Recommended Records
Årabrot - Solar Anus
This album is ferocious, funny, colossal, guttural, hopeful and terrifying. »
Toddla T - Watch Me Dance
An escapist Jamaica-pop lark with a traditional bent and a big heart, in the realms of good-times bass you could do a lot worse than the classy and charming Watch Me Dance.»
Grandaddy - The Sophtware Slump: Deluxe Edition
A beautiful and ambitious work born out of a rich period for adventurous, subversive re-imaginings of what, exactly, constitutes ‘Americana’.»
I Break Horses - Hearts
Like nu-gaze's answer to The Waterboys, I Break Horses' debut is, first and foremost, resounding proof that subtle beauty doesn’t have to be self-defeating, drippy or retiring.»
R.E.M. - Lifes Rich Pageant: Deluxe Edition
Unlike many a transitional record, Lifes Rich Pageant is a genuine hoot, an unexpected blast of sunshine between the darkness of Fables… and the fires of Document.»
Washed Out - Within and Without
Washed Out always stood above his supposed peers.»
Zomby - Dedication
Zomby, with record number two, Dedication, proves two things: why he's different, and why he may well be one of dubstep's, and music's, brightest flames.»
John Maus - We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves
Perfect examples of synth-as-joy-producing wonder drug.»
Sbtrkt - SBTRKT
What SBTRKT has done is take all the best elements of the past two decades worth of dance sub-genres and used these ingredients to make a 11-course popping candy meal of an electro album.»
Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
Two-and-a-bit hours of sonically dense bangers which, at times, represents a high water mark for the last decade of punk.»
Emmy the Great - Virtue
Virtue is every bit as lovely as First Love but has a greater sophistication in arrangements and mixes.»
The Antlers - Burst Apart
An album that, in anybody else’s hands, would have probably been standard hipster indie fare becomes a shimmering key to anyone’s heart.»
Suede - Suede (reissue)
Stripping away the videos, costumes, sex and sensationalism; what ultimately defines the classic nature of Suede is the fact that, unlike so many records of its time, it simply hasn’t dated.»
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Let Love In, Murder Ballads, The Boatman's Call, No More Shall We Part (reissues)
The world’s a much bigger, richer, sexier, louder, darker, scarier place when one has the opportunity to know everything. So take it. »
Friendly Fires - Pala
What we have in Pala is not some great band reinvention, or some desperately profound effort; it’s giant choruses, relatable lyrics, a million earworm riffs and 11 dance anthems.»
Austra - Feel It Break
A band that’s far more in love with acting on strange ideas to make odd-sounding pop songs function than it is with any notion of technical perfection.»
Gang Gang Dance - Eye Contact
The missing link between The Knife’s Silent Shout and some lo-fi electronic grime recording... In all honesty, there's nothing else truly like it… »
Bill Wells, Aidan Moffat - Everything's Getting Older
Bill Wells and Aidan Moffat have created a stunning album that assures us of the death and decay that is to come, but equally, they tell us, as long as we are still around, there is life to be lived, and music like this to be heard.»
EMA - Past Life Martyred Saints
Not easy, but often fascinating, wholly rewarding and genuinely cathartic.»
Wild Beasts - Smother
It’d be reductive to try and describe a timeless album like Smother as a step up from its two predecessors, or even as a surefire Mercury contender - although it is, on both counts.»
and so i watch you from afar - Gangs
It is still possible to advance on templates built on simple foundations of guitar, bass and drums, and And So I Watch You From Afar have proved this brilliantly.»
Winter - Into Darkness (reissue)
As astonishing as this must have sounded 21 years ago, if it had emerged in any year since, Into Darkness would at the very least have been a comprehensively crushing 46 minutes of music.»
TuNe YarDs - w h o k i l l
As long players go, 2011 won't get much better than this, and with whokill, Merrill Garbus has somehow managed to encompass more ideas into just over 40 minutes than most artists manage in a lifetime...»
Metronomy - The English Riviera
Possibly a little early to be wheeling out 'album of the year'-type assertions, but with The English Riviera Joseph Mount has set the bar nice and high.»
Low - C'mon
For a Low album to be awash with impossible beauty and spellbinding drama is par for the course, but the difference with C’mon is its formidable sense of assurance, rendering it the sound of an exceptional band finally ready to step out of the shadows.»
Braids - Native Speaker
Native Speaker is the kind of record to which you’d be tempted to ascribe the term ‘more than the sum of its parts’, if its parts weren’t so sodding gorgeous on their own merits.»
Katy B - On a Mission
A pop album which comes off as written from life while also addressing the concerns of its audience.»
The Mountain Goats - All Eternals Deck
The juxtaposition between style and content here is pretty much ingenious. »
The Strokes - Angles
Just because the hosts are grumpy, it doesn’t mean the rest of us can’t enjoy the party.»
Ladytron - Best of Ladytron 00-10
Other bands get swept up in a wave of hype before swiftly being carried back to obscurity, whereas Ladytron are like indie-objectivists, perpetually honing their craft with each new album regardless of popular context.»
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
DiS Does Singles 6.05.13: Vampire Weekend - Ya Hey (XL)
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