Recommended Records
Grizzly Bear - Shields
It's the understated confidence about Shields that will win it its admirers.»
Hey Sholay - ((o))
There’s an optimism in Hey Sholay’s music that never comes close to getting on your nerves.»
Cat Power - Sun
Sun is the most rounded and accomplished album of Cat Power’s career.»
Dan Deacon - America
No one concept album, even one with the complexity of America, could ever hope to fully address the manifold problems of the USA, but in searching for his own answers Dan Deacon has crafted an unique testament to this fact and to his own inimitable, and ever increasing, talents.»
Yeasayer - Fragrant World
This is a record of adventure and texture, an attempt, musically, to conjure up a future we may never actually have. Maybe that is kind of nerdy, but Yeasayer carry it off with style to spare.»
Swans - The Seer
Michael Gira: “The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album, as well as any other music I’ve ever made…”»
Bloc Party - Four
Sometimes it's like Bloc Party have accidentally made a Biffy Clyro album, but for the most part it's good. Very good.»
Purity Ring - Shrines
There is something so deft about this LP that you can’t help but feel that it is more than merely a by-product of its kooky genesis.»
Frank Ocean - channel ORANGE
Musical storytelling in its purest form, demanding several listens and uncovering itself as perhaps one of the more individual takes on the great American dream.»
Micachu and the Shapes - Never
There are no templates. There’s a sense that Micachu’s songs aren’t written, but birthed; thrown at the wall like a Jackson Pollock painting; a collage of sound and ideas. Not as careless as that may sound, but rather: created with abandon and an utter disregard for your rules, Sir.»
Twin Shadow - Confess
Confess is an album about love and lust behind the bleachers, in the dark of a multiplex, on the back of a motorcycle, in bathroom cubicles, under the neon glare of America’s bright lights - and it’s wholly, wholly brilliant.»
Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
Swing Lo Magellan is deadly serious even at its most eccentric, wilfully awkward even at its most accessible, dense and intricate even at its most freewheeling.»
Paul Simon - Graceland: 25th Anniversary Edition
There are moments on Paul Simon’s Graceland when it sounds transcendent, and there are others when it just sounds vibrant and alive, impervious to any wider concerns or political firestorms. This 25th Anniversary Edition, with accompanying documentary Under African Skies, does a fine job of chronicling the creation and controversy of a modern classic.»
Echo Lake - Wild Peace
Rarely in the past few years has mist and swirl seemed so gorgeously enticing, mystical and engaging.»
Hot Chip - In Our Heads
In Our Heads is arguably Hot Chips' most consistent record to date, but it is certainly their most fun.»
Future Of The Left - The Plot Against Common Sense
This is a misanthropic, outraged and often hilarious skewering of the early twenty-first century and its fascinations... The Mclusky/Future of the Left box of musical tricks is liberally mined here, though. You won't be disappointed if you're looking for ADHD punk in the style of 'Lightsaber Cocksucking Blues' ('Sheena is a T-Shirt Salesman') fun and games with keyboards ('Cosmo's Ladder' and 'A Guide to Men')... Thank you, Future of the Left – you've saved rock music. Now to make it pay.»
The Walkmen - Heaven
Heaven finds The Walkmen's beautiful, sweet melancholy crystallised into what could well be their finest record to date.»
Japandroids - Celebration Rock
Perhaps the highest praise anyone can offer Japandroids is to say they make worrying about rock'n'roll sound like the most rock'n'roll thing, ever.»
Liars - WIXIW
It is a refreshing, sublime, and exciting work of art. WIXIW? Bless you, Liars. Bless you.»
The Cribs - In the Belly of the Brazen Bull
This is The Cribs' best yet and possibly the best of the year.»
My Bloody Valentine - Loveless (remastered)
To claim that My Bloody Valentine went in pursuit of perfection and found it betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of this immense band. It’s their flaws which make them so transcendent.»
My Bloody Valentine - Isn't Anything (remastered)
A case in point of how music can transcend language, just listen and that’s the only way to understand.»
Actress - R.I.P.
A review such as this can barely scratch the surface of something so simultaneously esoteric and enjoyable. To call R.I.P. album of the year at this stage wouldn’t so much be pre-emption as an actual understatement.»
Chromatics - Kill for Love
Kill For Love is the perfect soundtrack for our ‘modern’ lives... This is a modern masterpiece, it’s as simple as that.»
Death Grips - The Money Store
Death Grips' second album, and first for Epic, upsets expectations by transcending them entirely, comprising the kind of must-listen, genres-dashing experience that comes along so rarely. »
Poliça - Give You The Ghost
Enter Poliça, slinking in from stage left. Six months ago their name barely registered on Google (unless you were looking for an Italian policeman) but The Blog Machine and ageing respect-mah-authority Rock Writers have been knocked for six by tracks from Give You The Ghost - some even going as far as naming them The Band of SXSW™. Driving all of this <3-ing is ‘Lay Your Cards Out’, an oblique pop ditty that starts off pirouetting in space, and as it begins to hurtle out the spaceship doors - whilst seeming motionless - the whole song soars and skitters along the crest of a double-drumming wave. »
Julia Holter - Ekstasis
Julia Holter has produced a very fine, fiercely imaginative record in Ekstasis, rife with sonic experimentation and not lacking in heart.»
Blood Red Shoes - In Time To Voices
All the passion and intimacy of the never ending stream of live shows that have been keeping the pair busy around the world since the release of Box of Secrets in 2008.»
The Shins - Port of Morrow
It's to James Mercer's credit that Port of Morrow, which could have so easily veered off into soulless corporatism or self-indulgence, manages to remain nothing less than both a universal and personal joy to listen to.»
Dirty Three - Toward the Low Sun
Capturing three musicians of virtuosic ability at the (continued) height of their powers, Toward The Low Sun arrives as a return to form which the Dirty Three never actually lost - only a ‘return’ in the sense that we’ve had to wait seven long years since we last heard from them on record.»
DiS joins the Music Alliance Pact + May 2013's global MAP compilation
Drowned in Bristol #12
DiS Does Singles 13.05.13: Swim Deep, These New Puritans, The National
Darkstar, Ed Harcourt, Halls, Wall +more for 3 DiS-curated nights at Great Escape 2013
Interview: Frank Turner on The Olympics, The Backlash, Thatcher and Black Flag
Drowned in Nottingham #14
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