Top Albums: 19-17

19) WU Lyf - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain

Appearing out of seemingly nowhere, shrouded in an unusual amount of anonymity, and taking a name that means World Unite Lucifer Youth Foundation, Wu Lyf certainly has carved a unique niche for themselves.  But that wouldn't mean much if their "heavy pop" wasn't pleasing to the ears.

Unintelligible barks break between bursts of glistening organ and shards of glassy guitars.  This all builds to a thundering crescendo and then descends into an even more unintelligible call-and-response only to build once more.  WU Lyf definitely have a template for what they're doing, but, god damn, it's an effective template.

Top Albums: 22-20

22) Future Islands - On the Water

Theatricality is nothing new to the world of indie rock.  In the last ten years we've seen everything from the superbly overblown to the hilariously overwrought. Somewhere between those two points is Future Islands.

Top 25 Releases of 2011

It's that time of the season.  No, not Christmas.  It's time for lists!

As this is a music blog, and list-making is something music blogs are wont to do, the following should be considered the top 25 releases of the past year.  Over the next two weeks this site will chronicle albums and EPs that just about absolutely killed it.

So, time to dispense with the hyperbole:

There Is No Soundtrack to Your Life

Altered Zones died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know.

Mondo Ray

A short blast of garage punk has always been a shot in the dark.  Either your songs gets ignored and you continue to mire in obscurity or you end up a footnote in some future edition of the Nuggets collection when they finally get around to the Great Grandchildren of Nuggets, whenever that may be.  Whichever happens, you still probably don't end up famous.

But that's okay.  RAWK isn't for catty primadonnas, right?  It's about NOISE!  Well, if that's the case then Mondo Ray has it.  Here's their single "Hypnotized" which is being released on Windian Records.  You can buy it (please, buy it!) here.


MONDO RAY-HYPNOTIZED by WINDIAN RECORDS

Your Weekend Jam

Geneva Jacuzzi "Do I Sad?" (2010)

In our earlier discussion of Lana Del Rey and musical inequality, it was brought to my attention that while we mentioned certain artists we didn't actually feature them.  So this is an attempt to right that wrong.

The video here is for Geneva Jacuzzi's "Do I Sad?" which sounds like a lost '80s club hit.  Enjoy the small dose of (imagined) nostalgia.

Crystal Stilts Radiant Door EP Preview

Crystal Stilts Radiant Door EP Preview

Sacred Bones is quickly becoming a force to be reckoned with in the world of independent music.  In the last year they've released stellar albums by Case Studies, Zola Jesus, and Amen Dunes, just to name a few.  Now they're prepping for a release of Crystal Stilts' Radiant Door EP.

The EP isn't a radical departure from Crystal Stilts' last album, In Love With Oblivion.  In fact, the first single off this EP, "Dark Eyes", even echoes Oblivion's "Silver Sun" with its reverence for chiming Byrds-like guitars and muffled bellows.  But where that album eventually became a bit of a chore to finish, the concise nature of an EP seems to be the perfect format for Crystal Stilts.  And even moreso than in their last album, the band dives head first into its psychedelic influences.  They opt for the Paisley Underground of 1980s Los Angeles instead of their earlier Joy Division worship setting themselves apart from an indie scene that still stubbornly has one foot planted in Ian Curtis' grave.

Highlights: "Dark Eyes", "Frost Inside the Asylum"