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Tramp is a ridiculously good album from Brooklyn’s Sharon Van Etten, that was released just this week.  In a sense the album title should be swapped with her previous record, Epic, since this is not an austere collection of tunes but a rather soaring and complex masterpiece that maintains the emotional majesty that is her hallmark but adds new depth to the music itself.  Produced by Aaron Dessner of the National (who, along with some of his bandmates and other luminaries such as Zach Condon, makes guest appearances too) this is a real step forward for Van Etten and is one of 2012’s leading albums to beat.

I discovered Escort through a club remix of the first track on this album, Caméleon Chameleon, which first appeared on an NPR podcast and then in my SoundCloud feed.  Now I’m listening to the full album, thanks to the power of the internet.  These guys are funky as hell, rediscovering the old disco roots of Brooklyn via the medium of gloriously upbeat tracks mixed with a sly sense of modernism.  Officially tipping Escort as a live band for 2012…

Another one where serious questions have to be asked about this writer’s taste and dedication as to why it wasn’t posted 6 months ago.  Burst Apart is a sonically stretching follow-up to the cathartic Hospice (another of 2009’s sleeper hits) that elevates the themes to something less likely to make you bawl but soar instead.  The epic opener I Don’t Want Love sets the album off at the right pace as a heartfelt and yet self-undermining protest and the rest of the album continues just as brightly.  Great stuff.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 10 May 2011

The Rip Tide is an excellent album that, much like the rest of Zach Condon’s discography is something of a slow burn (whilst being characteristically recognisable).  Not sure why it took so long to get round to it here but with tracks like East Harlem and the title track, it’s strong enough to comfortably slot into the end of year lists.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 30 August 2011

A universally epic sound, gradually swelling songs in a rare-double length LP and the controversial use of a saxophone marked out M83’s return to the public sphere.  Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming could have been the album title for about 40% of all indie releases since the summer of 2010 but at least Anthony Gonzales’s effort tries to capture the urgency in the beginning of that statement whilst letting the latter drift as your imagination wanders the way of the second part of the album (i.e. into the distance).  

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 18 October 2011

The inimitable Laura Marling’s third album was once again a marked progression from her previous work and surely solidifies her position not only as one of England’s brightest young talents in indie/folk but one her best songwriters too.  

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 12 Sep 2011

Already the recipient of the Mercury Music Award this year and likely to be right up there in a lot of end of year lists, Polly Jean’s latest album is an epic barnstormer.

Part of the 2011 winter clearout - albums not reviewed when they came out but still worth sharing before the end of year lists hit.

Original release date: 15 Feb 2011

An Album by Korallreven is an album by Korallreven.  Their first in fact.  Korallreven are a duo from Sweden (including one former member of the Radio Dept.) focused on making blissful electronica, something you could probably deduce by the titles of their preceding mixtapes: A Dream by Korallreven, Another Dream and A Dream Within a Dream.  It holds within it a powerfully hypnotic set of tunes that works excellently as a full album, transporting you to destinations known and unknown.  There are guest appearances (including ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman and Juliana Barwick) but this album should most be noted for its holistic and exquisite sound.

It’d be easy to dismiss Summer Camp as lazy 80s revivalists but beneath that veneer of sneer is a heart of gold.  Sounding like the soundtrack to the John Hughes movie that was never made in, let’s say Condale, this album is a pop masterpiece of sun-reflecting-off-the-newly-polished-surface-of-that-sailboat-you-took-out-once-as-a-kid-style-glistening quality.  This is an album about good times in the face of heartbreak, about memories that are more real than the sepia-tinged Polaroids they are now represented by, about life.  A really assured and vital release from Summer Camp.

Parallax is probably Bradford Cox’s 1,057th album in the last three days, such is the man’s impressive output.  And it’s good.  It’s like a collection of postcards from a constantly shifting destination, a time and space undefinable but defiantly refined.  But not only does Parallax contain a misty mystery but it is also contains some great songs - from a conceptual and a tuneworthy perspective.  Take Mona Lisa for example, not as memorable as Da Vinci’s version but equally likely to make you smile.  Expect another new album any time soon but enjoy this one for what it brings down from the skies today.

The world has only waited around 44 years to hear these recordings.  It’s like the Kennedy files of pop music.  The secret stash of unfinished but certainly not unfurnished studio takes of this infamous album have finally surfaced and now you can experience the maddening frustration of Brian Wilson’s attempts at perfection which ultimately drove him slightly mad.  Each track on here is a window into his mind and into the Beach Boys’ world, even (and almost particularly) the ones that are clearly incomplete and filled with studio chatter.  The resulting 5-disc set (which includes a full deconstruction of micro-elements of both Heroes and Villains & Good Vibrations) is a bitty affair that will fascinate the super fan and intrigue the casual observer.  The nuggets we do get to see are significantly different than the more polished version Wilson released in 2004 with the Wallflowers as his backing band and go to prove that, even despite more rudimentary technology, the voices and harmonies of the original Beach Boys simply cannot be bettered.  

This disappeared just before I had a chance to blog it but it has just returned.  Not really with a bang of course because this album is entirely about the slow burn, the subtlety with which things creep up on you in life is reflected delicately in the songs of Trevor Powers.  Each song is a carefully considered meditation, drenched in so much reverb and echo that you feel like you’re listening to this through a waterfall.  A really promising debut overall.

In Light, the inaugural album by Louisiana’s young Givers, is not a new release but it has recently hit Spotify.  Fusing the indie-pop-afro-beat of Vampire Weekend with a more exuberant undertone and some lush, tropicalia-inspired rhythms, In Light is an infectiously-melodious record.  This is no more evident than on Up Up Up, their rabble-rousing album opener and set closer but also appears on In My Eyes and Saw You First.  Sometimes the songs take a while to ramp up but when they do it’s invariably worth it.  Maybe this won’t stand the test of time, but for now it’ll take you out of the darkness.

The Whole Love opens with Art of Almost - a ripping, epic, 7-minute long experimental rock track that breaks you in to the latest Wilco album like Jack Nicholson enters a room, axe-first.  And it’s a shining example of the direction Jeff Tweedy & co have taken here - exhilaratingly mixing their experimental tendencies whilst managing to maintain a sense of craft and songwriting.  Standing O, One Sunday Morning and I Might are all fantastic songs that could’ve been picked from different albums in their catalogue (although the one it most resembles is 1999’s study of meticulously crafted pop-americana Summerteeth).  And yet every single listen to the album reveals something new that makes it well worth repeated spins.  It’s bound to earn them continued tags as the American Radiohead (despite Radiohead’s muse taking them in quite a different direction in the last decade) which is something they’ve dealt with since 2002’s career-defining Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  This is easily Wilco’s best album since then and in places touches those great heights.