1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Gemma Ray has a dramatic flair for jarring contrasts -- chanting the title of "Tough Love" in a shell-shocked deadpan as a toy piano plunks in the background or perfectly copping Beach Boys–style wooos in "Fist of a Flower." Had Phil Spector forced his girl groups in a more noir-soundtrack direction, this might've been the result.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Too much sex, too little intimacy: It's a cocktail that, like most cocktails, leads to oversharing. Luckily, WHY? frontman Yoni Wolf offers an explanation for his fourth album's plentiful corpse visions and masturbation scenes: "You gotta yell something out you'd never tell nobody." Once seen as hip-hop provocateurs, WHY?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

This deeply satisfying 21-song tribute was devised to help recently widowed singer-songwriter Mark Mulcahy (ex–Miracle Legion, Polaris) raise his young twin daughters and get on with life. (Grab a hankie before reading the liner notes.) Some artists -- a creepy Thom Yorke murmuring "All for the Best," a lunatic Frank Black bellowing "Bill Jocko" -- twist the material.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Times New Viking have truly mastered the no-fi game: No matter how they defile their sound (with razor blades, broken glass, tape hiss), they make sure there's bubblegum at the center. Here, TNV intensify the sweet and the abrasive.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Ex-Concretes frontwoman Victoria Bergsman sings as if she never leaves her windowsill, let alone her native land. But this shy Swede (whose voice was the female counterpoint on Peter Bjorn and John's "Young Folks") recorded her album with local Sufi musicians in Pakistan.

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Login or Register to rate this item.

Most alt-country fetishizes cowboy days, but Langhorne Slim’s third full-length does so while swiping tricks from this decade’s best rock bands. The joyful chorus of “Say Yes” could have been shouted by Arcade Fire, while “I Love You, But Goodbye” walks the same line between loveliness and dissonance as Wilco.