hell out of Fender reverb, The Dream / Carrion Crawler might be it.

2011 also saw Thee Oh Sees return to a subdued outlet for frontman John Dwyer, with the early Castlemania. Released later in the year was The Dream / Carrion Crawler, and the contrast between the two proves the band has clearly become more than a solo outing, and is better for it. They swell and dive at all the right moments, but their unforgettable moments are nearly always amid some extended jam. (“Jam” is sort of an elitist’s four-letter word, isn’t it? As if the moment a band indulges in one, they become the Dave Matthews Band.)

It’s a relentless assault. Most of the riffs are like the saw-toothed blade pictured on the cover: long, jagged, and dangerous. The band just doesn’t give up until it’s wrenched every ounce out of each of them, with keyboardist Brigid Dawson howling alongside Dwyer — even showing him up on standout “The Dream” — on all the best tracks. Dwyer’s twelve-string electric stands in stark contrast to the chummy strums of Real Estate’s Martin Courtney: it is suplexed and pile-driven past the line of abuse, until it yields the desired, entrancing result.

I’ve found, personally, that some of the most remarkable and rewarding records are the ones that appear late in the career of a band that’s really had to grind it out and earn their keep. The Dream / Carrion Crawler has all the hallmarks of such a record.

Thee Oh Sees’ “Contraption / Soul Desert,” from The Dream / Carrion Crawler.

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Bon Iver – Bon Iver, Bon Iver

Justin Vernon may never live down the lovelorn-songwriter-in-a-cabin image. It certainly didn’t help that he (supposedly inadvertently) branded the front of his second album with the proverbial cabin in the woods. Although he also carried on singing in that sweet crooning voice that so distinguishes him among peers, in ten years we may look back at Bon Iver, Bon Iver as the point where the band “went electric.” Nothing from For Emma or Blood Bank could have prepared fans for the radical shift in tone on display here. Silvertone guitars all but abandoned, the band takes up 80s-era Bruce Hornsby keys, hair-metal-ballad electric guitar, and the much-maligned saxophone as mainstays, leaving acoustics in the spotlight for only the impressive “Holocene” and the modest background of “Calgary.”

It’s charming to think that Vernon believes he is the frontperson of a band; I think there must be some mental blemish that Vernon has associated with merely being a singer/songwriter. He can get caught up on the semantics of who or what the name Bon Iver represents, but the fact is that admirers are unable to extract Vernon’s persona and story from Bon Iver because he is unquestionably the only relevant creative force in the band. He chuckles when people ask if they can call him Bon, as if Gayngs and Volcano Choir would have had the same critical traction and fan response without his trademark falsetto.

Whether or not he accepts it publicly, he’s certainly humble enough mentally to bring in the best ringers to record and tour alongside Bon Iver, and it has made all the difference.

Still, that has to be taxing, to know that it’s entirely up to you whether your record succeeds or fails, and that it falls to you to ferret out the talent, and put it in a press until it yields its juice. Is it strange to wonder if Justin Vernon ever gets tired of being such a talented songwriter? Heavy is the head that wears the crown, so they say.

However it’s accomplished, it continues to get done with remarkable consistency. Bon Iver, Bon Iver is an incredible victory.

Bon Iver’s “Holocene,” from Bon Iver, Bon Iver.

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Destroyer – Kaputt

People sometimes imagine that musicians are strange and peerless in real life. Now, the luxury of the internet has enabled us, more than ever, to watch our idols and observe just how normal they all are. They’re normal, at least, in comparison to Dan Bejar, who is every bit as quirky and evasive as his music.

Dan Bejar’s restlessness as an artist is countered only by his listlessness on stage. During his shows with The New Pornographers, he frequently loiters on stage, or just up and leaves when he grows tired of the back-to-back Carl and Neko songs. Hundreds of performances into his career, he is still so detached that nobody knows if or when he will return.

For a man whose stage presence intones a perfunctory sigh, he is nevertheless an engaged songwriter and visionary arranger, having crafted the whole of Kaputt‘s 80s lite-rock, sometimes from the comfort of his couch, while Bon Iver were still tuning their saxophones. Fans are afraid of that sort of thing; they start to get edgy when their favorite artists get too comfortable with themselves, for fear that they’ll go soft and phone it in (maybe, say, by recording vocals while sprawled out on a sofa?). Opposite Bejar’s on-stage restlessness, however, it seems comfort and complacence aren’t the enemy of Destroyer, only the method to the dazzling madness.

Destroyer’s “Savage Night at the Opera,” from Kaputt.

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James Blake – James Blake

Covers that crop up within five years of the original song usually come in the form of an embarrassing acoustic cover on YouTube. Not so with James Blake’s reinvention of Feist’s beloved “Limit To Your Love:” it’s even more paced and soulful than the original. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen anymore – it hearkens back to the 60s when pop singles would routinely be retreaded by new artists, almost as a rite of passage. Now, covers, the remix, and re-invention are again becoming parts of a creative arsenal for many emerging artists in a generation of information. There is no record, however — not even Bon Iver’s or M83′s — that so effectively re-purposes scraps of times and genres past as James Blake.

A lot has been said about “Limit To Your Love” and “The Wilhelm Scream,” but even take “Lindisfarne I:” fellow Brit Imogen Heap laid the groundwork for it, but Blake’s camouflaged emotion and cascading keyboard runs make her “Hide and Seek” look excruciatingly melodramatic by comparison.

The record is so rich, at times, that it’s hard to keep one’s eyes open during the swelling synthesizers of “Unluck” and “I Never Learnt To Share” – indeed, during the slow crescendo of the latter, the sound of Blake’s keys is positively rotund with flavor. Conversely, however, James Blake finds its identity not in the thickness of its arrangements, but in intentionally reductive and deconstructive patterns. It’s risky and difficult to strip away rather than ornament; this kind of space is something many artists don’t learn until late in their careers. What separates James Blake from its influences is its plain mastery of that tricky art. Space is ultimately what makes James Blake great. Space is what it relies on, and what sells it.

James Blake’s “The Wilhelm Scream,” from James Blake.

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Real Estate – Days

I had the opportunity to meet Real Estate after a show once, when my wife left town to visit home. What was supposed have been a bachelor’s weekend full of fun and freedom was fraught with in-opportunity, and began to look more and more like a dreadful, lonely time spent wiling away the hours in front of a computer screen. Luckily, however, I checked local concert listings and instead, Martin Courtney sold me a Real Estate coozie and button, and welcomed me to consider vinyl as a way to uncover yet another waiting social element to the discovery of music. I started collecting this year, and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long.

A casual interpretation might suggest that for a weekend, music filled that basic human void of companionship, but that’s not what I came away with. I’m saying that music was just the getting there. Blessedly, music is often a relational pastime, due to its innate share-ability. In the presence or absence of a lover or antagonist, it leads us to crystallize our relationships in a melody, and acts as the foremost of social lubricants.

The fondness with which I recall that weekend is palpable, and the jangling ease of Days resounds in certain affirmation of how music intertwines with our complex social natures: ”all those wasted miles / all those aimless drives / through green aisles / our careless life style / it was not so unwise / no.” This one supposes that you don’t always have to know where you’re going, if you can accept that getting there is half the fun.

Real Estate’s “Green Aisles,” from Days.

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Atlas Sound – Parallax

Bradford Cox is very much a divided man these days. On stage, the bisection of his real restless self from the Mick Rock portrait on the cover of Parallax is hazy, and difficult — but entertaining — to parse. Watching Bradford Cox also gives one a thrilling view into a kind of modern selective apathy: the feeling, in a liberated era of modern history, that one can truly choose for oneself what’s important and what’s not. More simply put: in a nightclub, Bradford Cox’s constituents — his personality, his lyrics, his banter, and even his audience — are as much a study in psychology as they are the components of a concert. You can’t leave without having considered your place in life.

So it is with Parallax, a challenging and mournful record that speaks volumes in less than fifty minutes.

Parallax marks the eighth full-length release that Bradford Cox has helmed in six short years. It’s another astonishingly deep record in a long string of quality releases that has fans questioning just how long he can continue to churn out music with such regularity and consistency. If there remains any doubt, let it be banished forthwith; even straddling two decades, Bradford Cox isn’t merely among the most relevant songwriters of his era, he’s manifestly timeless.

Atlas Sound’s “Mona Lisa,” from Parallax.

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Girls – Father, Son, Holy Ghost

Girls have officially transcended lo-fi. One could even go so far as to say it was a crutch without which they learned to walk — run, even. The worst offenders use it as an end, rather than a vehicle, but it seems Christopher Owens’ true love wasn’t the fuzz, it was the treasures you could bury underneath it.

Owens had a burning affection for 50s sensibility, melody, and chord structure on Album, and in every way it’s cleaned up and done with even more panache here. He capos his Rickenbacker to mask it, but nearly everything is played in first-position chords favored by early pop pioneers. His music videos feature cars prominently, and the lyrics have the winning simplicity of yesteryear. This makes its thematic cohesion unmistakable; on repeat, the resounding E chord at the end of “Jamie Marie” coalesces perfectly into the rapturous opening strum of “Honey Bunny.” The simple themes of love and forgiveness, executed like they are on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, never seem to grow old. Let’s hope they never do – what kind of world would that be?

“Alex has blue eyes / well, who cares? / no, I don’t / if somebody somewhere cries / well, who cares? / no, you don’t / Alex has a band / so who cares about war? / if somebody somewhere dies / well, who cares? / no, you don’t.” Girls are nothing if not life-affirming, and Father, Son, Holy Ghost is ultimately – gaiety on tracks like “Honey Bunny” and “Magic” notwithstanding – a heart-rending record about emotional compartmentalization. Owens is practically a laureate in the subject, and his brutal childhood and tattered happiness pour out of every track, particularly songs like “Saying I Love You” that turn the schmaltz on its ear.

Love is obviously the most repetitious theme on Father, Son, Holy Ghost, but the fact that he so regularly invokes his mother is telling. It may be all Owens has to sustain him, as an adult making a heartfelt plea for the kind of unconditional love and understanding we all seek: “mama / she really loved me / even when I was bad / she’d hold my little hand / and kiss me on the cheek / and when I cried, she would hold me closely / and tell me ‘everything will be alright’ / that woman loved me / I need a woman who loves me.” Call me a mama’s boy, but that is profound.

What else can I say? I feel like Owens would tell us each to call our mom. She’s probably committed no injustice so grave that she doesn’t deserve thanks.

Girls’ “Alex,” from Father, Son, Holy Ghost.