Playing catch-up with the reviews, Consumer Guide style.  Here’s everything I’ve listened to in 2014 thus far.  As is my usual style, this list will likely expand quite a bit by the time mid-November rolls around.  A couple of them (Here And Nowhere Else and St. Vincent) probably deserve the usual individual reviews but such is life.

Cloud Nothings – Here And Nowhere Else   ★★★★★

The Cleveland band’s fourth album finds them scrubbing away a lot of the pop elements that Steve Albini had left on them during the process of their 2012 breakthrough Attack On Memory.  It’s a triumph of 21st Century punk rock, eschewing the sunny California-inspired pop stuff that has mired the form for most of the last decade in favour of a hard-scoured feel-bad attack.  The album also has the cojones to use the lead single/best song the band has recorded as the final track.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA-Fz7Zd39k]

 

Wild Beasts – Present Tense  ★★☆

I still don’t get what people find so amazing about this album.  I’ve enjoyed the Eighties retread/re-exploration we’ve been on since 2008/2009 as much as the next person but this isn’t doing anything radically different than the next band.  I’ve heard better synth drones, I’ve heard craftier melodies, and the vocals remind me in a vague way of Xiu Xiu, and not in a good way.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IIbbFIQTKI]

 

Tacocat – NVM   ★★★☆

Candy-coated riot grrl punk, like Sleater-Kinney-Lite, or maybe an alternate-history Josie and the Pussycats that has a bit of actual substance.  Musically inoffensive and lyrically righteous, not a great album but certainly a good one.  Nothing original but you can sing along.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXt5n9Ni5p0]

 

The Notwist – Close To The Glass   ★★★★

The German band had a breakthrough back in the long-gone year of 2002 with Neon Golden and have consistently flown just under the radar with every subsequent release.  Close To The Glass is not likely to change this particular fate but it, like the other albums, is a solid record of warm experimental pop music that balances melody with a mix of textures that change from song to song.  Deserves more than it will end up getting.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUpktwg7O4M]

 

Julie Byrne – Rooms With Walls And Windows   ★★★☆

Glacial, whispered art-folk, highly recommended to anyone who enjoyed Grouper’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill.  Beautiful like a foggy frosty morning sigh.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3DjMKLiFDE]