There’s a lot of great new albums coming in the next few months, here are a few that I’m particularly excited about:
4-12
I approached “Last Night at the Jetty”, the first single released off the forthcoming Tomboy, with a certain amount of trepidation. I don’t particularly like Animal Collective and though I’ve always understood their popularity and what makes their sound unique, I’ve never found anything I’ve been that excited about.
I did passingly enjoy the previous Panda Bear solo release Person Pitch, so I was certainly interested to hear where Noah Lennox would go. Both “Last Night at the Jetty” and “Surfer’s Hymn” have definitely caught my attention. The former has a bubbly slide indebted, like so much of Panda Bear, to Brian Wilson and that listless optimism that permeated Pet Sounds. The latter is like being trapped inside of a glowing pinball machine of xylophones, in a cool way.
Check out the two lead singles below.
4-19
Dr. Dre, Detox
With the ridiculous amount of good ol’ fashioned teasing Dre and his cohorts have done about the eventual release of this album for over ten years (there was a reference made to this album’s eventual release on 1999’s 2001), it’s actually pretty surprising the thing is arriving so quietly.
This could be due in part to the fact that one of the two tracks released off the album sounds pretty great, and the other sounds like absolute crap. Do not, I repeat, do not get your hopes up too high for this album. I’m expecting a few gems and a lot of rust. Lead single “Kush”,is super tight and features Akon, a MONSTER verse from Snoop (“still I am/tighter than the pants on will.i.am.”), not to mention one of the last performances from the late great Nate Dogg. Unmistakably a Dre production, the smooth piano line keeps things gangsta without taking the track out of the club. REALLY cool video too, check it out below.
Update: Effed by the Green Weenie again!
5-03
Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues
Fleet Foxes’ self-titled 2008 debut is my favorite album released in the last five years; one so meticulously crafted and produced its execution sounds completely effortless. Drawing influence from a wide range of musical stylings from Appalachian folk to 60s psychedelia to contemporary grungy indie, the LP was a a journey through peaks and canyons and back to the safety of your sleeping bag.
So needless to say, I’m extremely excited for Helplessness Blues. It was alarming, then, when the first two tracks released from the album, the title track and one called “Battery Kinzie”, did not particularly strike my fancy. The third single, however, is the final track on the album and is terrific. Check out “Grown Ocean” below, and definitely pick this one up on the 3rd.
5-10
If you haven’t listened to the Antlers’ 2009 masterpiece Hospice, you really should. It’s a concept album about a hospice worker who falls in love with her patient, an extremely screwed up young girl with terminal bone cancer. Sounds really heavy, and in a lot of ways it is, but it’s also ungodly beautiful and done in a way that doesn’t feel stilted or overwrought.
It’s certainly not going to be easy for them to step out from the shadow of Hospice; that album is so unique and was so many peoples’ introduction to the band that expectations are necessarily high for what’s coming next. Check out the Radiohead-influenced “Parentheses” below.
Stay tuned for part 2, hopefully coming soon.
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