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Music

1. Comets on Fire: Avatar
With every album, Bay Area bad boys Comets on Fire just get better and better. Avatar has more of a classic-rock sound for the band, augmented by the chaos-punk-psych jams that ruled their earlier ...read more
2. Citay: s/t
This album actually came out a few months ago, but it somehow slipped my notice. Well, better late than never, as they say. Citay, a Bay Area band led by Ezra Feinberg of Piano Magic and Tim Green ...read more
3. Espers: II
In the last few years there has been quite a few bands openly embracing all things folk and psych but very few have released such a fully realized and carefully calibrated album as Espers have with...read more
4. Evangelicals: So Gone
Oklahoma’s Evangelicals’ debut So Gone seamlessly blends a colorful array of wayward musics into an evocative tapestry of pop, psychedelia and prog. Brandishing a miasma of high-energy ...read more
5. Psychic Ills: Dins
These twisted Brooklyn kids have given us the true psych-jam of 2006, a reverb-heavy, drone-filled freak out that recalls everything from the Velvets to Spacemen 3 to Amon Duul.read more
6. Animal Collective: Feels
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7. Animal Collective: Sung Tongs
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8. Animal Collective: Here Comes the Indian
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9. Akron/Family: Akron/Family
The debut from these Williamsburg freak-folksters was one of the best albums of 2005, an endlessly beautiful, rich and inventive record that established these youngsters as one of folk’s lead...read more
10. Robert Wyatt: Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard
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11. Six Organs of Admittance: The Sun Awakens
A fabulous and lush new album by Ben Chasny, a.k.a. Six Organs of Admittance. On this album, his second for the always reliable Drag City, Chasney takes us on many musical voyages into the lands o...read more
12. The Clientele: Strange Geometry
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13. The Clientele: The Violet Hour
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14. The Clientele: Suburban Light
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15. Comets on Fire: Blue Cathedral
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16. Comets on Fire: Field Recordings from the Sun
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17. Comets on Fire: Comets on Fire
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18. Dead Meadow: Feathers
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19. Dead Meadow: Shivering King and Others
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20. Dungen: Ta Det Lugnt
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21. Espers: The Weed Tree
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22. Espers: Espers
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23. The Flaming Lips: At War With the Mystics
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24. The Flaming Lips: Hit To Death in the Future Head
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25. The Flaming Lips: Ego Tripping at the Gates of Hell [EP]
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26. The Flaming Lips: Hear It Is
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27. The Flaming Lips: Zaireeka
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28. White Magic: Dat Rosa Mel Apibus
Freak-folk continues to flourish in Brooklyn, as shown on the second album by this shifting ensemble led by Mira Billotte (Quixotic). One of the aspects that sets White Magic apart from others on t...read more
29. Deerhunter: Cryptograms
Spectacular. Talk about a record coming out of nowhere! A surprisingly rockin’ record from Kranky, the label who in the past few years have been known for a steady output of electronica, ambi...read more
30. Brightblack Morning Light: Motion to Rejoin
I’m not sure there’s any record in recent memory that falls under the category of “grower” more than Brightblack Morning Light’s self-titled album from two years ago. ...read more
31. Woods: Songs of Shame
Words will never quite be enough for Woods. Not to suggest this Brooklyn outfit is The. Greatest. Thing. Ever!, just that when I tell you Songs of Shame is a collection of ramshackle floaty folk-ro...read more
32. Wooden Shjips: Dos
Wooden Shjips have a bunch of small-press vinyl releases, singles and even cassettes (a recent cassingle benefited SF’s Food Bank—nice one, dudes), but their one previous “proper&...read more
33. Weekends: s/t
Hailing from Baltimore, the mid-Atlantic’s unlikely cultural locus, Weekends have unleashed an essential CD-r of summer jams for both the all-ages set and the bitter, curmudgeonly thirty-some...read more
34. Headdress: Lunes
Texas always has kicked out this country’s best psychedelic stuff. The duo Headdress (who might live here in NYC now, hard to say with dudes like this) adds a hazy, shimmering new chapter to ...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. Oneida: Rated O
Oneida, a band that has spent more than a decade mixing grand statements with grand absurdity, tops itself yet again with Rated O — a triple-disc (in both formats) release that is worthy thro...read more
37. The Flaming Lips: Embryonic
At War with the Mystics was a respectable placeholder, and instrumental soundtrack Christmas on Mars holds an auspicious place in the Flaming Lips’ catalogue, but to fans who’ve been waiting ye...read more
38. White Rainbow: New Clouds
Another hard-to-classify gem from Kranky, the latest from Adam Forkner‘s one-man project, White Rainbow, is pure bliss: sprawling, meditative and hypnotic, full of rich textures and spacey el...read more
39. Irmin Schmidt: Kamasutra
The long-overdue reissue treatment finally comes to this drop-dead classic soundtrack, composed and performed by Irmin Schmidt and The Inner Space (which, less than a year later, would change their...read more
40. Circulasione Totale Orchestra: Bandwidth
Now’s the perfect time to catch up on some of those late-2009 releases that flew under our radar, and this one is at the top of the list, the latest from Circulasione Totale Orchestre. ItR...read more
41. Ancestors: Of Sound Mind
Don’t let the name fool you, Ancestors have as much of their collective foot in the psychedelic-hard-rock-stoner-metal past as they do in drone-heavy-sludge and monolithic-repetition of the cosmi...read more
42. Yeasayer: Odd Blood
Yeasayer is the rare band these days that can take more than two years to follow-up a much-loved debut and find their fans waiting and hungry (as opposed to finding them moved on to something else)...read more
43. Major Stars: Return to Form
Good news for fans of the rock! There’s a new Major Stars record. Return to Form — a comical title unless read as a directive — is the Boston-area band’s eighth, and third s...read more
44. Malachai: The Ugly Side of Love
Bristol, UK, duo Malachai can lean into a stomp and crunch to match the heaviest psych-era blues, but they aren’t content to just layer it on like some old throwback act. Rather, they modernize t...read more
45. Wooden Shjips: Vol.2
Vol. 2, like 2008’s Vol. 1, collects rare singles from San Francisco psych rock outfit Wooden Shjips’ past. These seven were previously available on limited-issue Mexican Summer, Sub Pop, and t...read more
46. The Alps: Le Voyage
Style into substance -- that's the magical feat of San Francisco trio the Alps on their gently affecting (and at times subtly unnerving) fourth album, Le Voyage. This instrumental record provides o...read more
47. Noveller: Desert Fires
Noveller is the nom de guitar of Brooklynite Sarah Lipstate, whose last album, 2009's Red Rainbows, was a jarring, technicolor rampage through sculpted noise and crashing dynamics. For Desert Fires...read more
48. Endless Boogie: Full House Head
Oh, hell yeah. While NYC's raddest badasses took their sweet ol' time (11 years!) to get around to making Album No. 1, 2008's Focus Level, Endless Boogie's return trip took just two years. Full Hou...read more
49. Odmenn: s/t
Finally, amid the glut of dubious psych-rock reissues, we get something truly worthwhile: the terrific lone album by the Icelandic trio Odmenn. Formed in 1966 by the Jóhannsson brothers, Odmenn to...read more
50. The Black Angels: Phosphene Dream
PRE-ORDER SPECIAL: SEE UPCOMING EVENTS (right). The Black Angels could've been content to merely remain devoted to the druggy, droney side of all things Velvet (Underground) and make cool-sounding ...read more