TOP 100 (101, actually) ALBUMS OF THE DECADE
2010-2019
Steven Greenfield
January 24, 2021

    As the years progress, I find that my list of must-have records, the ones I would want with me on any desert island that happened to have a CD player and an inexhaustible power supply, has dwindled.  But not my as much as I initially thought when I started to think about putting this list together.  The changing of the decade was an opportunity to go back and listen to each album I had reviewed (in the pop and rock categories) and decide on which merited re-evaluation and which I had been overlooking in the intervening years.  It should be noted, as I did a decade ago, that there is nothing particularly methodical or scientific in these rankings; a certain degree of arbitrariness tends to render the fine-grained distinctions of a numerical list illusory.  Nevertheless, some sort of order must be imposed, and thus, the results of the retrospective survey follow.*

 

*Note as well that the songs chosen as samples for the albums are not necessarily my own favorites but those for which the band or label provided an actual video.  If no video was available, I have marked up the entry’s sample with a dagger.

 

I will begin with my list of the Top 85 songs of the decade, and then move on to my Top 101 albums:

TOP SONGS

1. Grizzly Bear, “Sun in Your Eyes,” from Shields (2012)
2. Elbow, “White Noise White Heat,” from Giants of All Sizes (2019)
3. Sigur Rós, “Varuð,” from Valtari (2012)
4. Radiohead, “Burn the Witch,” from A Moon Shaped Pool (2016)
5. Bat for Lashes, “Laura,” from The Haunted Man (2012)
6. Rainbow Arabia, “Sayer,” from Boys and Diamonds (2011)
7. Flying Lotus, “Putty Boy Strut,” from Until the Quiet Comes (2012)
8. Arcade Fire, “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains),” from The Suburbs (2010)
9. Calle 13, “Calma Pueblo,” with Omar Rodríguez-López, from Entren los que Quieran (2010)
10. The Mars Volta, “In Absentia,” from Noctourniquet (2012)
11. Nilüfer Yanya, “In Your Head,” from Miss Universe (2019)
12. TV on the Radio, “Ride,” from Seeds (2014)
13. Tame Impala, “Elephant,” from Lonerism (2012)
14. Justice, “Audio, Video, Disco,” from Audio, Video, Disco (2011)
15. John Zorn, “Marmarath,” from Simulacrum (2015)
16. The Maccabees, “Marks to Prove It,” from Marks to Prove It (2015)
17. Jorge Drexler, “Movimiento,” from Salvavidas de Hielo (2017)
18. Hurray for the Riff Raff, “Pa’lante,” from The Navigator (2017)
19. The War on Drugs, “Under the Pressure,” from Lost in the Dream (2014)
20. Kit Sebastian, “Durma,” from Mantra Moderne (2019)
21. Lykke Li, “Silent My Song,” from Wounded Rhymes (2011)
22. Flight Facilities, “Merimbula,” from Down to Earth (2014)
23. Galactic, “Hey Na Na,” featuring David Shaw and Maggie Koerner, from Carnivale Electricos (2012)
24. Gwenno, “Chwyldro,” from Y Dydd Olaf (2015)
25. Foals, “A Knife in the Ocean,” from What Went Down (2015)
26. Calvin Harris, “Let’s Go,” featuring Ne-Yo, from 18 Months (2012)
27. Julia Holter, “Maxim’s I,” from Loud City Song (2013)
28. Gorillaz, “Tranz,” from The Now Now (2018)
29. Sleigh Bells, “Rill, Rill,” from Treats (2010)
30. Dungen, “Brallor,” from Skit i Allt (2010)
31. Battles, “Ice Cream,” from Gloss Drop (2011)
32. Juana Molina, “Cosoco,” from Halo (2017)
33. Sigur Rós, “Brennisteinn,” from Kveikur (2013)
34. Crystal Castles, “Celestica,” from Crystal Castles [II] (2010)
35. Thom Yorke, “Suspirium,” from Suspiria (2018)
36. LMFAO, “Party Rock Anthem,” featuring Lauren Bennett and Goon Rock, from Sorry for Party Rocking (2011)
37. Stars, “From the Night,” from No One Is Lost (2014)
38. Low, “Always Trying to Work It Out,” from Double Negative (2018)
39. Tamaryn, “The Garden,” from Tender New Signs (2012)
40. Les Big Byrd, “A Little More Numb,” from Iran Iraq Ikea (2018)
41. The Limiñanas, “Alicante,” from Costa Blanca (2013)
42. Tinariwen, “Toumast Tincha,” from Emmaar (2014)
43. Metric, “Breathing Underwater,” from Synthetica (2012)
44. Sampha, “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano,” from Process (2017)
45. Goat, “Trouble in the Streets,” from Requiem (2016)
46. SBTRKT, “Wildfire,” featuring Little Dragon, from SBTRKT (2011)
47. SPC ECO, “Think Twice,” from Anomalies (2016)
48. Khruangbin, “Cómo Me Quieres,” from Con Todo el Mundo (2018)
49. Broken Bells, “The High Road,” from Broken Bells (2010)
50. Grimes, “Kill v. Maim,” from Art Angels (2015)
51. Battles, “The Yabba,” from La Di Da Di (2015)
52. Calexico, “Para,” from Algiers (2012)
53. Oneohtrix Point Never, “Black Snow,” from Age of (2018)
54. Panda Bear, “Mr Noah,” from Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (2015)
55. Slowdive, “Falling Ashes,” from Slowdive (2017)
56. Pond, “Man It Feels Like Space Again,” from Man It Feels Like Space Again (2015)
57. Public Service Broadcasting, “Go!” from The Race for Space (2015)
58. Takagi & Ketra, “La Luna e la Gatta,” featuring Tommaso Paradiso, Jovanotti, Calcutta (2019)
59. Blur, “Go Out,” from The Magic Whip (2015)
60. Julia Holter, “Marienbad,” from Ekstasis (2012)
61. Tricky, “Nothing Matters,” featuring Nneka, from False Idols (2013)
62. Metric, “Dark Saturday,” from Art of Doubt (2018)
63. Sleigh Bells, “I Can Only Stare,” from Jessica Rabbit (2016)
64. Daft Punk, “Get Lucky,” featuring Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, from Random Access Memories (2013)
65. Goldfrapp, “Anymore,” from Silver Eye (2017)
66. Japanese Breakfast, “Diving Woman,” from Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017)
67. Dandy Warhols, “Pope Reverend Jim,” from Distortland (2016)
68. Thundercat, “Show You the Way,” featuring Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins, from Drunk (2017)
69. Zola Jesus, “Exhumed,” from Okovi (2017)
70. Lila Downs, “Zapata Se Queda,” with Totó la Momposina, from Pecados y Milagros (2011)
71. Spank Rock, “Car Song,” featuring Santigold, from Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is a F**king Liar (2011)
72. Joe Satriani, “Shockwave Supernova,” from Shockwave Supernova (2015)
73. Debo Band, “Habesha,” from Debo Band (2012)
74. Blood Orange, “Chamakay,” with Caroline Polachek, from Cupid Deluxe (2013)
75. Bodega, “How Did This Happen?!” from Endless Scroll (2018)
76. La Vida Bohème, “Radio Capital,” from Nuestra (2011)
77. Beach House, “Space Song,” from Depression Cherry (2015)
78. Neneh Cherry, “Natural Skin Deep,” from Broken Politics (2018)
79. Alt-J, “Left Hand Free,” from This Is All Yours (2014)
80. Animal Collective, “FloriDada,” from Painting with (2016)
81. Courtney Barnett, “Pedestrian at Best,” from Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit (2015)
82. Stars, “Progress,” from The North (2012)
83. Pond, “Daisy,” from Tasmania (2019)
84. Sylvan Esso, “Radio,” from What Now (2017)
85. TriBeCaStan, “Auto Rickshaw,” from New Songs from the Old Country (2014)

TOP ALBUMS

1.    TV ON THE RADIO, Seeds (Harvest Records, 2014)—This Brooklyn-based ensemble’s slow ripening yielded ever more delectable bounty, culminating with Seeds, which is practically flawless in its rock sensibility and execution.  The group overcame the death of its bassist, Gerard Smith, but appears to be finding a bicoastal existence (a couple of members transplanted to Southern California) tough to manage:  there has been no follow-up to Seeds in six years.  The rich diversity of the band’s influences is reflected in the impressive stylistic range of this record, from postpunk to funk to straight-down-the-middle rock to gauzy electronica, but all incorporated into TV on the Radio’s distinctive sound.  The group shows the same facility and deftness with the more rollicking numbers, such as “Ride,” “Lazerray,” and “Happy Idiot,” as with the pensive ones like “Trouble,” “Careful You,” “Test Pilot,” or the title track.  No album of the past decade bears up more to repeated listening than this one; its beauties are as fresh today as on the day of its release. 

 

Sample song  “Trouble”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bunJBFtlt-I

 

2.    GRIZZLY BEAR, Shields (Warp Records, 2012)—Brooklyn claims both of the top slots in my retro survey with Shields, a record I initially greeted with tempered enthusiasm, apart from its bang-up closer, “Sun in Your Eyes.”  I loved the slow-burn majesty of “Sun in Your Eyes” (Grizzly Bear had a habit of saving the best for last on its tracklists) immediately, but my admiration for the rest of the album grew powerfully as I accustomed myself to its subtle interplay and melodic/harmonic intricacies.  From the outset, with “Sleeping Ute,” and carrying straight through, these are quietly dramatic, complex compositions (some, like “Adelma,” “A Simple Answer,” or “Gun-Shy,” less knotty than others) that reward patience and particularly attentive listening, not something that is much prized in our age of instant gratification.  The artistic integrity and coherence of Shields, unequaled by the band before or since, make it one of the most profound and stirring listening experiences of the still relatively new millennium.

 

Sample song  “Yet Again”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Upr_5fusc

 

3.    THE MARS VOLTA, Noctourniquet (Warner Brothers Records, 2012)—Ever since their debut with De-Loused in the Comatorium (2003), the El Paso duo of Omar Rodríguez-López and Cedric Bixler Zavala have been a leading flagbearer for neo-progressive rock, culminating in Noctourniquet, the swan song of their decade-long career as the Mars Volta.  Perhaps not as cathartic as De-Loused or its follow-up, Frances the Mute (2005), Noctourniquet is an easier listen precisely because it does not put its audience through quite the same wringer emotionally.  This grants license to relax into its deliberately obscurantist, phantasmagoric fantasy and Goth opera ethos, enjoying the band’s channeling of the spirit of Freddie Mercury (before he steered Queen in more of a postpunk direction).  Quiet numbers such as “Empty Vessels Make the Loudest Sounds” and “Trinkets Pale of Moon” offer respite from the wiry, tangled circuitry that is the Mars Volta’s default mode; still, the most fun comes with the shifting moods of “In Absentia,” from dire, drilling bass guitar and fraught vocals to pure transcendence at the close.

 

Sample song†  “In Absentia”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DM718PU3ckQ

 

4.    JUANA MOLINA, Halo (Crammed Discs, 2017)—A former actress and comedian in her native Argentina, Juana Molina had an abiding interest in music from the start, and when she turned to it full time, the results were utterly spellbinding.  Halo is very much of a piece with Molina’s previous recordings, yet she is never rehashing ideas and here manages to top herself.  Because so much of Halo, which translates as “will-o’-the-wisp,” a ghostly folk legend, is murky/dusky in tone and furtive by nature, the shafts of sunlight that work their way through on songs like “Cosoco” are all the more welcome.  Molina is such a master of atmospherics that she amply demonstrates how much mileage a pop composer can get out of rudimentary chord progressions and percussion setups.  You could even dance to some of these numbers, in a slinky or a herky-jerky fashion, depending on their mood and rhythmic genome.
 

Sample song  “Cosoco”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9OTa2N9OXwM
 

5.    SIGUR RÓS, Valtari (Parlophone/XL Recordings, 2012)—The Icelandic group that took the term “postrock” and put its own stamp on it issues its quietest record to date.  That could have been deadly anesthetizing, but in fact Valtari (“Roller”) is sublimely exquisite, reaching dizzying peaks of acoustic piano, drumming, and choral beauty with “Varúð” (Caution).  This album is all about Arctic Circle sonorities, ghostly tintinnabulations (particularly in the title track), crunchy percussive filigree, and lead singer Jónsi’s elfin falsetto, reinforced strategically by various choir arrangements, all to splendid effect.  The final, instrumental piece, “Fjögur Píanó” (Four Pianos), is the apogee of Sigurrósian minimalism, a spare keyboard composition that would do Steve Reich himself proud.

Sample song  “Varúð”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gf1h2PMPCAo

6.    FLYING LOTUS, Cosmogramma (Warp Records, 2010)—An interplanetary head trip in seventeen brief movements, Cosmogramma, which took its name from Steven Ellison’s misinterpretation, as a child, of something his great-aunt, Alice Coltrane, said in a lecture about “cosmic drama,” is the first Flying Lotus record to incorporate live instruments rather than purely digital effects and is also the fullest expression of Ellison’s talents as Flying Lotus.  The eclecticism is remarkable, the list of collaborators impressive, including his own cousin Ravi Coltrane, his close collaborator in the Los Angeles music scene Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke.  There is a streak of seventies nostalgia running through the album, with nods to Parliament/Funkadelic, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and the like.  Even so, the creative genius is all (well, nearly all) his own and is as much forward as backward looking.  Amid all the abrupt and unpredictable changes in tempo, timbre, and tone, what is preserved throughout is an aura of blissful rapture.

Sample song  “MmmHmm”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uCyv05SG1g

7.    CALLE 13, Entren los que Quieran (Sony Music Latin, 2010)—It is certainly unusual that an album with a strong component of hip-hop (and reggaeton) would make my top ten, but such is the explosive force of this record, politically incisive without being overweening—that is, before “Residente” (René Pérez Joglar) developed a messiah complex.  From the very start, in which Residente and his musical partner and stepbrother, “Visitante” (Eduardo José Cabra Martínez), mock Puerto Rican society and elites for “paying more attention to the Miss Universe pageant than to education,” the lyrics hit hard, culminating with “El Hormiguero” (The Anthill), a parable about how multiple insignificant drones, working together, can topple the mighty.  But it is not all about lyrics; the musical settings are varied and deftly arranged as well, from the machine-gun rat-a-tat of “Calma Pueblo” (Stay Calm, People), with Omar Rodríguez-López of the Mars Volta (see #3 above), and “La Bala” (The Bullet) to quasi–Middle Eastern melodies for “El Baile de los Pobres” (Dance of the Poor Folk) to merengue (“Vamo’ a Portarnos Mal” [Let’s Misbehave]) to bolero (ballad) for “Latinoamérica” to ukulele in “Muerte en Hawaii” (Death in Hawaii).  Though the record is full of testosterone and bravado, the presence of the stepbrothers’ half-sister, Ileana Cabra Joglar (iLe), with her lovely voice, for songs such as “La Vuelta al Mundo” (A Trip around the World”) and “Prepárame la Cena” (Get Dinner Ready for Me) helps soften and humanize it.

Sample song  “Latinoamérica”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkFJE8ZdeG8

8.    GWENNO, Le Kov (Heavenly Recordings, 2018)—The sophomore solo effort from the Welsh/Cornish singer Gwenno Saunders, produced by her husband, Rhys Edwards, has a keen pop sensibility in multiple idioms and a way with chords, phrasings, shadings, and arrangements worthy of Todd Rundgren.  Because Le Kov (“A Place of Memory”) is sung entirely in Cornish (though with printed English lyrics), its audience will necessarily be limited, which is a shame.  Sweden’s Dungen (see #34 below), another act that makes no concession to an English-language market, with its light jazzy sensibility and instrumentation, is another apt comparison.  “Tir ha Mor” (Land and Sea) is dreamy and breezy, while “Daromres y’n Howl” (Traffic in the Sun) has swingy and sinuous syncopations evocative of Stereolab and backing vocals from Gruff Rhys of the Welsh band Super Furry Animals.  Yet “Jynn-Amontya” (Computer), “Hunros” (A Dream), and “Aremorika” (with its zither filigree) show that Saunders and Edwards can fashion pensive tunes to moderate tempos as skillfully as they can the faster ones.

Sample song  “Tir ha Mor”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rCeygWexyA

9.    BAT FOR LASHES, The Bride (Parlophone/Warner Brothers Records, 2016)—Natasha Khan’s The Bride is a remarkable concept album and song cycle.  In it, a bride-to-be loses her groom to a traffic accident just before the wedding and then goes through the classic stages of grief before reconciling sufficiently with life to be able to contemplate loving afresh.  Performing as customary under the rubric Bat for Lashes, Khan took a breathtaking risk in inhabiting this ill-starred persona, in an emotionally freighted performance than veers close to melodrama.  The result is spectral (channeling the Moody Blues in “Widow’s Peak” or Portishead in “Honeymooning Alone”), haunting (witness the raw anger in “Never Forgive the Angels”), and beautiful (“Sunday Love”), aided in no small part by Khan’s creamy soprano, supple and wide ranging, and her facility with a number of keyboards and string instruments from guitar to mandolin to harp.  If the closer, “In Your Bed,” seems tacked on, an odd duck of a resolution too mundane to match the nightmarish quality of the rest of the songs, that is a minor complaint in an album that has plenty to tell us about woundedness, vulnerability, and the slow process of healing.

Sample song  “Sunday Love”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBfZooPrmfo

10.    KIT SEBASTIAN, Mantra Moderne (Mr Bongo, 2019)—It is a testament to the compositional skills of the young Englishman Kit Martin that Mantra Moderne seamlessly weaves Turkish and Middle Eastern influences, as well as others (psychedelia, Brazilian rhythms, French yé-yé), into its shimmery, smooth pop fabric.  His partner in Kit Sebastian is Merve Erdem, who does much of the singing in her native Turkish.  If the musical ethos seems louche or decadent in its Orientalist exoticism (aided by what appear to be vintage instruments from the region), that is entirely intentional and part of the sheer enjoyment that this debut album brings.  From the relaxed, slinky title track to the sensual, lushly arranged “Kuytu” (Hidden) to the smoky groove that concludes the record, “Durma” (Don’t Stop), a fever dream of modal jazz crossed with a Balkan brass ensemble like Fanfare Ciocărlia, Mantra Moderne is a bag of unexpected Turkish delight to round out the decade (and my Top Ten here).

Sample song  “Kuytu”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJPKFvfpVd8

11.    JUSTICE, Audio, Video, Disco (Ed Banger Records/Elektra Entertainment, 2011)—My favorite guilty pleasure of the decade.  Justice’s second album hardly plumbs the depths of musical or lyrical profundity (the title track contains only its three words as a lyric); it is simply perfectly confected pop magic.  Though there is no orchestration beyond standard rock kit, and these tracks were manufactured for the dancefloor, in some respects these two Frenchmen, Xavier de Rosnay and Gaspard Augé, are spiritual heirs to the Electric Light Orchestra.  They clearly grew up imbibing from the same well of classic/progressive rock, with a touch of metal, that I did.  Having shrugged off the record initially, I found myself coming back to it repeatedly.  From the grinding, industrial electronica/house music of “Horsepower” (more in the idiom of Justice’s 2007 debut than the rest) to the grandeur of the galumphing “Civilization” to the dreamy, ersatz folk-Americana of “Ohio” to the Edgar Winter Group–style Baroque figurations of “Canon” to the descending-scale falsetto and heavy-footed percussion of “On’n’On,” this record wears on its sleeve its nostalgia for a certain type of seventies rock, with its glitter, bombast, and glories, yet is never a slavish imitation.  And it ends with that title track, with the metronome set to “Presto” and euphoria rising into the stratosphere.

Sample song  “Audio, Video, Disco”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqBhgEQ4LT0

12.    CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO, Río Arriba (ZZK Records/Ultrapop, 2010)—Pedro Canale, the genius behind Chancha via Circuito, hails from Buenos Aires, but Río Arriba (“Upstream”) is steeped in the mystique and folklore of the Andes.  That is its strength through and through.  Some of the tracks are merely electronically enhanced settings of South American classics by the likes of José Larralde (“Quimey Neuquén”) and Miriam García (“Pintar el Sol” [To Paint the Sun]) or more modernist songs, yet the “cumbia” rhythms and percussive arrangements framing them are of a piece with the purely instrumental, original numbers on the disc.  The title track samples a group called Bolivia Manta, dedicated to preserving the musical and cultural traditions of the indigenous peoples of the Andes, layering in a shuffling drum pattern and “jungle” noises, while “La Revancha de Chancha” (The Revenge of the Pig) resembles the Caribbean dub/electronica experimentation of Richard Blair and his Colombia-based group Sidestepper.  “Deportes” (Sports) infiltrates sounds evoking a racquetball or squash court, and “Cumbión de las Aves” (Big Cumbia of the Birds) arrives with a clanging like a smithy’s shop, along with weepy, tremulous native flutes and lutes.  Still, nothing Canale does can touch the brilliance of Larralde’s original with “Quimey Neuquén,” a truly stirring folk tune of the Argentine Andes.

Sample song†  “Cumbión de las Aves”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-_YaGiMo5Y

13.    THE LIMIÑANAS, Costa Blanca (Trouble in Mind Records, 2013)—The music of this husband-and-wife duo, Lionel and Marie Limiñana, from southern France, trades heavily in the psychedelic pop of the late sixties, together with garage rock, folk, and vintage Europop, with Serge Gainsbourg as much as Procol Harum or the Strawberry Alarm Clock being their spiritual ancestor.  Costa Blanca is the best of their releases, recalling the magic of Lionel’s childhood trips to the coast of southern Spain, particularly in “Alicante” or “La Mercedes de Couleur Gris Métallisé” (The Metal-Gray Mercedes), while spinning beguiling jams out of riffs and drones.  Lionel, the guitarist, does not sing but rather intones, in his smoky voice, and Marie, the drummer, does not have a great voice herself; fortunately, other women lend their vocal talents as well.  Songs are recited in French or English or both, with the exception of “I Miei Occhi Sono i Tuoi Occhi” (My Eyes Are Your Eyes”) in Italian.  Whether evoking the Stooges (in “Bb”) or recounting a head-spinning trip across the water to a festival of psychedelia (the buzzy “Liverpool”), the Limiñanas cannot help but infuse Gallic cool, which is no small part of this album’s appeal.

Sample song†  “I Miei Occhi Sono i Tuoi Occhi” (featuring Paula H Satan):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovG8jVUIJAQ

14.    JORGE DREXLER, Salvavidas de Hielo (Warner Music Spain, 2017)—A Uruguayan now living in Spain who is an otolaryngologist as well as a performer, Jorge Drexler writes in a folk vein, with eyes and ears open to the world’s wonders and absurdities, in the manner of Brazil’s Tom Zé.  The crowning glory of Salvavidas de Hielo (“Life Preserver Made of Ice”) is its opener, “Movimiento” (In Motion), which gently recounts how our species, from the moment our ancestors put two feet to the ground, began to move across the landscape, ever searching for what lay beyond the horizon, with the broader message that we are all immigrants of one sort or another.  The lively if hushed anticipation of “Movimiento” propels the rest of the record as well, a testament to Drexler’s songwriting powers.  For several songs, other Latin American artists join him to sing:  Chile’s Mon Laferte for the touching ballad “Asilo” (Refuge), the Argentine Javier Zalember Calequí for the breezy “Estalactitas” (Stalactites), the Chilean/Mexican Natalia Lafourcade on the title track (another rich ballad), and the Mexican/American star Julieta Venegas on “Abracadabras.”  There are ear pleasers throughout, but Salvavidas de Hielo is a sensitively put together, penetratingly intelligent creative effort that deserves a wider audience than its all-Spanish lyrics are likely to command.

Sample song  “Movimiento”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIGRyRf7nH4

15.    RAINBOW ARABIA, Boys and Diamonds (Kompakt, 2011)—When this record came out, a number of critics decried it as “derivative” of influences from music from the Middle East or East Asia, African rhythms, etc.  Having initially been less than lukewarm on it myself, I see it differently now.  In fact, this album has risen more in my estimation than any other in this retrospective survey.  Boys and Diamonds is not derivative at all; rather, it is a clever reimagining of a certain kind of 1980s pop.  The Los Angeles husband-and-wife team of Danny and Tiffany Preston have a knack for synthesizing catchy hooks and pairing them with crisp, clattery percussion from a range of exotic drum batteries.  Further, Tiffany’s voice is perfectly suited to the ambience Rainbow Arabia set out to create, a throwback to new wave chanteuses like Dale Bozzio or Alannah Currie.  The “beeping” guitars of “Blind” echo those of Naked Eyes on “Promises, Promises” (1983), while the drum pattern on “Without You” replicates (self-consciously, I would guess) that of Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance” (1982).  At other times, the group’s phrasings and arrangements might put one in mind of Talk Talk or even Peter Godwin.  But while the Prestons found inspiration in the music they grew up with, their compositions are stamped strongly with their own musical identity and ideas, from the skipped beats and stuttering tempos of “Hai” to the cinematic suspense of the quasi-instrumental “Papai,” with its soaring, long-toned keyboard theme and skittering percussion.  Rainbow Arabia reaches its highest pinnacle with its sparest setting, a Noh drama of a performance worthy of the Thompson Twins, “Sayer,” a plaintive, bubbly song that manages to sound reflective even with lyrics that are impossible to parse, slippery keyboard clusters, and lots of room cushioning the phrasing.

Sample song  “Without You”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2r6amYnItng

16.    PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING, Every Valley (PIAS Recordings, 2017)—Each of the three Public Service Broadcasting full-length recordings made this list because they are all excellent, but the third, Every Valley, rates highest because it takes on the most somber issue:  the disappearance of an entire culture with the decline of coal mining in South Wales.  As such, it is the most affecting PSB record to date.  Not a mere social history (though considerable archival research went into it) set to cool beats, the album’s arrangements are handled as sensitively by J. Willgoose as any soundtrack composer would.  The atmospheric sense of profound loss that pervades the latter stages of the record, casting in stark relief the chipper pronouncements from earlier times on tracks such as “Progress” and “People Will Always Need Coal,” is kindred in spirit to The Sweet Hereafter soundtrack (1997) or Over the Rhine’s Ohio (2003), another album about the troubles of a depressed coal-mining region.  The epitaph for these abandoned communities, “Mother of the Village,” is followed up by “Take Me Home,” performed by the Beaufort Male Choir of South Wales as balm for all the pain these places have suffered.

Sample song  “They Gave Me a Lamp”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWvK7Uffmts

17.    RADIOHEAD, A Moon Shaped Pool (XL Recordings, 2016)—The boys from Abingdon (Oxfordshire) are back, with their most substantial recording since Hail to the Thief (2003).  A Moon Shaped Pool is a departure from earlier Radiohead records in that it incorporates strings—the London Contemporary Orchestra—and choral voices, arranged by band member Jonny Greenwood.  As such, the album’s sound is as sumptuous as it is furtive and unremittingly dark, even if there is little on it as stirring and disturbing as the opener, “Burn the Witch,” with its choppy violin and cello strokes, a warning about the dangers of succumbing to a mob mentality.  Some of the quieter songs, like “The Numbers” and “Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief,” are spellbinding and exquisite in their harmonic richness.  Thom Yorke’s vocals, as always, could have been enunciated in a way that is more readily intelligible, and not everything on the track list measures up to the band’s elevated standards; even so, this album maintains a mood of agitation and lament throughout, demonstrating that the band’s creative powers have not dimmed with the onset of middle age.

Sample song  “Burn the Witch”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yI2oS2hoL0k

18.    JOHN ZORN, Simulacrum (Tzadik, 2015)—The number of genres in which John Zorn has worked is incredible, but he is best known for modern classical, jazz, and Jewish-themed music, not so much rock.  Simulacrum is an homage to the progressive rock and metal of his youth; the term Simulacrum extends from the album itself to the trio lineup of musicians used:  Matt Hollenberg on electric guitar, Kenny Grohowski on drums, and John Medeski on keys (organ), which went on to record a number of other albums in subsequent years.  Zorn did the composing and arranging but does not himself play.  As is often the case in progressive rock, the longer-form compositions (“The Illusionist to open up the set;  “The Divine Comedy” to close it out) have discrete sections set off by abrupt changes in mood and tempo, but even the shortest piece (“Alterities”) shares in this to some degree.  The antic stop-starts and head-swiveling digressions and changes in direction, disposition, and pace are typical of Zorn’s writing across musical formats.  It is unclear how much latitude Medeski (of the famed trio Medeski Martin & Wood) had for improvising on this disc, but some of the sections in which he appears to let loose are steeped in King Crimson and its spiritual successors.  The crunching bass chords of “Marmarath” are a departure of sorts, into doom metal.  For all the tribute paid to an earlier era, the crate digging in various genre bins, this is a highly original and enjoyable excursion.

Sample song†  “Marmarath”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZsz6Rfy9ng

19.    THE FOCUS GROUP, The Elektrik Karousel (Ghost Box Records, 2013)—As with its predecessor, Broadcast and the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age (2009), this disc is a Wunderkammer or collection of funhouse mirrors, a large batch of short vignettes, lasting from a few seconds to six minutes.  Julian House, the Welsh-born musician and designer behind the Focus Group, worked with James Cargill, the surviving member of Broadcast, and may have inserted the vocals of the late Trish Keenan (also of Broadcast) into a few tracks.  The Elektrik Karousel is both glittering entertainment and a bit nightmarish and claustrophobic at the same time.  Like the English weather, if you do not like a selection, just wait a few seconds.  House is partial to snippets of sampled sound, including from television broadcasts or films, stock library music, and drippings of folk, acid rock, and psychedelia, with a particular emphasis on the latter.  “Bachoo,” barely eighty seconds long, gives a taste of what would happen if, say, hunting horns were introduced into a Flock of Seagulls tune.  These little gems have wistful melodies, bizarre or exotic timbres, and fascinating harmonic chiaroscuro and note warpings; the styles, tempos, and moods are ever changing, from swingy or stretchy thematic cells to brittle harpsichord miniatures.  Those whose tastes do not run to electronica will not appreciate The Elektrik Karousel, but they would be missing out on one of the trippiest, most innovative experiments in contemporary pop.

Sample song†  “The Elektrik Karousel”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mn1zWdQj3Hg

20.    ELBOW, Giants of All Sizes (Polydor Records, 2019)—Guy Garvey, the lead singer and lyricist for Elbow, grew up an admirer of Peter Gabriel and Genesis, so it follows that the progressive rock influences are strong on this record, the Moody Blues in particular.  The strings of Manchester’s Hallé Orchestra add symphonic heft to the record’s standout song, “White Noise, White Heat,” which is intended to be about the Grenfell Tower fire disaster in London (though it is nonspecific).  Two other tracks, “Empires” and “Dexter and Sinister,” contemplate the consequences of Brexit for the United Kingdom and the European Union; Jesca Hoop’s soprano coda to the latter brings to mind Clare Torry’s on Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” from Dark Side of the Moon (1973).  Elbow can veer into Coldplay mode on the ballads, but it mines deeper veins of emotion than any tune I have heard Chris Martin sing.  Although the prevailing mood is glumness, a grandiose slough of despond tinged with sarcasm, Giants of All Sizes is a stellar achievement, whether taken purely on its musical merits or as a lamentation for a great nation that has lost its way.

Sample song  “Empires”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJa5FvCaBJc

21.    TIM HECKER, Ravedeath, 1972 (Kranky Records, 2011)—The most uncompromising of the Tim Hecker recordings that I have heard in terms of the purity of its minimalist electronica manifesto, Ravedeath, 1972 is also the most successful.  The album is full of sustained tones that resonate, ripple, and undulate, or are noise gated, while other things go on in the background:  plinking piano, high-pitched whirring, low rumbles or drones, percussive sounds (without any actual drums).  There is too much going on for this to be regarded as “ambient” music, but it often develops at a glacial pace, with the keyboards adding tonal color or implied harmonies amid the thick textures—buzzing, droning, screechy—produced through studio processing and looping.  Recorded mostly live in an Icelandic church by Ben Frost, with Hecker making use of the pipe organ, and then remixed in studio with piano, guitar, and various sound effects, the album can seem a bit remote and chilly in the service of its severe esthetic; nonetheless, it is well conceived and executed.

Sample song†  “The Piano Drop”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlfwZDR_1Hg

22.    BATTLES, Gloss Drop (Warp Records, 2011)—The departure of Tyondai Braxton (to a solo career) meant a very different vocal sound for Battles’ second album; for the most part, it meant no vocals at all, but the muscular, tightly syncopated instrumental sound carries over from Mirrored (2007).  Deprived of Braxton’s cartoonishly processed singing, Gloss Drop imports singers for four of its twelve tracks:  the Chilean DJ Matías Aguayo (“Ice Cream”), Gary Numan (“My Machine”), Blonde Redhead’s Kazu Makino (“Sweetie & Shag”), and Japan’s Yamantaka Eye (“Sundome”).  From the start, the record’s guitar/percussion/keyboard pyrotechnics are impressive, but to focus on that at the expense of composition would be shortchanging Battles.  The sense of foreboding conveyed by the opener, “Africastle,” the playfulness of the wobbly bagatelle “Toddler,” the weirdly Jamaican-sounding “Sundome” with its hortatory shouts, the lightning-round prog rock of “White Electric,” the industrial sci-fi of “My Machine,” the stark grandeur of “Futura”—all contribute to making this a tour de force for one of our great experimental rock ensembles, unjustly overlooked by most.  But the flouncy “Ice Cream,” with Aguayo’s carefree singing, stepping on his own rests as if in a hurry to get to the end of the song, is still the most entertaining.

Sample song  “Ice Cream” (featuring Matías Aguayo):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFggLJxv9zA

23.    FKA TWIGS, Magdalene (Young Turks Recordings, 2019)—Imagine combining the theatricality and classically inspired explorations of a Kate Bush with the sophisticated, artsy rhythm and blues of an Alicia Keys, and you have Magdalene.  The full-length follow-up to the debut FKA Twigs (Tahliah Debrett Barnett) record, LP1, is more openly emotional, a little less experimental, and less indebted to trip-hop.  Although Twigs had plenty of help making this albun, notably from producer Nicolas Jaar but also from the likes of Skrillex and Daniel Lopatin (see #38, #54, and #86 below), she has co-writing credit on all tracks.  It is hard to grasp the connection between the biblical figure of Mary Magdalene and the more workaday female figures portrayed in these songs, but the pain, vulnerability, alienation, deceit, tenderness, or wistfulness they express is palpably affecting.  As she did on her previous record, Twigs multitracks her elegant and pliant soprano, which covers an impressive range not just in terms of pitch but of dynamics and dramatic effect as well, to form a chorus.  Her comfort working in varied musical settings, from swing to R&B to breakbeat to spare minimalism and beyond, make this an encore well worth waiting for.

Sample song  “Cellophane”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkLjqFpBh84

24.    MATMOS, Plastic Anniversary (Thrill Jockey Records, 2019)—This record’s concept could be seen as gimmicky, were if not that interesting music is being formulated in the process.  All sounds were generated by plastic objects, which leads to the question, Is it cheating to include actual instruments (flutes, ocarinas, trumpets, trombones) made of plastic?  The range of sounds that can be made with the likes of poker chips, dominos, billiard balls, waste containers, riot shields, synthetic body parts, etc. is truly remarkable, yielding effects from fanfares (in the title track) to the lachrymose (in “The Crying Pill”) to something approximating a samba street procession (“Collapse of the Fourth Kingdom,” since whistles can be plastic as well).  The pair behind Matmos, Drew Daniel and M. C. Schmidt, even managed to have one of their song fragments beamed toward a distant exoplanet.  In their cheekiest move, “Breaking Bread” is generated by actually shattering L.P.s and singles from the soft-rock group Bread, which expresses Schmidt’s disdain for David Gates and company.  Invariably, the disc is a commentary on the amount of plastic waste our society generates (and this was before disposable masks entered the stream), yet it also commemorates the two men’s relationship with each other, dating back twenty-five years.

Sample song  “The Crying Pill”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltNwzJSsSPo

25.    SIGUR RÓS, Kveikur (XL Recordings, 2013)—In contrast to Valtari (see #5 above), Kveikur (Fuse) represents the opposite end of the sonic spectrum:  rather than quiet and restrained, it is loud (at least by Sigur Rós standards) and rocking, far more than anything the band had previously attempted.  Also, the melodies are more open and much more sustained than previously, when they tended to be isolated fragments of arousal from a sea of icy background stasis.  To a certain degree, the band sacrificed crystalline clarity for power, as the sound is deliberately sludgy, less stately, and with fewer polarities.  Even so, it is thrilling to listen to, and not only at the climax.  Power tunes such as “Brennisteinn” (Brimstone) and “Ísjaki” (Iceberg) show a side of the band we have not witnessed before, and it is not all elfin cuteness after all.

Sample song  “Brennisteinn”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc6zXSdYXm8

26.    M83, Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (Mute Records, 2011)—Anthony Gonzalez’s double-disc set is more ambitious than what came before it in his performance as M83, if also not quite as sure-footed as Saturdays = Youth (2008).  Dealing with dreams as subject matter provides fertile ground for the imagination, and Gonzalez has plenty to spare.  The two discs are rather short but are set up so that each of the eleven tracks on the first would have a counterpart on the second.  Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming strikes me as “European” in that its composer does not shy away from overly emotive vocals we might perceive (on this continent) as cheesy, in the way of much Europop, and Gonzalez’s own voice tends toward a sobbing tone, though the ambience of this recording is pretty benign—no nightmares here.  The glory of this record is in its sumptuous orchestrations (certainly not the mawkish, for the most part, lyrics); for that, credit Gonzalez and his producing partner, Justin Meldal-Johnsen, whose seven-year-old daughter narrates one of the tracks, “Raconte-moi une Histoire” (Tell Me a Story), geared toward kids.

Sample song  “Wait”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAwYodrBr2Q

27.    METRIC, Art of Doubt (Metric Music International/BMG, 2018)—The lyrics probe thorny questions about love and fame and identity and spiritual integrity, while the Toronto-based band, which has been together for close to two decades, rocks with an easy confidence gained through years of experience.  Metric’s biggest selling point is its frontwoman, Emily Haines, who, even as she verges into middle age, still has one of the sexiest and sharpest voices in rock today; her attempts to downplay her own glamour, for example, on “Dressed to Suppress,” are less than convincing.  The first two-thirds of the record are generally uptempo, with a mixture of straight-ahead rockers and bouncier, more playful pieces, while the final third is softer and more reflective, ending with “No Light on the Horizon,” which moves progressively from self-recrimination to gratitude.  Art of Doubt is Metric at the top of its game.

Sample song  “Dark Saturday”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVn2UM8-sKI

28.    PANDA BEAR, Panda Bear Meets the Grim Reaper (Domino Recording, 2015)—No sign that Panda Bear (Noah Lennox of Animal Collective; see #101 below) will actually meet the grim reaper anytime soon.  In fact, this is a generally upbeat record, and though its trippiness and textural density match what Panda has done with Animal Collective, it is surprisingly sweet and tuneful.  The arrangements, in collaboration with producer Peter Kember (Sonic Boom), are plush, bubby, and swirly, psychedelic without being sef-consciously so.  The disc’s two singles, “Mr Noah” and “Boys Latin,” each have instant appeal, though Panda’s voice is typically engineered so that it sounds as though he is singing from the bottom of a well, making the words hard to interpret.  Even “Tropic of Cancer,” dealing with the death of the singer’s father, is angelically consonant, although it acquires a hard-earned poignancy in due course.  Panda Bear has given us a candy-striped sweets shop of delights to marvel over and savor.

Sample song  “Mr Noah”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmXIIL2tmR8

29.    CRYSTAL CASTLES, Crystal Castles [II] (Fiction/Universal Motown Records, 2010)—My tastes have shifted slightly away from Crystal Castles since the duo’s breakup, in the wake of some very ugly recriminations between Ethan Kath and Alice Glass, but the second album is still solid.  Fresh and innovative as electronica/dream pop, it is as viscerally affecting as it is formally daring.  The outstanding single, “Celestica,” floats on a cushion of air, an admixture of bliss and wonderment, but with an edge of tension.  Kath employs techniques such as an Atari gaming chip to produce glitches and signal-to-noise howl to distort his keyboard sounds.  Glass’s voice is suitably dreamy, though it can turn harsh and raucous when she chooses.  There is a cover of Platinum Blonde’s “Not in Love” (1985) and even a collaboration with Sigur Rós (see #5 and #25), “Year of Silence,” that samples the Icelandic band’s music.

Sample song  “Celestica”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsxNUl1IHnE

30.    FENNESZ, Bécs (Editions Mego/Touch Music, 2014)—For an ambient/electronica recording, Bécs is surprisingly warm, in no small part because it incorporates live instruments, and not just Christian Fennesz’s own guitar but bass and drums on certain tracks.  It is a tribute to his skill in creating sound environments that these songs are freighted with drama to an unexpected degree, given how little changes in them from beginning to end.  Certain pieces have a hazy sunniness to them, accentuated by the composer’s love of fuzztones and distortion; others are more dire or evocative of science fiction soundtracks or planetarium music.  The title track, which is the Hungarian word for Vienna, is the most pop oriented of the bunch, using sonic manipulation to introduce static into a theme played on what sounds like a very tinny piano.

Sample song†  “Bécs”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEDD0IaKv0g

31.    JULIA HOLTER, Loud City Song (Domino Recording, 2013)—As an arty, theatrical songstress, Julia Holter has inevitably drawn critics to compare her to Kate Bush or Laurie Anderson.  Fair enough, although some aspects of her music are closer kin to Juana Molina (see #4 above and #51 below)—shadowy keyboard ostinatos, for example.  Her compositions demand listener patience since a number of them unfold at deliberate tempos, and some passages are meterless, but she constructs a dreamscape on Loud City Song that is compelling and utterly convincing.  The record reaches its pinnacle with “Maxim’s I” (part one of two), anthemic, nostalgic for European café society, evocative in its brilliantly shimmery keyboard accompaniment and lachrymose string arrangements.

Sample song  “Horns Surrounding Me”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0_LuSW61GI

32.    GOAT, World Music (Rocket Recordings, 2012)—Notwithstanding this group’s claims of hailing from a remote village in northernmost Sweden and playing music that harkens back to pre-Christian, voodoo-like rituals of the Arctic, it is far more likely that they are cosmopolitan citizens of Gothenburg, and their broad exposure to musical cultures explains the title of their freakishly intriguing debut album.  On it, Goat incorporates influences from Africa, Turkey, black metal, krautrock, and, above all, a predilection for acid music, ranging from folk to psychedelic rock.  For an opener, the Malian guitarist/singer Boubacar Traoré has his traditional “Diarabi” transformed into a guitar instrumental that gets steadily noisier, adding heavy percussion and feedback and playing up the Middle Eastern, modal aspect of the tune into a psychedelic swirl.  This song returns with a smoking vengeance at the end of “Det Som Aldrig Förändras” (That which Never Changes) to close out the disc.  The songs in between all have vocals, and the unidentified female vocalist tends to shout rather than sing her lyrics, but all is forgivable amid a combustible mixture of funk, fuzz guitars, bass syncopations, spare, African-inspired melodies, and spacy drones.

Sample song†  “Det Som Aldrig Förändras/Diarabi”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0AEdWgnTm0

33.    GANG GANG DANCE, Eye Contact (4AD, 2011)—A certain exuberance, reveling in maximalism of electronic sound and unconcerned with restraint, characterizes the music of Gang Gang Dance.  Eye Contact is unafraid of being weird, as in the way “MindKilla” shoehorns the lullaby “Hush, Little Baby” into a jumpy, edgy dance number.  Most bizarre, and grating, are Lizzi Bougatsos’s kewpie-doll vocal mannerisms.  The album is less interested in sonic beauty and more invested in a collective effort toward the phantasmagoric.  (But you can dance to it.)  More conventionally, the band hands over the microphone to Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip to sing “Romance Layers,” a gauzy pop confection.  But Gang Gang Dance is at its best in the symphonic, electronic swirl it creates in the longer compositions, from the majestic opener “Glass Jar” through “Adult Goth” and “Sacer” and on to the closer, “Thru and Thru,” all of which are stirring and have a grand sweep that supersedes their baroqueries.

Sample song  “MindKilla”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2R7k1_kOqvk

34.    DUNGEN, Skit i Allt (Subliminal Sounds/Mexican Summer, 2010)—Notwithstanding its devil-may-care title, which translates as “Screw It All,” a lot of creativity went into this peculiar but subtle recording.  Much of it is mellow, with flute, piano, acoustic guitar, in almost a light jazz vein, but there is also some scorching electric guitar and feedback, particularly in “Högdalstoppen.”  Neo-progressive in spirit, the music of Gustav Ejstes, the songwriter and key figure in Dungen, owes as much to psychedelic rock and folk of an earlier generation, as if the Byrds had been transplanted to Stockholm and were singing in Swedish, which Dungen does exclusively.  But it is not that simple:  Ejstes’s melodies are situated well outside the pop mainstream, not so much dissonant as defying consonance by taking chord progressions in unexpected directions.  The effect is weirdly unsettling, as in, for example, the contrast between the quasi-pentatonic piano theme of “Blandband” (Mixtape) and the sober, restless flute-and-guitar countertheme, with organ undertones.

Sample song  “Blandband”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d09yIN1cNh8

35.    ARCADE FIRE, The Suburbs (Merge Records, 2010)—It was always going to be difficult for Arcade Fire to follow up the smash success of its first two albums, Funeral (2004) and Neon Bible (2007).  Consequently, in spite of a fair amount of critical acclaim, plenty had the knives out for The Suburbs when it was first released.  No question that it is too laconic, matching its chosen subject matter (the brothers Win and Will Butler reflecting on their lives growing up in the Houston suburbs), to generate the supernova heat of its predecessors; there appears to be far less at stake emotionally here.  Still, The Suburbs would demand respect if the only decent song on its tracklist were “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains),” which is emphatically not the case.  The title track clip-clops along, with Win Butler carrying over his singing in Bruce Springsteen mode from Neon Bible, summoning a certain grandeur as it unfolds.  It is true that quite a few of the songs that follow it are, if ear pleasing, fundamentally hollow, as the brothers struggle to say something meaningful about life outside major cities beyond the usual tropes of boredom, alienation, rebelliousness, and anticipation of better things to come.  Better things do indeed come with “Sprawl II,” the last Arcade Fire song really to stir my blood (somehow, the most rousing Arcade Fire songs seem to be given to Régine Chassagne, Win’s wife and writing partner, to sing), majestically anthemic as whispers of furtive romances and feelings of not fitting in set against a sterile environment (“dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains”) finally hit home.  The album’s coda, a ghostly extension of the title track, is a nice touch as an emotional climb-down from the intensity of “Sprawl II.”

Sample song  “Sprawl II (Mountains beyond Mountains)”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NuSbELCNloc

36.    FLYING LOTUS, Until the Quiet Comes (Warp Records, 2012)—Trippy, soulful, nerdy, gossamer, earthy, amusing—Until the Quiet Comes is a treat for the ears and a worthy successor to Flying Lotus’s Cosmogramma (see #6 above).  It is an eighteen-course tasting menu, featuring many of the same guest chefs as on its immediate predecessor, with many tracks fragmentary in nature and just one (“Me Yesterday/Corded”) staying around beyond the four-minute mark.  The intrinsic chill of the electronica is mitigated by the warmth of human voices on those tracks that have vocals, with the exception of Thom Yorke’s, which epitomizes alienation on “Electric Candyman.”  But the choice cut involving a member of Radiohead (see #17 above) is “Hunger,” based on a soundtrack by Jonny Greenwood; its string arrangements are like a medieval lay repurposed for the Battlestar Galactica generation.  The best of the instrumental offerings are “The Nightcaller,” indulging Flying Lotus’s taste for computer-generated early seventies funk/soul, and “Putty Boy Strut,” a stretchy little piece that broadens out at the end, with a helium-pitched, highly artificial keyboard sound, metronomic percussion, and wisps of breathy, androgynous vocalization.

Sample song  “Putty Boy Strut”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1KOb4_XK84

37.    SLEIGH BELLS, Treats (Mom + Pop Music, 2010)—When the electronic instruments whiz kid Derek E. Miller joined forces with singer Alexis Krauss to form Sleigh Bells, he had a clear idea what he wanted the band’s brash debut, Treats, to sound like:  loud, aggressive, and in your face but still listener friendly.  The album is the exemplar of noise rock:  a sonic onslaught, videogame explosions of big beats, lead-footed syncopation, punky, disaffected vocals but tempered with sweetness throughout, as Krauss’s singing voice is light, breathy, and pure.  Even her yelping is generally on-key.  Because of that, the listener is likely to enjoy the sonic bludgeoning.  Treats is structured to have its (relatively) less booming numbers at the center, framed by the more bombastic songs at each end; songs tend to be short and punchy, as is the entire album.  The drilling, punk-inspired rhythm guitar pattern from “Infinity Guitars” has been picked up by commercials, while “Straight A’s” is one lethal guitar riff, with distortion, above which Krauss screeches about her report card.  An interval of mellow sunshine comes with “Rill Rill,” which samples the guitar progression from Funkadelic’s “Can You Get to That” (1971) in service of its butter-smooth, chiming melody.

Sample song  “Rill Rill”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmFgejWZjtg

38.    ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER, Age of (Warp Records, 2018)—Daniel Lopatin’s most listener friendly album in years as Oneohtrix Point Never manages to pull off the trick of being both edgy and benign.  The conceptual back story about there being four successive ages of human societal development comprising history is not essential to appreciation of the music.  For this electronica specialist to have several offerings with conventional song structure (on some of which he sings himself) almost seems radical.  On the gently sunny “Babylon,” Lopatin’s voice is relatively unfiltered; not so for the stark, nearly a cappella “Black Snow,” for which his voice is AutoTuned, or the brooding meditation called “The Station.”  Anonhi (formerly Antony Hegarty of Antony and the Johnsons) harmonizes on “Black Snow” and takes the lead on a couple of the more strident (“Same”) or jarring (“Still Stuff that Doesn’t Happen”) tracks.  The remainder of the album consists of instrumental compositions, or rather, electronic representations of instruments, some of which are antique in sound (the title track with its Japanese-sounding strings, “Myriad.industries” with its harpsichord facsimile), others of which are industrially noisy with diabolically grim arrangements (“We’ll Take It”), or cheesy (“Toys 2”), or subtly beautiful, as with the closer, “Last Known Image of a Song.”

Sample song  “Black Snow”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMQJF-7Y2h0

39.    A WINGED VICTORY FOR THE SULLEN, The Undivided Five (Ninja Tune, 2019)—Serene, atmospheric, brooding, A Winged Victory for the Sullen’s third studio album is crying out for some hip art-house film director to adopt it.  Ambient music comes in various stripes; that of the Brussels- and Berlin-based American duo of Dustin O’Halloran and Adam Wiltzie tilts in the direction of classical music.  Named after the interval known as the perfect fifth in music theory, the all-instrumental record, produced at eight different studios from Hungary to Iceland, is said to have been inspired by Claude Debussy, as well as the Icelandic composer Jóhan Jóhansson, recently deceased, with whom the pair had worked closely.  Even in the opening composition, titled “Our Lord Debussy,” they avoid falling into the trap of creating ersatz Impressionism, although the opening of “The Haunted Victorian Pencil” is self-consciously modeled on Erik Satie.  (Nor is there anything resembling Jethro Tull on the provocatively titled “Aqualung, Motherf**ker.”)  “Adios, Florida” is the only track to depart from the default mode of glacial pacing and acquire at least a mild sense of motion.  The long-tone chromaticism and contrasting background arrangements, as well as strategic use of instrumental elaboration—hornlike overtones, agitated violin passages—help lift these nine selections well above mere pretty pianism.

Sample song  “The Rhythm of a Dividing Pair”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPw-oQ_mvv8

40.    PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING, The Race for Space (Test Card Recordings, 2015)—The first Public Service Broadcasting record to have a unifying theme concerned itself with the early years of unmanned and manned space flight, in an era of intense superpower rivalry.  It spans the period from the launch of Sputnik in 1957 to the final Apollo flight in 1972.  In some regards, the eagerness to document what took place took precedence over the music, relegating it to the status of soundtrack for a podcast lite.  Even so, there are emotional peaks and valleys:  the tragedy of “Fire in the Cockpit” is recounted starkly, with a spare setting around the NASA announcement; the tension and release as Apollo 8, the first craft to achieve full lunar orbit, loses contact with Mission Control on the far side of the Moon and soon re-establishes it, is reflected by the music going almost silent and then rebounding.  “Gagarin” creates a funky tune to honor the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, while a dream pop outfit called the Smoke Fairies are brought in to pay homage to the first female cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova.  The piece “Go!” is surprisingly rousing, simply by setting the checkoff of voices from various systems monitors to a snappy rhythm.

Sample song  “Go!”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BHIo6qwJarI

41.    GALACTIC, Ya-ka-may (ANTI/Epitaph, 2010)—Named for a Crescent City soup of Chinese origins that mixes leftover meat with noodles, hard-boiled egg, and scallions, this record by the New Orleans funk/jam band showcases a wide variety of local talent, on almost every track, going well beyond Dixieland and the blues.  The best tracks involve some of the city’s better-known acts:  the Rebirth Brass Band dishes up horn-driven funk on “Boe Money,” after the nickname of the group’s trombonist, Corey Henry, and “Cineramascope” also features Henry, this time paired with Trombone Shorty for a session of “dueling trombones.”  “Liquor Pang” is a delicious hangover blues from Josh Cohen and Ryan Scully, wallowing in misfortune and regret with a growly, Tom Waits–esque vocal.  Other tracks that are less musically satisfying will at least make you laugh or smile.  While I sometimes regret that Galactic’s own talents take a back seat to those of its guests, in all, Ya-ka-may is a sumptuous feast of New Orleans musical culture seamlessly interwoven with the band’s characteristic funk-rock sound.

Sample song†  “Boe Money (featuring the Rebirth Brass Band)”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiS5M7TgtpQ

42.    NILÜFER YANYA, Miss Universe (ATO Records, 2019)—The debut L.P. by London’s Nilüfer Yanya exploded onto the scene with a force of megatons, earning heaps of critical praise.  Though the songs vary considerably stylistically and in the range of their preoccupations, an overriding scheme is established by means of periodic communications from a fake concern called WWAY Health (“we worry about your health”).  This superstructure invites the listener to view the album through the prism of angst about relationships and the tribulations of day-to-day living, and the way our concerns sidetrack us from our aspirations.  The album’s most powerful statement is its opener, “In Your Head,” co-written with the producer John Congleton, a straight rocker that sets the tone with its fingernail-chewing anxieties about love, acceptance, and, ultimately, one’s own sanity.  Even the weaker tracks are generally solid.  Yanya’s voice is supple if not conventionally pretty, with a texture like maple syrup and a tendency toward voice cracking in the manner of her better-known compatriot Adele.

Sample song  “In Your Head”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsxf541UI-8

43.    TV ON THE RADIO, Nine Types of Light (Interscope Records/Universal Music, 2011)—Another instance of a record I look more kindly on now than I did when first reviewed.  Never prolific, TV on the Radio was perhaps still trying to establish a musical identity, at a time when its bassist, Gerard Smith, was dying of cancer, and on Nine Types of Light, it really starts to coalesce, foreshadowing the triumph of Seeds three years later (see #1 above).  The song I come back to repeatedly is “Killer Crane,” whose bare-bones arrangement, with a chorus supplemented by strings tuned to sound like a Japanese shamisen,  as well as woodwinds and shimmering keyboards, puts into stark relief the gentlest and most contemplative tune, having the elegance of a scroll painting.  “Forgotten” is another well-sculpted piece that creates a nice study in shifting moods.  “Keep Your Heart” and “You” are soul-tinged ballads, while “Second Song” and “No Future Shock” have funky rhythms and falsetto vocals from lead singer Tunde Adebimpe, climaxing in rousing horn choruses.

Sample song  “Second Song”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwYM2t22h_E

44.    TAME IMPALA, Lonerism (Modular Recordings/Fontana Distribution, 2012)—The best-known song by a group named after one mammal is titled for an unrelated mammal, and neither roams the bush of that group’s native Australia.  “Elephant” was huge for Kevin Parker and Tame Impala; its fuzz-toned psychedelia is the most playful item on Lonerism, trundling along with the occasional sidestep pause to break the rhythmic sway.  Dealing with themes of social isolation, eight years before a pandemic forced everyone home, the album manages to be impressively original while sounding like a throwback to the late sixties/early seventies.  Parker acknowledges a debt to Todd Rundgren, in particular.  Some of the tracks go on a bit long, but Parker, with production help from Dave Fridmann of the Flaming Lips, is mostly careful to mix up the settings and arrangements enough to prevent sonic sedimentation.  Like that rhythmic hitch in “Elephant.”  “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” was the follow-up single to “Elephant,” and its catchy, pitiable lament of a falsetto chorus makes the tune.  Much of the record is laid-back, dimly incandescent like sunshine burning through a haze.

Sample song  “Elephant”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnKUD_OztRE

45.    THE WAR ON DRUGS, Lost in the Dream (Secretly Canadian, 2014)—The primary selling point of Lost in the Dream is its introductory song, “Under the Pressure.”  Not gifted with an elaborate or intricate melody, it nonetheless summons a certain grandeur as it sweeps the listener along, guided by bandleader Adam Granduciel’s nervy, Dylanesque vocal narration.  It would be a slacker’s anthem if not for the gnawing self-doubt it expresses.  Critics have noted the kinship of “Burning” with Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” (1984), even if the former is more reflective and less high-strung.  Much of the other material on the disc effortlessly combines rock with folk/Americana themes, particularly in the slow tunes like “Suffering,” “Disappearing,” and the title track, with their laid-back manner and touches of pedal steel, harmonica, and limpid piano chords.  “The Haunting Idle” is an exquisite tone poem, the album’s only instrumental, relatively short unlike most here—concision does not seem to be Granduciel’s strong suit.

Sample song  “Under the Pressure”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkLOg252KRE

46.    APHEX TWIN, Syro (Warp Records, 2014)—Unexpectedly accessible for abstract electronica, Syro is, according to its creator, the Irish-born Briton Richard James, who records as Aphex Twin, “as poppy as it’s going to get.”  His first studio recording in thirteen years, it sets the tone immediately with “minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]” (sorry, they all have titles like this), a pithy little number with a rubbery, essentially undanceable “dance” rhythm and wordless vocal samplings that have the effect of laying a sketchy tune on top of a repeating harmonic progression.  The album rests comfortably within the traditions of British electronica, from Brian Eno to Autechre (see #89 below), with crisp beats and ethereal sonorities.  The real departure is the final song on the tracklist, “aisatsana 102,” abandoning electronics in favor of a Nordic, ruminative piano theme, barely elaborated, that is like Sigur Rós (see #5 and #25 above) in one of its quieter moments.

Sample song†  “minipops 67 [120.2][source field mix]”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUAJ8KLGqis

47.    FKA TWIGS, LP1 (Young Turks Recordings, 2014)—The blanky titled LP1, the first full-length offering from FKA Twigs, is groundbreaking, drawing on elements of rhythm and blues, electronica, and trip-hop for a synthesis that is distinct.  As with trip-hop’s leading exponents, the music is spectral, dark (the hues of its R&B range from midnight blue to black), and with a clinical chill in the way the arrangements are put together that contrasts with the white-hot passions expressed in the vocal line.  Twigs’s voice is pliable and impressive in range, and her concerns are those of an experienced late-twenty-something who has perhaps been burned once too often.  She had assistance in songwriting from a whole roster of producers and fellow performers, including Sampha (see #81 below), Arca, and Devonté Hynes (Blood Orange).  The frankness of sexual desire conveyed in “Hours” and “Two Weeks” will knock you back a stride.  “Lights On” has the most openly R&B approach of any song on the record, whereas “Give Up” is more space-age R&B.  On an album that admits little light generally, “Hours” and “Video Girl” are especially moody and sepulchral.

Sample song  “Video Girl”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jhTiLuGezI

48.    TINARIWEN, Emmaar (Wedge/ANTI-, 2014)—There is enough that is novel on Emmaar (the title refers in the Tamashek language of the Tuaregs to the heat that is conveyed on the wind), with settings ranging from the romantic to the politics of defiance, to reassure the listener that Tinariwen is not simply recycling material from older records.  The group’s exile from its northern Malian homeland thanks to Islamic terrorism there took it far abroad, to the scrublands of the Joshua Tree National Monument in southern California and surroundings to record this album.  As on its immediate predecessor, Tassili (2011), it includes some contributions from Western musicians:  Josh Klinghoffer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Matt Sweeney on guitars, and Nashville’s Fats Kaplin, who plays fiddle on “Imidiwan Ahi Tifhamam” (Friends, Understand Me) and pedal steel on several other songs, but this time their presence seems unobtrusive.  Emmaar is not characterized by gloom or despair, in spite of the dire situation back home.  “Toumast Tincha” (The People Have Been Sold Out), the opener, has a resolute stateliness to its steely guitar melody, even as the lyrics depict a no-win situation.  Some of the new twists for the band can be characterized as lighthearted or fleet-footed numbers in 3/4 or 6/8 time, such as “Chaghaybou,” a praise song, or “Imidiwan Ahi Tifhamam,” which is about a now-vanished female partner of desire.  By contrast, “Timadrit in Sahara” (Youth of the Sahara) is a lumbering, ominous tune promising that the people of the desert will catch up in weapons capability with those who have wreaked havoc on their land.

Sample song  “Toumast Tincha”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFtmB2U3Clo

49.    THE MACCABEES, Marks to Prove It (Fiction Records/Universal Music, 2015)—The fourth and, alas, final record from the Maccabees has plenty to recommend it, most of all the title track, which kicks off the disc.  It is a busy, buzzy depiction of life in the vicinity of the band’s Elephant & Castle studio and a throwback to the guitar-led “lad” bands of the first British invasion, melodiously compelling but also laced with the descending-scale harmonic figures the band seems to love.  The album has more of these (“Spit It Out”); however, it also contains songs with a measure of reserve and experimentation, with offbeat timbres and textures that resemble their compatriots Gomez in that band’s heyday, a bit more than a decade earlier than this release, for example, “WW1 Portraits” or “Slow Sun.”  “Ribbon Road,” a midtempo rocker with brisk 6/8 rhythm patterns underlying it, shifts moods on a knife edge, sometimes within the same phrase.  “River Song” gathers a collection of antique instruments, à la Arcade Fire (see #35 above).

Sample song  “Marks to Prove It”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Kt3aN6Ey8w

50.    WEVAL, The Weight (Kompakt, 2019)—A certain chameleon quality appertains to the music of Amsterdam-based Weval, whose name is shortened from the Dutch word for “waterfall,” waterval.  The Weight is moody throughout, and there are times when its interiority would feel right at home on a disc by Thom Yorke and Radiohead (see #17 above), as with the furtive, downcast “Someday” or “Are You Even Real.”  However, Merijn Scholte Albers, one of the two men behind Weval, admits to being deeply influenced by trip-hop, and the breakbeats sliding under “Someday” are not something one is likely to find in any Radiohead recording.  The other partner, Harm Coolen, has tastes running more to house music and jazz.  While there are guitars on several tracks, the album is synthesizer heavy, and the band members splice in their own vocals but use outsiders for a couple of songs, KW Toering for the muddy-toned yet sunny “Are You Even Real” and Romy Dya for the austere, brittle “Silence on the Wall.”  “Heaven, Listen” is one of the record’s shortest tracks, but it packs a remarkable rhythmic variety and complexity into its three minutes, while “Same Little Thing” contains the album’s funkiest rhythm tracks.  Aside from being expert electronic sound collagists, Albers and Coolen display a wealth of compositional ingenuity.

Sample song  “Someday”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-wEvzqdDZg

51.    JUANA MOLINA, Wed 21 (Crammed Discs, 2013)—As is typical for releases by Juana Molina, Wed 21, named for the date on the calendar when she finished writing the last song, has a furtive quality, aspects of dark fantasy, and repeating motivic elements that roll out quickly.  It is less trancelike than others because, for one, it has intelligible lyrics (apart from one refrain in English, entirely in Spanish) and is more guitar driven.  Its spell is less powerful than that of Un Día (2008) or Halo (see #4 above). Yet, even for songs that seem largely unremarkable in their cast, as they grow woolier and more unrestrained, the atmospheric magic Molina is so practiced at conjuring insinuates itself into the listener’s consciousness.  “Lo Decidí Yo” (I Decided) is notable for its energetic, tight syncopations and fuzzy, spluttering electronic accompaniment.  “Eras” (You Were) is an exemplary scene setter, fugitive yet bopping along on the crest of its 7/4 time signature.  Molina’s affectless voice is less zombie-like in the context of the chiaroscuro effects she devises to surround it.  “El Oso de la Guarda (The Guardian Bear) has the same combination of mysticism and rubbery beats as elsewhere but adds an interlude of bright guitar psychedelia.

 

Sample song  “Lo Decidí Yo”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76gXv0SbTcI

52.    CANT, Dreams Come True (Terrible Records, 2011)—The bassist for Grizzly Bear (see #2 above), Chris Taylor, put out Dreams Come True as a solo project, as CANT (his initials), showing off an ample stylistic range and capably smooth tenor.  Other musicians play keyboards and drums.  It is an unassuming yet lively disc.  The starter song, “Too Late, Too Far,” has a rolling/shuffling beat and a funky vibe that plays against its sense of tension and foreboding, fed by what sounds like a mournful, rain forest piccolo.  “The Answer,” stylistically similar, is shifty and moody, starting out with a film noir slinkiness; eventually, its dance beat becomes almost bombastic, surrounded by clangorous trappings.  The title track is the noisiest and most electronics heavy on the album, with a punchy rhythm pattern, screechy resonances, and verse that is growled rather than sung.  Lest you get too comfortable….  As with early Grizzly Bear releases, some of the material is too mannered or soporific for its own good, but Taylor mostly steers clear of those traps by changing directions midstream or subverting expectations.

Sample song  “Too Late, Too Far”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEuHXM8VNjc

53.    GANG GANG DANCE, Kazuashita (4AD, 2018)—The entrancing psychedelic collage that Gang Gang Dance has confected made the seven-year wait since the band’s prior release (see #33 above) worthwhile.  The album is structured as seven full-fledged compositions with three shorter interludes.  However beatific the music waxes, there is a more disturbing message underneath, although just what that message might be is muddied by Lizzi Bougatsos’s muffling of her own lyrics.  Besides, the interview snippets used in various instances are not always easy to decipher, whether protest poetry by one of Robert Mapplethorpe’s set or declarations of native American pride and defiance.  Gang Gang Dance, as its name implies, is known for dance music, but Kazuashita, which is said to mean “peace tomorrow” in Japanese, often slows things down and is uncharacteristically pacific (as on “Lotus”).  The title track, however, is more of a classic club track (following a subdued intro), with danceable beats, big flourishes, and sonic shimmers.  “J-TREE” wraps stretchy, dotted-note-rhythm chords around an angelic theme.  “Too Much, Too Soon” is winsome if repetitive, while “Salve on the Sorrow” is, appropriately, soothing and benedictory to close things out.

Sample song†  “J-TREE”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8uWfxhdaek

54.    ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER, Replica (Software Recording Company/Mexican Summer, 2011)—For Replica, Daniel Lopatin had no overriding concept, unlike for Age of (see #38), so the record is more about showing what can be done creatively with sampling, of old television commercials for the most part.  He makes use primarily of a Roland synthesizer, incorporating external sound samples and arranging via multitracking software.  The electronic processing of voices from TV yields eerie distortions, similar to what the dubstep producer Burial has often done.  The range of moods and timbres captured by these methods is eye-opening (or ear-opening), going from hazy and lethargic (“Andro”) to punchy and spiky (“Up”; “Child Soldier”).  “Sleep Dealer” features recurring sighing, juxtaposed with electronic bleeps, throbbing bouts of percussion, half-heard voices, and a playful melodic phrase at intervals.  “Submersible” is the most cinematic composition, a tone poem that lends itself to ready visualization of the titular object in motion.

Sample song†  “Sleep Dealer”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leRlxHlm-nI

55.    POND, Tasmania (Spinning Top Records/Caroline Australia, 2019)—The most environmentally conscious album this Aussie fivesome has made (in its short career) has lead singer Nick Allbrook musing, in the title track, “I might go and shack up in Tasmania/before the ozone goes and paradise burns in Australia,” just before the continent suffered its deadliest round of wildfires yet.  Despite the seriousness of the band’s concern, the first half of this record has an easy-stepping, white-boy funkiness to it, apart from the earnestness of the opening song, “Daisy.”  After soaring early, Tasmania loses some altitude and focus in its latter stages, but not by enough to ground it.  “Burnt Out Star” reprises the lyric from “Tasmania” and extends the ecological metaphors via a sequence of long keyboard tones and chiming, with a groovy, spacy coda.  Under the production guidance of Kevin Parker of Tame Impala (see #44 above), Pond is free to pursue what it does best, serving up questing, entertaining psychedelic pop.

Sample song  “Daisy”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap2gStsDZZo

56.    SPC ECO, Anomalies (Saint Marie Records, 2016)—Although this band, whose weird name is supposed to be pronounced as “space echo,” is commonly described as shoegaze, Anomalies is not a conventional shoegazing record, drawing on other traditions as well.  The ethos is one of moodiness and introspection, but with accessible hooks in the song choruses.  The lineup is unusual as a father-daughter team, uniting Dean Garcia, who played with the Eurythmics, on all instruments and in charge of song composition, with Rose Berlin, singer and lyricist.  Her voice matches the music’s beauty; the same cannot be said for the head-scratching lyrics, which shoot for profundity and fall well shy.  The seductive opening tune, “Out of My System,” establishes the template for the record, throbbing and crepuscular, as the narrator tries to purge herself of a collapsed romance.  “Think Twice” strives for the anomie of Portishead, but without the febrile quavering of Beth Gibbons’s voice and with no breakbeats, it is more downtempo than trip-hop; that takes nothing away from the song’s visceral tug, however.  The final number, “Lost in a Crowd,” makes a gesture toward the minimalist experimentation of other Londoners like Mica Levi or Matthew Herbert.

Sample song  “Think Twice”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YHoTbC3SXw

57.    BAT FOR LASHES, The Haunted Man (EMI/Capitol Records, 2012)—The eleven songs on The Haunted Man are, with the exception of the title track, tightly focused, self-contained mini-universes of rock-infused pop.  The album dwells at the edge of fantasy and superstition, yet, in the classic English tradition, it remains grounded in the here and now.  Its most memorable tune is its primary single, “Laura,” the only song for which Natasha Khan had a co-writer, Justin Parker; it sounds wistfully downcast but rises to a passionate denouement in the chorus.  “Lilies” effectively plays off its dreamy stop-time intro and verse against a stately orchestral theme in the refrain.  “Oh Yeah,” a soft shuffle, is about as pure an expression of sexual ecstasy as one is likely to find in today’s pop, great washes of synthesizer smothering its male choral accompaniment.  The record’s second half falters in trying to keep up the visceral intensity of the first, yet even the artistic shortcomings are in some ways intriguing.

Sample song  “Laura”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UznHTBZIa8E

58.    TIM HECKER, Virgins (Kranky/Paper Bag Records, 2013)—Qualitatively, Virgins is much like the purely abstract electronica of Tim Hecker’s previous record, Ravedeath, 1972 (see #21 above), although it bears some similarities as well to Brian Eno and Robert Fripp’s collaborations in the 1970s.  The label, Paper Bag Records, described the music as “out of time, out of tune and out of phase,” referring to the electronic manipulation of tone and phase shifting.  There is one major departure from Ravedeath in that live instruments were used, primarily fellow Canadian Kara-Lis Coverdale on keyboards and Iceland’s Grímur Helgason on woodwinds.  There are long passages in which motifs are reiterated obsessively, while gradually the ground beneath them is stretched or displaced; there is plenty in the way of overtones, reverb, distortions, buzzing bass hum.  This all sounds overly cerebral or clinical, and yet, the chord changes that unfold partway into “Live Room” beneath Coverdale’s plinking ostinato produce a powerful tidal pull, marking the album’s emotional core.  On Virgins, Hecker continues to make a convincing case for his treatment of minimalism.

Sample song†  “Live Room”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k-tRbEW-Rc

59.    STARS, The North (Soft Revolution Records/ATO Records, 2012)—At least obliquely, The North is a tribute to the band’s Canadian homeland, though the boreal sensibility is not treated directly beyond the title track’s refrain:  “It’s so cold in this country/October to May.”  These are, as is customary for Stars, stories of youthful romance and setbacks, grit and determination and tough lessons learned through experience, pulling off the trick of seeming both earthy and transcendent.  Nothing on The North is really outstanding, but the quality and sophistication of the songwriting are maintained throughout, reaching a summit of characteristic sublimity with “Progress”:  as Amy Millan intones, “You could be the one to kill mundane,” shades of gray from the verse’s wintry imagery transform to pearlescent, the sun breaking through via a soaring chorus, radiating warmth and new expectation.  “The 400” speaks of souls sundered by distance, turning to quiet desperation at the chorus, with the line “It has to go right this time” amid reverberant piano chords, grainy guitar tremolo, and a touch of harp.  The volubly titled “Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It” turns humdrum advice-column dross into a free-swinging chorus, as Torquil Campbell answers Millan’s high, silvered plaint, “What do I do when I get lonely?”

Sample song  “Hold On When You Get Love and Let Go When You Give It”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaRQV9vcIRs

60.    CRYSTAL CASTLES, Crystal Castles [III] (Polydor/Universal Music, 2012)—More dance oriented than the previous release from Crystal Castles (see #29 above), the third album is more thematically unified as well, in that its grim, haunted ethos is relentlessly maintained.  For all that, it is less of a standout.  The balances seem off, as Alice Glass’s voice, notwithstanding its frequent resort to shrillness, is overwhelmed by Ethan Kath’s arrangements.  These de-emphasize videogame-derived effects and laptops in favor of synthesizers and keyboard filigree, though noise gating and pitch manipulation still take place.  The Goth tone is established from the outset with the song “Plague,” in which the bacillus itself chillingly becomes narrator, and is sustained through the moody (“Mercenary”), the noisy (“Insulin”), and the funereal and creepy (“Transgender”).  The culmination is the final song, “Child I Will Hurt You”; a glittering assemblage of arpeggios, chimes, and choral sighs, its wintry beauty is beguiling, but the lyric is sinister, delivering a terrible, icy fate to the wayward like Father Frost.

Sample song  “Sad Eyes”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjAdfDrh8v0

61.    BROKEN BELLS, Broken Bells (Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment, 2010)—The self-titled debut is an easygoing, well-crafted pop record by two veterans who, coming from different backgrounds, have melded their contributions into something genuinely new.  Danger Mouse (Brian Burton) was one-half of Gnarls Barkley, and he teams up with James Mercer of the Shins for Broken Bells.  The song that kicks off the recording, “The High Road,” is the prizewinner, an ingratiating slice of bluesy rock with a downtempo feel that ends with a “trio” section only tangentially related to the rest.  But “The Ghost Inside,” with Mercer in falsetto register, and “Trap Doors” are replete with appealing hooks as well.  “Your Head on Fire” is a throwback to breathy sixties pop groups.  Though it goes down smoothly, the album does not completely lack for ambition:  the final two tracks strive for more complexity, “Mongrel Heart” with a direr tone and elaborate, Spanish-style trumpet–led bridge section; “The Mall & Misery” with a bleak keyboard line and clangorous, jagged guitar attacks in the manner of the Gang of Four from several decades earlier.

Sample song  “The High Road”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWBG1j_flrg

62.    ACTRESS, R.I.P (Honest Jon’s Records, 2012)—Without ever becoming forbiddingly conceptual, R.I.P (never mind where the third period went) tends toward the experimental end of the electronica spectrum.  A smattering of the songs, such as “Shadow from Tartarus” and “The Lord’s Graffiti,” have danceable beats, but Actress (Darren Cunningham), who has a background as a DJ and producer, did not intend this to be a dance album.  “Marble Plexus,” a furtive-sounding track with a loping, deep bass motor and an insistent, high-pitched clanking, is a highlight, as is the time signature–warping, note-bending, sullen “Tree of Knowledge.”  The final entry, “Iwaad,” moves into dubstep territory and would feel right at home in nightclubs.  The repetitiveness of the motivic elements in these compositions sometimes cries out for relief, and there is a cold and clinical quality to the production setting, yet, in all this is a pleasantly accessible record.

Sample song†  “Shadow from Tartarus”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KayDmuELMHQ

63.    LA VIDA BOHÈME, Nuestra (Nacional Records/RED Distribution, 2010)—From the start of “Radio Capital,” the vibrant rocker that leads off Nuestra, the resemblance to Interpol is arresting:  the jangly guitars, the dance-friendly percussion (wood block and drums) patterns, the frenetic urgency impelling the music.  Nothing that follows is as exhilarating, but several other songs likewise could pass as a Spanish-language Interpol, or Radio 4, or the Rapture, or another postpunk revival band:  “Danz,” “Calle Barcelona” (Barcelona Street), “Huxley,” “Nicaragua.”  A few other songs are in shoegaze mode, or at least partly so.  Still others are louder and have a harder edge to them, such as “El Sentimiento Ha Muerto” (The Feeling Has Died) or “El Buen Salvaje” (The Good Savage), which was adopted by EA Sports for its FIFA 12 soccer game.  Henry D’Arthenay, the lead singer and guitarist, does not have a tremendous voice, but he does not really need to in this context, surrounded by a powerful battery of guitars and drums.  In the final analysis, there are far worse things than sounding like Interpol.

Sample song  “Radio Capital”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9gb9SsO_O8

64.    GOLDFRAPP, Silver Eye (Mute, 2017)—Ever dependable as a purveyor of swingy, knowingly hip music, Goldfrapp did not miss a beat with its seventh studio record.  Although Silver Eye has its share of bright, danceable pop, notably, the song at the top of the tracklist, “Anymore,” Alison Goldfrapp (voice and keyboards) and Will Gregory (synths) take a turn toward the darker and more introspective, giving the album a more futuristic, even dystopian, dimension than anything in the band’s prior catalog.  For this, they solicited the help of producers John Congleton and Bobby Krlic, who records as the Haxan Cloak.  “Zodiac Black” is the most sinister-sounding track, with Alison Goldfrapp’s voice assuming a tense urgency above ominous bass chords; its brooding and suspense is recaptured in the final song, “Ocean,” powerful crescendos giving way to sudden silence.  “Beast that Never Was” and “Moon in Your Mouth” also partake of the somber and reflective, offsetting the peppier pieces such as “Become the One” or “Systemagic.”  Magic is a recurring theme on the record, and even if Silver Eye never reaches true profundity, it is plenty spellbinding enough.

Sample song  “Anymore”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2euqyXXjmAo

65.    MATMOS, Ultimate Care II (Thrill Jockey Records, 2016)—How much mileage can one get out of sounds emanating from a washing machine?  If one has the imagination of Drew Daniel and M. C. Schmidt, enough to fill an entire album and make it entertaining as well.  The album begins and ends with the sounds of the Whirlpool’s (model:  Ultimate Care II) basic functions, concluding with the buzzer that alerts the user that the cycle is finished.  In between, the machine’s noises are manipulated via samplers, software, and MIDI.  Since most of the racket made by a washer is the thumping of the agitator, the music is naturally percussive in nature, but Matmos was not content just to sample the machine’s organic functions; the pair also beat on it with sticks and rubbed objects against it for friction.  As with Plastic Anniversary (see #24 above), this raises questions of whether that constitutes “cheating.”  But the friction effects yield elephantine cries or sounds comparable to Teletype chatter, a Brazilian cuíca drum, even an African mbira (thumb piano).  About two-thirds in, the reverberant long notes coalesce into a sublime tone poem lasting several minutes.  Though some will find the record contrived, its restless spirit and sheer inventiveness make for a stimulating listen throughout.

Sample song  [excerpt five from the album’s single track]:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukqOGGJqtZM

66.    DEBO BAND, Debo Band (Sub Pop Records, 2012)—The Ethiopian diaspora music of Debo Band is invariably a hybrid, but then, so was the “Ethio-jazz” of Mulatu Astatke and his contemporaries from the 1960s and 1970s that inspired it.  Debo (Amharic for “collective effort”) is centered on wind player Danny Mekonnen, with Bruck Tesfaye on vocals; the other nine band members are do not have Horn of Africa origins but are Boston-area musicians steeped in folk and klezmer, among other traditions.  Debo has an energetic, at times funky, horn sound, but one thing that sets it apart are the dueling violins (one electric, one conventional) heard on some tracks.  The traditional “Akale Wube” is reimagined via strident horn charts that conjure very different, West African–rooted bands, the Budos Band or Antibalas, for example.  One hears the peculiar “pentatonic” scales of classical Ethiopian music in “Ney Ney Weleba” or “Yefeker Wegagene.”  “Medinanna Zelesegna” is striking in its Middle Eastern sensibility, a rhythmless incanation set to droning strings, a reminder of how much cultural exchange has taken place across the Red Sea/Gulf of Aden.  These are traditional tunes or date from the “golden age” of Astatke and peers, but the best of the original Debo Band compositions is “Habesha,” in which the brass/saxes and guitar/strings do a delicate dance of triplets around each other, ultimately building to a furious horn climax, attempting to convey the delight an Ethiopian or Eritrean abroad feels on seeing one of his or her ethnic counterparts out on the street.

Sample song†  “Asha Gedawo”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T6cGZrf2nQ

67.    GWENNO, Y Dydd Olaf (Heavenly Recordings/PIAS, 2015)—Gauzy dream pop, with hints of psychedelia, Y Dydd Olaf (The Last Day), Gwenno’s first full-length solo record, is also sung entirely in Welsh, except for the final song, “Amser” (Time), written by her father, the poet Tim Saunders, in Cornish.  With no translations to English offered by the label, the meanings will be lost on most listeners.  The combination of breezy tempos, plush accompaniment, and aura of mysticism comes together brilliantly on “Chwyldro” (Revolution) to lead things off and continues into “Patriachaeth” (Patriarchy) and on to “Fratolish Hiang Perpeshki” (this is a nonsense title) in the album’s second half.  The trancelike, faraway settings of the quieter songs (the instrumental intro to “Sisal y Môr” [The Whispering Sea] is like a crystalline cave of wonders) perfectly frame Gwenno’s airy soprano.  Though the latter portion of the disc is less captivating, “Amser” is a breathy, soothing, yet also aching ballad.

Sample song  “Chwyldro”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CldPv3-VHmM

68.    SLEIGH BELLS, Jessica Rabbit (Torn Clean/Sinderlyn, 2016)—As tempting as it is to say that Sleigh Bells “doesn’t do subtlety,” subtlety nonetheless creeps in unexpectedly on Jessica Rabbit.  The band is looking to do more than it has previously, and if there are a few misfires along the way, that is pardonable in light of the raised ambitions.  The turn toward greater lyricism is an added bonus.  On a song like “I Can Only Stare”—yes, it is loud and overwrought, but there is still a heart-tugging quality to the way in which Derek Miller harmonizes Alexis Krauss’s melodramatic cries.  “Baptism by Fire,” “I Can’t Stand You Anymore,” and “Torn Clean”—all have surprisingly songful choruses by the standards of this band, and “I Know Not to Count on You,” with Miller accompanying on acoustic guitar for once, is expressive enough that it could find its way onto a movie soundtrack.  Meantime, “Hyper Dark” beckons toward house music, while “Loyal for” uses breakbeats in trip-hop fashion.  Of the more complicated tracks, “Lightning Turns Sawdust Gold” is the most successful and pleasurable, even if its bridge section is cluttered and an awkward fit with the rest.  Jessica Rabbit may be an unruly menagerie, but it is full of brightly colored and fascinating beasts.

Sample song  “I Can Only Stare”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZAJeYzrtUY

69.    JULIA HOLTER, Ekstasis (RVNG International, 2012)—Even as far back as her sophomore recording, Julia Holter was flashing certain danger signs of preciousness, yet that aspect of her performance is largely kept in check on Ekstasis (whose Greek title can mean the state of being out of control).  For all the plainchant and moaning/sighing of “Our Sorrows” or the mincing, chanson-style vocals of “Moni, Mon Amie,” there are a number of songs that lift the album well beyond the arty and contrived to true artfulness.  “Marienbad,” with a view back to the famed Alain Resnais film, has ghostly, echoey resonances u;ndulating, arpeggiated organ triplets; and a concluding section in which Holter’s voice mimics a trumpet fanfare.  “Für Felix” and “Four Gardens” are Asian inflected; the former in particular, with its Indian drone, is like a Ravel Orientalist chamber fantasy.  The two pieces titled “Goddess Eyes” are variants on the same divine processional, the first one (which actually comes second on the tracklist) being a stripped-down version of the second.  At her best when not affecting the mannerisms of Edith Piaf, or the choral settings of Hildegard of Bingen, or the styles of Tori Amos or Laurie Anderson, Holter shows ample creative spark just by being Julia Holter, the original.

Sample song  “Marienbad”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QukVgY8I_nA

70.    ALCEST, Spiritual Instinct (Nuclear Blast Records, 2019)—Having flirted with the shoegazing style on Shelter (2014), the French dyad of Neige (Stéphane Paut) and Winterhalter (Jean Deflandre) moved closer to their origins in black metal; in fact, some credit them with inventing a hybrid genre, “blackgaze.”  I do not care for Neige’s Bob Mould–like screaming, which is incorporated into all six of the rather lengthy tracks on Spiritual Instinct, but the orchestration is usually loud enough to provide some cover.  Especially strong are the opener, “Les Jardins de Minuit” (The Gardens of Midnight), with its thrumming bass that will echo in your ears for minutes afterward, as well as foreboding long tones and a wailing electric guitar theme; and the pounding, midtempo “Le Miroir” (The Mirror), with icy beauty dripping from its harmonic accompaniment.  The harder edge and the Sturm und Drang theatrics of this record are Alcest working in its true element, even if some of the main themes are pallid or underdeveloped (and the vocals are overkill).  The music has a fundamental integrity in its brooding disposition and rocks powerfully, honing the blade of its gleaming metal.

Sample song  “Protection”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tn7wvu8R4Wk

71.    LILA DOWNS, Pecados y Milagros (Sony Music Entertainment Mexico, 2011)—For her seventh studio album, Mexican/American singer Lila Downs chose to shuffle the deck and intersperse her own work with Mexican standards, folk tunes, and other, less well-known songs.  The Mexican source material on Pecados y Milagros (Sins and Miracles) is heavy on the slow weepies.  Best known is Tomás Méndez’s lovesick ballad “Cucurrucucú Paloma,” originally sung by Pedro Infante and since covered by a host of famous singers, in which Downs gets to show off her quasi-falsetto in imitation of a cooing dove.  Schmaltzier sobbing comes with the Marco Antonio Solís (of the band Los Bukis) tune “Tu Cárcel” (Your Jail Cell).  Notable traditional songs revived here include the ranchera “Vámonos,” with its characteristic oompah rhythm imported from Central Europe, the decorous nineteenth-century waltz “Dios Nunca Muere” (God Never Dies), and the Nahuatl folk tune “Xochipitzahua” (Little Flower).  The six songs that Downs composed together with her husband, Paul Cohen, tend to be faster and livelier.  “La Reyna del Inframundo” (Queen of the Underworld) has the rhythm of a corrido, a high-stepping and accordion-driven polka.  Both “Palomo del Comalito” (Dove of the Cooking Pan), swept up in colorful Amerindian pageantry, and “Zapata Se Queda” (Zapata Remains), a cumbia that uses the life of Mexico’s most famous revolutionary as inspiration to guide one’s own, and on which Downs shares the vocals with Colombia’s Totó la Momposina, have an anthemic feel to them.

Sample song  “Zapata Se Queda” (with Totó la Momposina and Celso Piña):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beuRgIqxTnY

72.    KHRUANGBIN, Con Todo el Mundo (Night Time Stories/Dead Oceans, 2018)—Mellow, largely instrumental, with Spanish-inspired guitar work from Mark Speer, “like Santana on Quaaludes,” Khruangbin’s second L.P. is almost too smooth for its own good.  There are also sprinklings of Middle Eastern or Asian exoticism, particularly in “Shades of Man,” psychedelic or surf guitar touches, and more than a dash of funk.  In fact, the songs lacking in funk suffer for it, as “Cómo Te Quiero” (How Much Do I Love You), “Friday Morning,” and “A Hymn” veer close to easy listening.  At the opposite end of the funkometer is the tightly coiled, bass-powered “Evan Finds the Third Room.”  On this song and a few others, Laura Lee’s whispery vocals are subsumed in the musical flow.  The hushed psychedelia of the opening track, “Cómo Me Quieres” (How Much Do You Love Me), represents the album at its unassuming best.  One might wish for more rhythmic variety than the loping gait that is the default meter, or for more visceral thrills than Con Todo el Mundo (With Everyone, or With All the World) offers, but its velvety torpor is certainly complaisant.

Sample song  “Cómo Me Quieres”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHzIl82165g

73.    BUCK CURRAN, Immortal Light (Obsolete Recordings/ESP-Disk, 2016)—Ethereal, spiritual, mystical, yet with a pungent earthiness, acoustic guitarist Buck Curran’s “solo” disc—his wife at the time and partner in Arborea, Shanti Deschaine, backs his singing and is integral to the album’s sound—is a throwback to the late 1960s, trading in psychedelic folk with progressive rock accents.  Four of the eight tracks have lyrics, drinking deeply from the well of fantasy, with themes of nature, the heavens, traveling.  The exception is the lone cover, that of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Bad Moon Rising” (1969), and even that deals in celestial signs; Curran’s take is quieter and more oracular than the original.  “New Moontide” sets the scene for the record, relating a journey of heroes evocative of Strauss or Wagner in Curran’s tenebrous baritone; it is Deschaine’s owlishly sighing backing vocals, though, that give the song its haunting quality.  “Seven Gardens to Your Shore” is similarly earnest, questing, and enigmatic.  The last two tracks on the disc are harmonium drones, “Andromeda” and “Immortal Light,” but the title track features Deschaine on vocals alone, with Curran splicing plucky, note-bending, sitar-like metaphysical ruminations in between her verses.

Sample song†  “New Moontide” (with Shanti Deschaine):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwW3J6YmnNc

74.    FLIGHT FACILITIES, Down to Earth (Future Classic, 2014)—Breezy and effervescent as an airline cocktail, Down to Earth is the first, and to date only, full-length studio album from the Sydney producer tandem Hugo Gruzman and James Lyell, colloquially known as Hugo & Jimmy.  It is not damning with faint praise to describe this as a well-crafted dance pop album, featuring a long roster of guest performers, mostly fellow Australians.  The best-known of these cuts, “Crave You,” sung by Giselle (Rosselli), actually dates to four years earlier, but here it is packaged with a second, much shorter, a cappella version courtesy of Kylie Minogue, and even with this tiny showcase, Minogue’s magnetism is evident.  Other highlights among the guest singer tracks are Reggie Watts (later the leader of the house band for The Late Late Show with James Corden) delivering a suitably funky, loose-limbed, falsetto swing number, “Sunshine”; the overt sexiness of Owl Eyes (Brooke Addamo) on a yearning, poignant melody with “Heart Attack”; the suavely seductive “Two Bodies” from Emma Louise (Lobb); and the blue-eyed soul and dreamy arrangements of “Clair de Lune,” with Christine Hoberg.  These are nice, but the two outstanding compositions on the record are both instrumentals:  “Waking Bliss” is a cool, serene meditation set to sustained string sounds and a bass groove; “Merimbula” is an extended drum-and-bass track with a “jungle” feel, sampling various voices and deftly layering them amid synthesizer chords that add another dimension of depth and feeling.

Sample song  “Crave You” (featuring Giselle):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0bS-YnLf4s

75.    PUBLIC SERVICE BROADCASTING, Inform, Educate, Entertain (Test Card Recordings, 2013)—The most eclectic of the three full-length Public Service Broadcasting records to date (see #16 and #40 above), the debut is a curated amalgam of movie passages, bits of public service announcements, educational filmstrips, and advertising.  The archival nature of the group’s electronica can suggest Kraftwerk or Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (O.M.D.).  Some of the offerings register musically as little more than quasi-automated factory pop ditties, but “Spitfire,” “Night Mail,” “The Now Generation,” and “Everest” aspire to a swinginess that transcends the anodyne.  The band’s chief songwriter, who styles himself as “J. Willgoose, Esq.,” is clever in his compositional craft—“Spitfire” soars and swoops in a way that recalls O.M.D.’s “Enola Gay” (1980)—and does not lack for humor:  the fusty, dated mod-ish “Now Generation,” narrating a fashion show, is sure to bring a grin, if not a guffaw.  “Theme from PSB” and “ROYGBIV” feature banjo breaks from Willgoose.  A few tracks—“Qomolangma” (the Tibetan word for Mount Everest), “Late Night Final,” and “Lit Up”—slow things down, and “Lit Up” is particularly effective as an atmospheric piece describing how ships moored in the dark are “lit up like fairy lamps.”

Sample song  “Night Mail”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFJPYi3JXw4

76.    JOE SATRIANI, Shockwave Supernova (Legacy Recordings/Sony Music Entertainment, 2015)—A guitar teacher before he was a star performer, Joe Satriani has gone on tour with some of the most famous rock acts in the world and has issued more than a dozen records on his own.  Shockwave Supernova is a power trip that toys with guitar-god iconography without overplaying its hand.  There are, naturally, plenty of six-string pyrotechnics, never more so than on the title track, but they are harnessed in service of the compositions, which are all his originals and entirely instrumental.  Though they can sometimes sound pedestrian, songs with slouchy or relaxed tempos are the alternate mode for Satriani, contrasting with the explosive intensity and percussive heaviness of the showier pieces.  The progressive rock leanings of keyboardist Mike Keneally set up a striking dynamic:  ripping guitar attacks from the bandleader versus Mellotron-like synths.  “On Peregrine Wings” is another burner, with some excellent sonic distortion, and “A Phase I’m Going through” and “Scarborough Stomp” also rate as strong entries.  Of the more contemplative numbers, some of which have a bluesy feel, “Goodbye Supernova,” the farewell track, is the best, its sublime astral serenity tinged (or singed) with regret.

Sample song  “Shockwave Supernova”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dug-YEIvoe8

77.    POND, Man It Feels Like Space Again (Caroline International, 2015)—The psychedelic aspect of Pond’s music is somewhat downplayed on Man It Feels Like Space Again, which, though plenty trippy, is more of a variety act, comprising everything from folk to funk.  “Waiting Around for Grace” is a springy, catchy, vaguely retro, guitar-driven number with a flight of prog-rock fantasy toward the end.  “Elvis’ Flaming Star” and the slightly bluesier “Zond” are also straightforward rock.  The spirit of Sly and the Family Stone imbues “Outside Is the Right Side” with jangly guitar funk and some sun-splashed synth chords.  “Heroic Shart” is the most characterisitcally psychedelic tune, full of reverb, acid-washed fuzztones, and mystical/portentous chord progressions.  However, the tour de force is the elaborate finale, “Man It Feels Like Space Again,” as much a suite as a single song, lugubrious at times but wafted into the ether by the airiness of its unfolding, plaintive melody, with a mind-warping, neo-psychedelic opening (and closing) theme.

Sample song  “Man It Feels Like Space Again”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNbPg6zKmPI

78.    LOW, Double Negative (Sub Pop Records, 2018)—Slow paced and low fi, with ample distortion and fuzz, Double Negative demonstrates that beautiful things can emerge from muddy bottoms.  The dubstep-like clipped phrasings and truncations of sound and other heavy production effects by producer BJ Burton partially mask accessible melodies, most insistently in “Always Trying to Work It Out.”  A tune like this is a ray of sunshine cutting through the smoggy anomie that is the album’s substrate.  While much of the playlist lumbers at a trudging pace, the percussion is more booming in the songs that almost bookend the record:  “Dancing and Blood” and “Rome (Always in the Dark),” the latter so funereal as to call forth the gods of heavy metal.  But it is the chiaroscuro contrast between sung verse and turgid setting that makes the album an impressive achievement, typified by “Fly,” in which Mimi Parker’s tentative, aspirational melody struggles for liftoff like a fledgling albatross against a weakly throbbing bass and dour piano chords.  At times the ponderousness and the many layers of electronic processing can be off-putting, yet there is a genuine majesty to Low’s accomplishment here.

Sample song  “Always Trying to Work It Out”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m31A4ZGss0

79.    LES BIG BYRD, Iran Iraq Ikea (PNKSLM Recordings, 2018)—Coming at you like a European version of the Flaming Lips, the goofily titled Iran Iraq Ikea sits toward the pop end of the psychedelic spectrum.  The second full-length album from Les Big Byrd, a Stockholm foursome, wins out because it does not try to do too much.  Notwithstanding titles like “A Little More Numb” (with its Pink Floyd allusion), “I F**ked Up I Was a Child,” and “I’ve X-ed Myself from Your World,” the record is far too radiant to bother much with alienation or remorse; all those singingly bright major chords pouring forth take the sting out of regret.  The clattering guitars of “I Tried So Hard” are like the Gang of Four on endless repeat, but any frustration evinced is blown away by sheer energy output.  The quasi-instrumental acoustic guitar and synths rumination “I’ve X-ed Myself from Your World” is akin to one of the slower numbers on Pink Floyd’s The Wall (1979), while another acoustic guitar and percussion track, the gently acerbic “Pink Freud,” could serve as an outtake from Crosby, Stills & Nash’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” (1969).  The expressive piano figurations and heart-on-sleeve vocal delivery of “Mannen Utanför” (Man Outside), the only selection sung in Swedish, bear an uncanny resemblance to Arcade Fire.

Sample song  “A Little More Numb”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DuRsMCpkoo

80.    FRENTE CUMBIERO, Frente Cumbiero Meets Mad Professor (Vampi Soul, 2011)—Cumbia has been modernized by a number of Colombian acts, which have added electronics and other outside influences.  One of those is reggae and dub from Jamaica; another is the “Ethio-jazz” of Mulatu Astatke and his peers (which in turn was influenced by Latin music of an earlier era).  Both of those figure on Frente Cumbiero Meets Mad Professor, a project of Colombian bass guitarist and songwriter Mario Galeano Toro.  The record is structured so that the seven cumbia “originals” are presented first and then dub versions of them make up its second half.  Two of the seven have vocals, including the rapping of Shaun Turner on “Ariwacumbé” (named for producer Joe Ariwa) and Bomba Estéreo’s Liliana Saumet on “Analógica.”  But the true highlights are the instrumentals.  To a steady cumbia beat, the winds and horns take solos, in jazz fashion, in between ensemble reiterations of the primary theme, in songs such as “Chucusteady” and “La Bocachico,” the latter showcasing a klezmer-like, note-bending clarinetist, Mario Fajardo.  “Bestiales 77” is an infectiously frenetic, percussive piece whose pacing and accordion-led melody resemble certain styles of music from northeastern Brazil.  “Cumbietíope” incorporates into its rousing, brass-dominant melody the pentatonics of Ethiopian music for a taste of the exotic.

Sample song†  “Chucusteady”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmIV8ZRoeNI

81.    SAMPHA, Process (Young Turks, 2017)—Whereas many of today’s rhythm and blues performers are simply regurgitating musical ideas that were fresh forty or fifty years ago, and sung with more conviction by the leading artists of the day, Sampha (Sisay) is a true original.  He shows that from the start with “Plastic 100°C,” which takes atmosphere-level readings of intimate relations, with a sense of vulnerability, of melting down under the scrutiny of a lover’s gaze.  Its emotional soul baring makes it the standout on Process.  However, the soulful simplicity of “(No One Knows Me) Like the Piano” and “Incomplete Kisses” make them strong entries as well, and deeply personal as well.  The latter operates on two levels:  romantically, in a “gather ye rosebuds” way, and as the cry of a now-grown child yearning for a departed mother.  The former is a recollection of the singer/pianist’s introduction to music as a child, yet the piano also serves as a stand-in for mum (his mother died of cancer a few years before the record was made).  Other songs move away from the sense of personal loss but are still confessional and deeply felt, in Sampha’s signature, constricted tenor voice, whether the subject is facing fear out on the streets (“Blood on Me”) or contending with mutual recriminations among lovers (“Reverse Faults”) and the ensuing regrets.  Process marked a promising debut for a singer who has already appeared in a supporting role on numerous other British musicians’ recordings.

Sample song  “(No One Know Me) Like the Piano”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NSuIYwBxu4

82.    BODEGA, Endless Scroll (What’s Your Rupture?, 2018)—Designed to mirror the real-life experience of dwelling in Brooklyn’s gritty Bushwick neighborhood as it relentlessly gentrifies, the postpunk sound is minimalist (three guitars and a drum kit) and electrically charged.  The band’s social critiques might be a little too scattershot and laced with inside references (“pizza core”?) to hit the mark every time; even so, Bodega is at its best when being punchy and political.  The rock/rap that begins Endless Scroll, “How Did This Happen?” implicates the listener in indifference to social protest and a tendency to allow consumerism to distract from what really matters.  In “Name Escape,” Bodega is poking fun at musical acts and hipster types that, by trying to be “different” in largely the same way, end up utterly unmemorable.  Its target audience can readily relate to songs such as “Can’t Knock the Hustle” or “Bookmarks,” laments about how alienating office work can be or how difficult it is to get by in a place as expensive as New York.  Songs like these work because they have attitude, directness in puncturing pretension, and verve that mask their three-chord nature.  The record incorporates a Siri-like computer voice to add an additional layer of wry commentary.

Sample song  “How Did This Happen?”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKAzK41-YHM

83.    METRIC, Synthetica (Metric Music International/Mom + Pop Music, 2012)—Hardly revelatory or profound in contriving to explore what is real versus what is artificial, Synthetica still is a pleasure, in that each of the first eight songs is strong enough to be a single in its own right.  The three guys backing Emily Haines—James Shaw on synthesizers and lead guitar; Joshua Winstead (bass); Jules Scott-Key (drums)—produce a big sound but one that comes in many guises.  It is buzzy and reverberant in the opener, “Artificial Nocturne,” and in “Dreams So Real,” tricked out with a punchy, Gary Glitter–derived beat and screechy overtone in “Youth without Youth,” full of plaintive, bouzouki-like tremolos in “Speed the Collapse,” powered by a new wave–style motoric bass in “Breathing Underwater” or “Lost Kitten,” thrumming with energy and touched up with cycling keyboard harmonics in the title track.  Playing the kittenish role, or singing in a high register, is not something that comes naturally to the earnest Haines, but she pulls it off convincingly in the singsong “Lost Kitten,” the most playful song on a rather heavy-footed disc.  Lou Reed, nearing the end of his life as it turned out, adds little as invited guest with his interjections in the song’s refrain to “The Wanderlust.”

Sample song  “Synthetica”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6h_WPICwr8

84.    BROADCAST, Berberian Sound Studio: Original Soundtrack (Warp Records, 2013)—Monastic, creepy, beautiful, icy, alarming, and disturbing, Broadcast’s soundtrack to the 2012 Peter Strickland horror film Berberian Sound Studio is at once a glittering testament to what this U.K. outfit can conjure and also something more likely to be appreciated by the group’s fans than by a general audience.  Taken as a straight-up, stand-alone listening experience, as pure electronica, it can seem slight.  There is one primary melody, often voiced by a flute with arpeggiated keyboard accompaniment that recurs throughout the soundtrack with different settings and arrangements.  Most tracks are mere fragments, some lasting only a few seconds, as is typical for Broadcast, and some are merely snatches of dialogue, some unsettling.  Without the vocals of Trish Keenan, who died before this project could be completed by her musical partner, James Cargill, it is a very different Broadcast.  Nonetheless, the claustrophobic hall-of-mirrors effects, the echoes, the organs and harpsichords and counterpoint, all the little details that make a Broadcast album the enchanted funhouse that it is, work their magic even in the context of a chilly, skin-crawling, fright-night soundtrack.

Sample song†  “The Equestrian Vortex”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOUO9oDlJFg

85.    LCD SOUNDSYSTEM, This Is Happening (DFA/Virgin Records, 2010)—Nothing on This Is Happening is as pulse accelerating or snarkily entertaining as “North American Scum” or as well constructed as “Someone Great” from the album’s predecessor, Sound of Silver (2007).  It comes close with “One Touch,” an electronic cocktail of throbbing strokes, glockenspiel, and repeating keyboard sequences; its in-your-face lyric includes the dismissive line “People who need people are just people who need people.”  “Drunk Girls” is an appropriately rollicking tune to commemorate the Jersey Shore era, with characteristically sardonic commentary from bandleader James Murphy.  “I Can Change” carries an atypically sweet melody for LCD Soundsystem, drawing power from its rich arrangements, with Murphy’s vocal delivery alternating between earnestness and wounding sarcasm.  A David Bowie glam-rock sensibility drives “All I Want.”  Songs like the opening “Dance Yrself Clean” and “You Wanted a Hit” are more drawn out and slow developing and take time to pay dividends.

Sample song  “Drunk Girls”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5uTVqu0bXs

86.    TIM HECKER/DANIEL LOPATIN, Instrumental Tourist (Software/Kemado Records, 2012)—Two specialists in purely instrumental ambient electronica, both Canadian, combine their talents on this sterling, if low-key, recording.  Their approaches and sensibilities differ in their solo work:  Hecker’s vision (see #21 and #58 above) is more uncompromisingly abstract, whereas Lopatin, who records as Oneohtrix Point Never (see #38 and #54 above), is less minimalist and more listener friendly.  It is no cinch to determine where one’s influence starts and the other’s stops; since Instrumental Tourist was recorded on Lopatin’s label (though mixed by Hecker), it is, perhaps inevitably, less monkish than a standard Tim Hecker release.  The opening track, “Uptown Psychedelia,” has the same suspended-in-gelatin feeling as the intro to Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” (1975), minus the crescendo, accentuated by jabbing strings, explosive rumbles, and outcrops of white noise.  “Scenes from a French Zoo” is funereal yet affecting, like a church organist trying out a theme from the Renaissance or early Baroque period, whereas “Vaccination (for Thomas Mann)” brings in washes of choral voices in a pattern that appears fixed at first but becomes untethered over the course of the piece.  “Racist Drone” and “Grey Geisha” take inspiration from Japanese classical music and instrumentation, stark and serene.  When the music comes at you in muffled waves of repetition, as foreboding as a tsunami alert (viz. “Whole Earth Tascam”), that is Hecker at his Heckiest.

Sample song†  “Scenes from a French Zoo”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16BUev37ZgY

87.    FOALS, What Went Down (Transgressive Records/Warner Brothers Records, 2015)—On What Went Down, Foals demonstrates facility across multiple genres without achieving transcendence in any, until the final song, “A Knife in the Ocean.”  That song begins with a tolling of bells, then moves through near a cappella verse, taking its time building to a searing, note-bending refrain.  While the band goes in for sheer volume at times, it never does so gratuitously or at the expense of lyricism or rhythmic light-footedness.  “Albatross” and “Mountain at My Gates” are rhythmically crisp, with fervor in their choruses.  The title track plumps for buzzy-toned garage rock in a tribute of sorts to Iggy and the Stooges, again with a fervent refrain.  “Snake Oil” is a yowler that incorporates the grimy guitar chords and other trappings of American roadhouse blues.  “London Thunder” partakes of the restless, world-weary spirit of Jackson Browne’s dispatches from the tour.  The breezy, relentlessly upbeat “Night Swimmers” sounds like late-period Talking Heads, when David Byrne was borrowing from Brazil and Central and West Africa for musical inspiration.  It all adds up to a little less than the sum of its gleaming components, more skillful facsimile in various idioms than deeply felt but still enjoyable at that level.

Sample song  “A Knife in the Ocean”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-n4U2KZZVs

88.    THE DANDY WARHOLS, Distortland (Dine Alone Records/Beat the World Records, 2016)—Ever droll and fun to follow, the Dandy Warhols are dealing, for at least one song on Distortland—a sideways tribute to the band’s hometown of Portland, Oregon—with the approach of middle age.  In “The Grow Up Song,” bandleader Courtney Taylor bids a sober farewell to all the vices of a rock’n’roll youth, wrapping up with:  “I’ve got to admit/I’m too old for this shit.”  The vocal tracking sounds muddier than on previous Dandy Warhols records, perhaps because of the switch from Capitol Records to a homegrown label, which is unfortunate because the lyrics are vital to an appreciation of the band’s humor.  The boisterous numbers are the most fun, notably the infectious “Pope Reverend Jim,” riding its throbbing, monotone bass.  Also resting on a pumping bass foundation is “You Are Killing Me,” though it does sound as if the narrator is having his last nerve worked, and “All the Girls in London” is a bar blues romp featuring Matthan Minster of Cage the Elephant on Farfisa organ that indulges Taylor’s Anglophilic nostalgia.  Of the gentler pieces, the prize is the deceptively easygoing lament “STYGGO” (Some Things You Gotta Get Over).

Sample song  “Catcher in the Rye”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMZVFrM4PMA

89.    AUTECHRE, Exai (Warp Records, 2013)—The way the compositions on this two-hour-long, double-disc set obsessively work over specific sound patterns can seem a bit much for anyone not a huge fan of mechanistic, abstract electronica.  Yet, there is method to the monomania of these two Englishmen, Rob Brown and Sean Booth, on Exai, so named because it is their eleventh studio album.  Generally, one hears synthesizer drones, processed and sampled in ever-changing ways, sometimes with what passes for a subdued melody on top.  Sometimes, the melody is implied, left to the listener to fill in mentally.  This is all given a sense of motion by drum machines, which reiterate and recombine complex, timbrally textured beats.  Only once on the record can a true rock beat be heard; that powers “recks on,” on the second disc, which comes at you like a metal band’s demo tape, with its muscular, straight-on drumbeat and growling bass intro.  Synthesizer tones can be buzzy as an electric razor (as on “Irlite [Get 0]”), percolating (“T Ess Xi,” “VekoS”), twangy or metallic (“Prac-F,” “11 is”), shimmery (“Jatevee-C”), or full of reverb (“Nodezsh”).  “Deco Loc” is about the only piece to feature human voices, distorted, chopped up, staggered, melded.  The short, repeating cycles are easy enough to grasp; the longer developmental arcs demand more studious listening.  If all this sounds rather bloodless, I would call attention to the final selection, “YJY UX,” which is a gem, showcasing a high-pitched, silvery tone pattern that is wistfully yearning and mysterious throughout, no matter how many sonic manipulations Autechre puts it through in the course of eight-plus minutes.

Sample song†  “recks on”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4znpQmVz9OM

90.    FLYING LOTUS, You’re Dead! (Warp Records, 2014)—As implied by the album title, there is a cartoonish aspect to some of the music, particularly the songs animated by “Captain Murphy,” the rapper alter ego of Steven Ellison’s customary alter ego, Flying Lotus.  The main departure from earlier Flying Lotus discs is the greater emphasis on something approaching space-age free jazz, which necessarily diminishes the primacy of their space-age neo-soul, although that is present in spots, such as the long-ish (for Flying Lotus) “Coronus the Terminator.”  While You’re Dead! is never less than entertaining, it is less cutting-edge than Flying Lotus’s earlier efforts, in that the sax, bass guitar, and drum free-form ramblings are simply not up to the level of professional jazz musicians’ improv sessions.  Herbie Hancock, a jazz legend, makes a couple of contributions, but “Tesla” and “Moment of Hesitation” are both more effervescent than substantive.  The weirdest tracks are the Captain Murphy showcases:  “Dead Man’s Tetris” is a throbbing, bleeping videogame chiptune, with robotic, almost drunkenly deep-pitched rapping from Murphy and Snoop Dogg; “The Boys Who Died in Their Sleep” begins with Murphy multitracking his voice for a basso/falsetto contrast in a diva’s lament about how “someone has to pay the bills,” followed up by a request for pills.  The best of the purely instrumental offerings are the zippy “Cold Dead,” “Turkey Dog Coma,” which alternates punchy outbursts with dreamy stop-time sections, the metronomic “Ready Err Not,” and the sublimely relaxed “Obligatory Cadence” (with a faint trace of backdrop vocals).  Other guest contributors, apart from Flying Lotus’s usual L.A. crew, are Angel Deradoorian (formerly of the Dirty Projectors), Kamasi Washington, Kendrick Lamar, and Jeff Lynne.

Sample song  “Coronus, the Terminator”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ak4vLEBxIo4

91.    TAMARYN, Tender New Signs (Kemado Records/Mexican Summer, 2012)—Musicians whose stock in trade is shoegaze revel in the gauziness of the sound they create; even so, I wish this album were not engineered to be as murky as it is, making the lyrics challenging to parse.  Like Goldfrapp (see #64 above), Tamaryn at this stage was both a person (Tamaryn Brown, a New Zealand expatriate in San Francisco) and a band (the California guitarist Rex John Shelverton played many of the instruments and was her co-writer and producer), though Goldfrapp has remained steady throughout the years, whereas Tamaryn Brown has moved on to other collaborators since.  While chiming guitars and distortion, the hallmarks of shoegaze, are central to Tender New Signs, the music also makes a nod toward goth rock and dream pop.  Pretty much every song on the record has something to engage the ear, even if the songs’ textural similarity leads to a certain monotony when listening straight through.  “The Garden” manages to summon sufficient melodic warmth to cut through the fog, and its stately if drowsy majesty makes it the album’s choice cut.  Contemplative and full of echo-chamber effects, “Transcendent Blue” succeeds in fostering an aura of mystique, at least for a time.  “Violet’s in a Pool,” the closing track, is an exercise in woozy, drawn-out arpeggiation, with the guitars becoming screechier toward the finish.

Sample song  “The Garden”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzuf2P7cjmo

92.    BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, Forgiveness Rock Record (Arts & Crafts, 2010)—The Canadian collective’s fourth studio album is as eclectic as its predecessors, if the quality is not as consistent.  The quasi-Caribbean brashness of “Art House Director,” which gets its kick from a lively horn section, is one of the record’s highlights, along with the hair-metal woolliness of “Water in Hell,” sung by Broken Social Scene cofounder Brendan Canning, which plays around with changes in tempo and tenor.  “All in All,” with vocals from Calgary newcomer Lisa Lobsinger, is an airy piece with a throbbing beat and a chorus in which Lobsinger’s breathy, sweet soprano evokes girl groups of the 1940s like the Andrews Sisters.  Another singsong piece is “Texico Bitches,” which eventually ditches its simple guitar arpeggios for thicker textures.  “Meet Me in the Basement” is a punchy, straight-ahead rock instrumental, while “Chase Scene” is an entertainingly kinetic caricature of a movie soundtrack.  Emblematic of BSS’s style (and weirdness) is “Ungrateful Little Father,” an appealingly original, well-structured composition, its distressed keys a kind of modern-day, synthetic glass harmonica, married to a bizarre lyric and ending in an extended instrumental coda of sustained tones and electronic blips.

Sample song  “All to All”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VuoC6qNozI

93.    GOAT, Commune (Sub Pop Records, 2014)—It may be a notch below World Music, the band’s debut (see #32 above), but Commune shares that album’s DNA:  ersatz tribal rituals married to magpie thievery from musical influences spanning the globe, all in the service of mind-blowing psychedelic rock.  The unidentified female lead singer is still plenty irritating, like Kate Pierson of the B-52s if Pierson had shouted her lyrics in a hoarse tone, yet the vocals matter less in the context of the musical ensemble and ethos the band creates.  The album’s mysticism is signaled by the ringing of a gong at both the outset and the close.  “Goatslaves” begins with a musing about the spirit world from the late Sioux activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman but then becomes a bone-rattlingly rambunctious ride with samba-style, high-pitched percussion.  “Gathering of Ancient Tribes” does some heavy lifting from the so-called desert blues style of guitar pioneered by Tinariwen (see #48 above); both it and the opener, “Talk to God,” eventually settle into powerful rock grooves.  With its various accretions, from Latin rhythms and instrumentation to wailing, hallucinogenic electric guitars, “The Light within” is closest in spirit to the “Ethio-jazz” of Mulatu Astatke and his quintet.  “Goatchild” is where the group moves closest to the B-52s, setting up a dialogue between the lead singer and a male, Fred Schneider–ish counterpart.  There are a couple of instrumentals:  the trancelike “Bondye,” with its buzzy wah-wah bass, is actually somewhat dull, whereas the cabalistic “To Travel the Path Unknown” urges fellow travelers to “be a positive force in the constant creation of evolution.”

Sample song  “Hide from the Sun”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnu_O5P8P5I

94.    BATTLES, La Di Da Di (Warp Records, 2015)—For the first time, Battles is performing purely instrumental compositions on La Di Da Di.  The trio spins its wheels in places, but they are seemingly content to settle into a groove and rip it up.  The irregular and overlapping rhythmic patterns, jagged attacks, and dissonant chords are served up with large introns of repetitive cycling, which the band manages to alchemize into successive triumphs.  “Summer Simmer” does more than bubble idly; it really cooks, trying on modal phrases and voicelike modulations on the way to a pot-stirring climax.  Far from pacific, “Non-Violence” shows off a springy, tightly wound theme, pierced by the occasional klaxon, at full volume; nonetheless, crunching bass notes threaten to consume the melody.  The lugubrious trills and romping, elephantine ensemble of “Tricentennial” are closest in disposition to the Looney Tunes hijinks of the band’s debut, Mirrored (2007).  The heavy-footed shuffle and Frankenstein monster theme of “Megatouch” start off winningly, although the song then becomes too absorbed in dissecting its own components, more lab experiment than entertainment.  Conversely, “The Yabba” seems hulking and monochromatic until its textural density and complexity take a quantum jump toward the end.

Sample song  “The Yabba”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkhLzHuUYmo

95.    SPANK ROCK, Everything Is Boring and Everyone Is a F**king Liar (Bad Blood Records, 2011)—As is the case with Calle 13 (see #7 above), it is unusual for any act heavily weighted toward hip-hop to make my list, but exceptions are made for humor, and parts of this tantrum-titled record are very funny.  Nothing more so than the barely ninety-second spoken complaint by Hennessy Youngman (a.k.a. Jayson Musson) that serves as an intro to “Race Riot,” about how women are constantly asking him when the Spank Rock record is going to drop, which he maintains is killing his libido.  Spank Rock was originally a two-man outfit, but when XXXChange (Alex Epton) departed (though not entirely; he still had a big production role), it left MC Spank Rock (Naeem Juwan) to solo.  He fires some blanks on this disc, including “Race Riot” itself, but the balance is enjoyable.  “Car Song” with Santigold singing the chorus in a grainy but sexy voice, is the most accessible track; not incidentally, it is the only track with a full-fledged melody.  The other single from the album, “Energy,” closes things out with Spank Rock singing the refrain as an anguished, hoarse descending-scale phrase, while the song is grounded in a riff taken from the German progressive group Can’s “Vitamin C” (1972).  “#1 Hit” takes a cockeyed look at the promotion industry, equipped with a military drumbeat and a comically spluttering bass synth sequence.  Other songs like “The Dance” and “Hot Potato” have a bouncy, rubber-room energy that owes something to the punk/hardcore genre.

Sample song  “Car Song” (featuring Santigold):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqPlebmDG-Y

96.    GALACTIC, Carnivale Electricos (Galactic Funk Recordings/ANTI-, 2012)—Continuing the celebration of the band’s adopted hometown of New Orleans, Carnivale Electricos focuses, naturally, on Mardi Gras celebrations, with a nod toward Carnival traditions outside the Crescent City through the two short (and, frankly, lesser) Brazilian tunes, “Magalenha” and “O Côco da Galinha” (The Chicken’s Head), the former a forró composition by Carlinhos Brown, performed in conjunction with the New Orleans–based samba school Casa Samba.  The Neville Brothers tune “Out in the Street” is subpar; far more rousing and infectious, if not terribly original, is the blues-rock stomp “Hey Na Na,” in which the band’s forces are augmented by singers David Shaw of the Revivalists and Maggie Koerner.  The terrific “Voyage Ton Flag,” which briefly samples the accordion and voice of the late zydeco star Clifton Chenier, makes wonderful use of the deep bass grooves that characterize Galactic.  The instrumentals tend to be unreservedly great, from the brass-heavy (“Karate,” featuring the KIPP Renaissance High School Marching Band, and “Attack”) to the roadhouse harmonica blues of “Guero Bounce” and the Latin-tinged “JuLou,” both of these last mere bagatelles.  The album is bookended by two splendid pieces:  “Ha Di Ka,” with Mardi Gras Indian chief Juan Pardo front and center, is rollickingly funky, with low horn rumblings, groovy organ vamps, and a liquid piano solo; “Ash Wednesday Sunrise” is an appropriately sobering-up tune floating on a mellow Hammond organ and handclaps, but with interjections of Galactic’s trademark raucous horns.

Sample song  “Hey Na Na”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Smb8ahl3A10

97.    CHANCHA VIA CIRCUITO, Bienaventuranza (Wonderwheel Recordings, 2018)—As with the magical Río Arriba (see #12 above), both traditional and more modern Andean music are filtered through the electronic production effects in which Chancha via Circuito specializes.  Back for an encore are a couple of performers who appeared on previous discs:  the Buenos Aires traditional singer Miriam García and the Colombian/Canadian songstress Lido Pimienta.  García’s is an indigenous song, “Nadie lo Riega” (No One Waters It), accompanying her vocal with handclaps, big drumbeats, and a periodic swipe of bass tones.  Pimienta co-wrote “La Victoria” (Victory) with Victoria Fabrice, and it has a playful spirit and quasi-Asian pentatonics, backed by Manu Ranks’s Caribbean toasting.  That the strongest entries on Bienaventuranza (beatitude) are those written by others suggests that Pedro Canale’s strong suit is arranging and producing rather than composition.  Even so, “Ilaló” and “Barú” are well done, and those are his creations entirely.  Both perpetuate the mystique of South America’s wild lands that permeates Chancha via Circuito’s earlier productions.  “Ilaló” springs forth from an incantation to the “virgin of the dawn” from Ecuadorean Amazonian singer Mateo Kingman into snappy beats and sweet yet portentous Andean lutes; “Barú” is full of jungle sounds and human cries, spiking a mournful flute theme.  The haunting flute lines of “Sierra” and “Indios Tilcara” will conjure for American listeners the Simon and Garfunkel adaptation of “El Condor Pasa,” from 1970.  The opening song, “El Pastor” (The Shepherd), by William Centellas, the late Bolivian composer and charango (lute) player, has a simplicity and sincerity that are its chief strengths.

Sample song  “Ilaló” (featuring Mateo Kingman):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALO40b-qIdQ

98.    FOUR TET, There Is Love in You (Domino Recording, 2010)—While not as eye-opening as Everything Ecstatic (2005), the unmemorably named There Is Love in You is exquisitely atmospheric.  It is largely about incorporating the human voice into abstract electronica, although any singing on the record is limited to recurring brief phrases, when any words are audible at all.  The most ethereal tune is “This Unfolds,” its plodding drumbeat morphing into a stately march that paces a silvery principal theme; its various elements, including gentle guitar arpeggios and a bit of horn accompaniment, coalesce beautifully.  “Love Cry,” the longest track at nine minutes, is a sequence of spectral, telecom-like tones, set to a cantering dance beat, over which a female voice utters a cry about giving a cry, over and over, while “Angel Eyes” uses a looped vocal that is itself a mildly anguished cry.  “Circling” is a rapid-fire cycling of broken chords in 12/4 meter, over which other electronic effects are gently sprinkled, with the insinuation of a human voice so subtle it is barely apparent until the end.  Perky themed and with a heavy beat, still the sighing and precisely tuned moaning of “Sing” is suffused with a mournful aspect, in the vein of Sigur Rós (see #5 and #25 above).  “Plastic People,” a backhanded tribute to the Czech rebel band Plastic People of the Universe from years back, has a dark, Blade Runner sensibility to it, ending oddly with the sound of a baby cooing and banging on a toy piano.  The concluding tune, “She Just Likes to Fight,” is actually the sunniest and most benign on the record, although, following the intrigue of the preceding compositions, it actually comes as something of a letdown.

Sample song  “This Unfolds”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOPx-47QXeM

99.    TOBACCO, Maniac Meat (Anticon Records, 2010)—Perhaps there is a slightly harder edge to the solo work of Tobacco (Tom Fec) than to that of his usual ensemble, Black Moth Super Rainbow, but they are ladling from the same soup tureen.  Hippy-dippy, electronic keyboard–heavy psychedelia is set to disco beats, or zoomy glissandos (or both) with lots of tonal blittering, fuzztones, bubbles.  The singer’s voice is, as always, heavily processed and breathy, never more so than on the supremely trippy, tempo-bending “Heavy Makeup.”  Lyrics are spacy or just bizarre, and have a Japanese sparseness to them.  Maniac Meat’s songs are generally shorter in duration and punchier than those on the Black Moth Super Rainbow disc Eating Us (2009), with more of an acid/metal kick to offerings such as “Sweatmother” or “Motorlicker.”  Two songs feature Beck (Hansen), his voice also chopped up and processed, at least on “Grape Aerosmith.”  Certain tracks, among them “Six Royal Vipers,” “Stretch Your Face,” and the instrumental “Nuclear Waste Aerobics,” are close to BMSR’s mind-warping, blissed-out beatitude, but “Unholy Demon Rhythms” is more like a classic planetarium laser rock show, and “New Juices from the Hot Tub Freaks” even dabbles in experimental electronica.  If the music does nothing for you, nonetheless, titles like “Creepy Phone Calls” or “TV All Greasy” are bound to stick in your memory.

Sample song  “Motorlicker”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1YoUJh5HOg

100.    A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW, Sea When Absent (Lefse Records/Fat Possum Records, 2014)—Effusive, if disjointed, Sea When Absent is one of the records that has dipped in my estimation since I originally reviewed it.  Shoegaze, to which this album adheres to a much greater degree than its wispy predecessor, Ashes Grammar (2009), is by its nature blurry and sludgy, but here phrases are tripping over each other and discrete elements within song structures collide in ways that seem almost random rather than by design.  That might be in part because the band has doubled in size since Ashes Grammar, with two lead singers, Jen Goma and Annie Frederickson, instead of one.  Still, if one is willing to look past the untidiness of the composition, songs can be intoxicating in their vigor:  “Byebye Big Ocean (The End),” the opener, starts as if in midstream, a densely viscous guitar/percussion accretion that manages to be brightly melodic; “In Love with Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing),” its follow-up, is as overeager as a puppy, its shoegazing exuberance uplifting even as it rips through buffers and the rushed vocals threaten to lap themselves.  “MTLOV (Minor Keys)” (the band loves parenthetical alt titles) is in a decidedly major key, slowing things to midtempo as it envelops the listener in its singsong manner.  Also taken at midtempo, “Boys Turn into Girls (Initiation Rites)” is the most sophisticated and varied composition, incorporating angelic harmonies between the two singers, raucous guitar outbursts, and prog-rock synthesizer flourishes.  The initial, gritty power chord of “The Things They Do to Me” is deceiving, leading in not to a rocker but a dream pop excursion.  The quality of the songs wilts toward the record’s end, with the exception of the final “Golden Waves,” with its pseudo-Caribbean keyboard opening and vocals that beckon toward R&B.

Sample song  “In Love with Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing)”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUFoj59A8-8

101.    ANIMAL COLLECTIVE, Painting with (Domino Recording, 2016)—Band members told Rolling Stone that this was their “Ramones” album, in the sense that the songs are relatively short and hopped-up.  Yet, listening to the infectious, boppy opener, “FloriDada,” impelled by a belching vocal, the Beach Boys are the more obvious reference; not entirely incidentally, the album was produced in the same L.A. studio where the Beach Boys recorded Pet Sounds (1966).  Nothing else on the disc really measures up again, though there are minor pleasures to be had.  “Bagels in Kiev is interesting more for its lyric than for the actual sung tune.  “Lying in the Grass” has a stretchy, quasi-Latin feel to it, with added (most likely artificial) woodwind filigree.  Another appealingly burbling number, with a pumping bass groove, is “On Delay.”  On a number of these tracks, the band resorts to the odd device of alternating singers, Avey Tare (Dave Portner) and Panda Bear (Noah Lennox, see #28 above), syllable by syllable.  The album terminates with the goofy, synthetic instrument clockwork mechanisms of “Recycling.”  This is Animal Collective in its element, turning childhood memories into whimsical, gentle watercolor washes of music.

Sample song  “FloriDada”:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cuoIvNFUY7I