Dum Dum Girls - Only In Dreams This is hands down my most listened to album of this year. Everything about this album is exactly as it should be. Understated, but not too simple and very catchy. Her rich voice brings unexpectedly dark lyrics; all of the songs are about love, loss, and death. This album has a lot in common with country and Americana in terms of sound and lyrical content, almost like a goth-pop Neko Case or something. Wasted Away is my current favorite of the bunch, but it changes daily. Each track is a gem.
Cold Cave - Cherish the Light Years Surely you know by now that this is the project of Wesley Eisold, vocalist for hardcore bands Some Girls and American Nightmare, both of which have a total cult following, especially here in Richmond. Both of which I never really got into. That would even be an overstatement…I don’t think I’ve ever even heard the band Some Girls. In high school when all of my friends were getting into hardcore, I was realizing that I was probably not all that punk, and that I wanted to dress better. Oh well. The first Cold Cave record was great, although totally derivative of that No-wave minimal synth, Joy Division thing. Not to detract - for those of us enamoured with the 80’s no wave sound, Love Comes Close was welcomed with open arms, mostly because the 80’s are over and I’ve played all those Joy Division songs a billion times, and this is something new. But there wasn’t anything wildly different about it. It was catchy and dark and dancey and that’s great, but it feels like he put that record out to sort of say, “Here is this completely different thing that I can do, get interested in that,” so that he could grab people’s attention, and once the hype was up he drops this crazy bomb Cherish the Light Years on us. It is over the top, there is even a track with a huge ska-esque horn section. But it’s interesting, and the tracks are each different enough to stand out, and I even dig the melodramatic lyrics.
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake She can do no wrong. While I really loved White Chalk, I am glad that her newest is less ethereal and a sort of return to that tried and true PJ Harvey sound. She does sing a lot of those eerie high notes, a la White Chalk, but it comes and goes here. The content here is political, more mature, and less personal; some of the meaning is almost out of reach for someone not born and raised in the UK, but that doesn’t stop it from sounding hauntingly gorgeous.
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Crystal Stilts - Radiant Door EP and In Love With Oblivion The EP is only 20 minutes long and 2 of the tracks are covers, but it got more plays than their full length at my house. Lots of Velvet Underground and No-Wave influences here, but nods to lots of other genres too. The cover of Lee Hazelwood’s ‘Still as the Night’ sounds like some rockabilly horror movie soundtrack exerpt. His vocals are deep and hazy, I like that they are often fuzzed out or mixed into the background enough to make the lyrical content not a huge part of the point. Jangly, reverby, lo-fi, goth-pop at its finest.
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Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost I can’t help it, I love this band. This new record sounds like their masterpiece and I think they know it. The packaging is deluxe, the songs are deeper, more thought out, and draw from a wider array of musical styles. Front to back this album rocks, there isn’t a bad track in the bunch. Every time I read anything about this band there is mention of the fact that the front-man Christopher Owens was brought up in the Children of God cult, which means he was very sheltered from popular music and culture. While that is a really interesting fact, I think it ultimately has nothing to do with his music or success. This record is heavily influenced by 60s and 70s rock, but there is a little bit of everything thrown in here, from classic metal to alt-country.
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My name is Alan, I am a former Pure Pop employee. Josh LaClair’s year end list has a lot of the same stuff that I’ve been listening to A LOT, but I left those albums off bc his write ups are already very good, so just look at that. ALSO AWESOME: Wye Oak – Civilian, Machinedrum – Rooms, Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact, Cass McCombs – Catacombs, Zola Jesus – Conatus, Amen Dunes – Through Donkey Jaw, Balam Acab – Wander/Wonder, Oneohtrix Point Never- Replica.
