Sound Fix | Music

Music

1. Animal Collective: Feels
While critics found it easy to lump Animal Collective in with the freak folk scene after the strumming madness of Sung Tongs, Feels may cause them to revise their opinions -- slightly. First, this...read more
2. Brian Wilson: Smile
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3. Belle and Sebastian: If You're Feeling Sinister
"Belle & Sebastian's second record, If You're Feeling Sinister, is, for all intents and purposes, really their first, since their debut in 1996 was not heard outside of privileged inner circl...read more
4. Belle and Sebastian: Push Barman to Open Old Wounds
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5. Belle and Sebastian: The Boy with the Arab Strap
"Belle & Sebastian quietly built a dedicated following after the release of their second album, If You're Feeling Sinister, as word of mouth spread from indie kids to record collectors to st...read more
6. Belle and Sebastian: Tigermilk
"Belle & Sebastian's first album, Tigermilk, was initially pressed in a quantity of 1,000 on their own label, Electric Honey Recordings. The record was intended to be the end result of Stuart...read more
7. Belle & Sebastian: Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like a Peasant
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8. Belle and Sebastian: Storytelling
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9. The Green Arrows: 4 Track Recording Session
Here’s the first from a new series (can’t wait for the others!) of rare legendary recordings from seminal bands that formed the explosive Zimbabwe music scene in the 1970s. The Green Ar...read more
10. Broken Social Scene: Broken Social Scene
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11. Broken Social Scene: Bee Hives
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12. Camera Obscura: Underachievers Please Try Harder
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13. Camera Obscura: Let's Get Out of This Country
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14. Death Cab For Cutie: The Photo Album
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15. The Decemberists: Picaresque
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16. The Decemberists: Castaways and Cutouts
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17. The Decemberists: Her Majesty, The Decemberists
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18. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
"Perhaps best likened to a marching band on an acid trip, Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is another quixotic sonic parade; lo-fi yet lush, impenetrable yet wholly accessible, In the Aeroplane ...read more
19. Neutral Milk Hotel: On Avery Island
"Like their Elephant 6 labelmates and kindred spirits Olivia Tremor Control's Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, Neutral Milk Hotel's debut, On Avery Island, is an ins...read more
20. Of Montreal: Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Mad genius Kevin Barnes and his revolving cast of Of Montreal bandmates shed their twee trappings and “went disco” with 2004’s Satanic Panic in the Attic – and thankfully they never loo...read more
21. Peter Bjorn and John: Writer's Block
Writer’s Block is quite simply a perfect pop record. It doesn’t dazzle, it’s not groundbreaking, it’s just so good it hurts. The third album from Swedish sweethearts Peter B...read more
22. The Apples in Stereo: New Magnetic Wonder
How long has it been since the last Apples in Stereo record? Here’s one indication: The Elephant 6 was still around. It’s been five years since Robert Schneider & Co. gave us a prop...read more
23. Crystal Castles: s/t
Call this the year of the Crystal band: Antlers, Castles, Stilts. The fact that Crystal Castles share their name with an 1983 Atari arcade game and play keyboards using vintage video consoles sound...read more
24. Matt and Kim: Grand
Matt sings and plays keyboards; Kim plays drums and adds vocals. And in a lot of ways, it really is that simple! But what’s made Matt and Kim one of NYC’s most popular acts is their unr...read more
25. M. Ward: Hold Time
Matt Ward is one of those characters who does things in such an understated manner that it’s easy to forget just how jaw-droppingly talented he is. M. Ward’s seventh album, Hold Time, w...read more
26. v/a: Pop Ambient 2009
The latest installment of one of the Kompakt label’s signature series should give you that stimulating life-begins-anew feeling. In fact, Pop Ambient 2009 strikes us as one of the finer editi...read more
27. Here We Go Magic: s/t
What’s in a name? Here We Go Magic is the new nom de musique employed by indie singer-songwriter Luke Temple, whose previous work was solid if a bit unremarkable. Things have changed: The reb...read more
28. Neko Case: Middle Cyclone
Artists who’ve been around as long as Neko Case, and who’ve been roundly celebrated by critics and cash registers alike, tend to get taken for granted after a certain point. Yet Middle ...read more
29. The Whitest Boy Alive: Rules
King of Convenience Erlend Øye returns with the second offering from his other outfit, Berlin-based quartet The Whitest Boy Alive. (Side note: Though they’ve been absent from these shores for...read more
30. Comet Gain: Broken Record Prayers
Broken Record Prayers, a collection of singles and rarities from the longstanding British pop group Comet Gain, opens with “Jack Nance Hair,” which boasts multiple spoken testimonials o...read more
31. Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career
Scot-pop outfit Camera Obscura is one of the few bands to whom we’ll give a pass on making the same record a coupla-few times. Which is good, because My Maudlin Career, the group’s four...read more
32. St. Vincent: Actor
St. Vincent (Annie to her family, the Clarks) returned this year to prove her debut was no fluke. On Actor, Clark leads with her cute, pointy chin, updating the ambitiously composed songs that made...read more
33. Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest
It’s hardly a revelation at this stage that Grizzly Bear had a good year in 2009. When a Brooklyn psych-folk act makes the Billboard Top 10 (we’re not kidding), that’s news. But i...read more
34. Dirty Projectors: Bitte Orca
We knew this day would come. The Dirty Projectors were one of those bands that just got better and better with each new release, and on Bitte Orca, 2009’s indie breakout hit and the Projector...read more
35. Pisces: A Lovely Sight
One line-drive into the gap after another for the champs over at the Numero Group. Amid their unending soul, gospel and R&B excavations they uncover a true left-field odyssey-oddity that was ne...read more
36. Regina Spektor: Far
The follow-up to Regina Spektor‘s 2006 breakthrough, Begin to Hope, is every bit as gorgeous and whimsical as you’d expect. It’s no secret that she can work magic with a piano and...read more
37. God Help the Girl: s/t
Let’s just assume that you haven’t been reading about and living in anticipation of this record for months. So! The new Belle and Sebastian album is in fact this Stuart Murdoch-directed...read more
38. Wilco: Wilco (the Album)
Wilco (the Album) finds this great American band getting deeper into…Wilco! Okay, I joke, but they do open with “Wilco (the Song),” on which Jeff Tweedy & Co. simply insert th...read more
39. Phoenix: Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Only French people could do something so clearly unoriginal and yet make it seem perfectly right and natural and cool. Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix sounded best during the warm months, but it’s a...read more
40. Bowerbirds: Upper Air
Sounding every bit like the rural folk outfit from Down South that they are, Bowerbirds make their debut for the well-respected Dead Oceans label with the very likable Upper Air. Phil Moore handles...read more
41. The Fiery Furnaces: I'm Going Away
Old fans who complain of not being able to keep up with the best sibling-band around may have an easier time with I’m Going Away, the Fiery Furnaces’ eighth album. (Eight albums. Man.) ...read more
42. Yacht: See Mystery Lights
Be right with you, I’m having a low-grade psychedelic experience with the cover of Yacht’s new See Mystery Lights. Wow, it’s — I see them, the mystery lights! Once you stop your d...read more
43. Fruit Bats: The Ruminant Band
“Ruminant”: it’s a fancy way of saying contemplative — or more precisely, it’s the way a truly ruminant band would describe itself as being contemplative. It all fits ...read more
44. Spoon: Transference
Transference is the first Spoon album to noticeably mark a change in direction since 2001’s Girls Can Tell. But even in that, the band continues to be so uncompromisingly, well, SPOON-y: taut...read more
45. Surfer Blood: Astro Coast
The latest blog-rock band to be served up to you, the soon-to-be-adoring indie-public, is deserving of the attention: Astro Coast, the debut full-length from South Floridians Surfer Blood, packs an...read more
46. RJD2: The Colossus
Before scoring the Mad Men theme, RJD2 rose to fame in Columbus, Ohio, in the late-‘90s making beats for local hip-hop artists. Since then, through several albums on Definitive Jux and now, h...read more
47. Charlotte Gainsbourg: IRM
Ah, la belle Charlotte. Given everything we know about her — the impeccable pedigree, the great films, the outright personification of roughly 50 years of cool French culture, all contained i...read more
48. Beach House: Teen Dream
Everyone knew that Victoria LeGrand and Alex Scally of Beach House had established themselves as permanent stars in the constellation of indie rock. We did ...read more
49. Los Campesinos!: Romance Is Boring
Album number three from this Wales-based septet (on the Canadian label known for its many large bands) delivers exactly what fans — and there are many — want: 15 songs of shout-along ch...read more
50. Frightened Rabbit: The Winter of Mixed Drinks
To be honest, Scottish band Frightened Rabbit’s singer-songwriter Scott Hutchison does seem like the kind of raggedly emotional guy who’d turn himself into a hermit for his art — and that’s precise...read more