
Frode & Marcus I get why people have such affection for Shout Out Louds' 2005 debut Howl Howl Gaff Gaff ; the way it tapped into the scrappy, garage-rock sound in vogue at the time but rather than the insouciant attitude that typically came with the aesthetic, it offered a wide-eyed and sincere charm and stood apart from the pack for it. That said, it was only with 20072s Our Ill Wills , which polished up their pop and expanded it to widescreen dimensions, that I [...]
You may well, and rather conceivably play on through this one multiple times before twigging what track it actually is that Alexis Taylor and his About Group gaggle go ad libbing this time around, for this extempore take on Dionne Warwick's Walk On By eschews the Bacharachian minor key melancholy in favour of a wilfully erratic improvisation. I never quite got why About Group were never afforded a greater cultural prominence than that which they were afforded a couple years ago around the release of their decidedly good Start And Complete LP, not least as [...]

En la temporada de los grandes festivales, ya les anunciamos qué bandas iban a decir presente en el Primavera Sound de Barcelona. Hoy, ya tenemos el line-up de uno de los mayores eventos musicales del país del norte, Coachella . Algunas bandas, como Blur , The Postal Service , The Knife , Phoenix , Grizzly Bear , [...]

Coachella' s 2013 lineup is finally here: Blur, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wu-Tang Clan, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, The Postal Service, Passion Pit, The xx, Sigur Rós, Vampire Weekend, How to Destroy Angels, New Order, Lou Reed, Modest Mouse, Grinderman, Of Monsters and Men, and Bassnectar. Other notables include James Blake, Bat For Lashes, Johnny Marr, Beach House, Alt-J, Spiritualized, Franz Ferdinand, Hot Chip, Grizzly Bear, Local Natives, Yeasayer, Tegan & Sara, Social Distortion, Moby, Wild Belle, The Joy Formidable, Japandroids, Tame Impala, Rodriguez, Father John Misty, Two Door Cinema Club, [...]

La última lista compilatoria del año 2012 es aquella que engloba y premia al trabajo musical en su conjunto, a los lanzamientos tomados como un concepto y un esfuerzo global por entregarnos algo nuevo, algo que no hayamos escuchado con anterioridad y que escape a los éxitos solitarios de una canción o un remix: nos referimos al conteo de nuestros 20 discos favoritos del año. Al respecto, el 2012 fue un año que, sumando y restando, estuvo acorde a las expectativas y que fue testigo de grandes nacimientos, de varias consagraciones y de uno que otro fracaso inevitable. [...]
No podemos recibir este 2013 si es que no despedimos 2012 como se lo merece. Los últimos doce meses fueron excelentes para la música de varios estilos, con buenos regresos y sorprendentes apariciones. Para tratar de que no se nos escape nada, hemos organizado cuatro listas con distintas categorías: discos, remixes, canciones bailables y no bailables, que reflejan el consenso entre quienes hacemos esta página. Hoy vamos a empezar con las canciones no bailables. Quizás la categoría más amplia y más difícil, ya que muchos de nuestros discos favoritos tenían al menos tres o cuatro cada uno. Eso [...]

2012 ne fut pas une année musicale pourrie mais pas une grandiose non plus. J'ai eu du mal à choisir un top 1, j'ai même pendant quelques instants hésité à commencer mon top au top 2... Mais bon, le vainqueur est beau puisque c'est Field Music qui gagne. Wouaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii iis! Même si ce n'est pas le meilleur album des frères « dieux » Brewis, il est au dessus du lot (46). Les chansons singulières sont toujours là mais c'est surtout leur style qui a fait la différence: aucun [...]

Another year comes to an end and with it another great collection of albums and amazing music! Which ones will stand the test of time? We shall see, but here are our picks for favorite albums of 2012!! As for the process, it was pretty simple. I just rounded up all our contributors and had them each send me their fave albums, then I combined them with mine and here's what we came up with in no particular order (except that maybe I tried to get the art works to match up [...]

Podría arrancar esta nota con algún latiguillo aburrido como "Se nos termina un nuevo año y..." . Pero no lo voy a hacer, más que nada porque supongo que todos ya saben que está terminando el año. Y los que no lo saben se están dando cuenta mientras leen estas líneas donde indirectamente -y a mi pesar- lo termino diciendo. La cuestión es que para estas fechas aparecen siempre los balances anuales, esa especie de trampa psicológica que la gente usa para convencerse que las cosas salieron bastante bien y que seguramente el año que viene, si el universo [...]

(photo by cubagallery ) We're quickly approaching the end of 2012 and/or the world depending on your interpretation of Mayan prophecy, and that can only mean it's time to reflect on the best albums of the year. For me, one record stood head and shoulders above the rest in 2012, so album of the year was an easy decision, but there was much deliberation for the other 24 positions (plus, honorable mentions). This was one of the most diverse years of music in recent memory, with pop, guitar-oriented rock, folk music, indie-pop and electronica all being represented [...]

(photo by cubagallery ) These are 50 tracks that delighted, inspired and fascinated us in 2012 and that we think are worthy of remembering long after the year is over. We present them here in highly unscientific ordered list form, with Matt's songs marked with a "-MG" and my choices with a "-TJ" next to them. To better spread the love, we've stuck with the one song per artist rule. Click here to download all the tracks in a zip and subscribe to our Spotify Playlist to stream them all. Enjoy y'all! [...]

photo via cubagallery We've hit the halfway point for 2012 and that can only mean it's time for our annual mid-year recap of the best albums of the year so far. Looking through my list of favorite albums, I've noticed a surprising dominance of guitar-oriented rock and folk music and a general lack of electronica (with Grimes, Hot Chip and Chromatics being the exceptions) . If you told me at the beginning of the year I'd have so many guitars and so few synths in my mid-year tallies, I may not have believed [...]

ithugsback.co.uk Though I only gave it a very passing mention when it came out, I was really quite fond of British quartet It Hugs Back's 2009 debut Inside Your Guitar ; after all, I described their aesthetic of narcoleptic vocals, humming organs, and understated guitar heroics as a charming blend of American Analog Set and Yo La Tengo - how could I not like its fuzzy, mid-fi charms? But I lost track of them between then and now, though not without reason: first, they found their way off [...]

Frank Yang NYC Popfest is wonderful for many reasons, not least of which is a built-in excuse to jet off to New York for the May long weekend. I did so back in 2009 when The Radio Dept. as headliners were enough to get me out to two nights , and while I was already planning on being in town this year regardless, the opportunity to see Allo Darlin' - who were skipping Toronto on their tour in support of Europe [...]

Gabriel Bruce I'm no fan of the deluxe reissue trend - at least not with respect to an album that came out less than a year ago - as it tends to punish the biggest fans, those who would have bought the original issue and most want whatever bonus materials are applied to the reissue. So while I don't greet the news that Emmy The Great is doing this with last year's Virtue - one of my faves of 2011 - I at least appreciate that some [...]

Cat Stevenslores The general assumption as to whoy Teenage Fanclub release albums so infrequently - 20102s Shadows was just their third effort in the 21st century, assuming you count 2000 as part of this millenium - is that despite having three superb songwriters in their ranks, they just work very, very slowly; if this is true, then clearly bassist Gerard Love isn't the limiting factor. Based on Electric Cables , the debut album from his solo project as Lightships , he has no shortage of [...]

Frank Yang Somewhere over the last few weeks Sunday night's Wedding Present show at The Horseshoe got co-opted as the "closing party" for Canadian Musicfest , an appellation I personally refused to acknowledge. The 21st anniversary show for Seamonsters ? Absolutely. The tour in support of their just-released new record Valentina ? Certainly. Closing party for a festival that at no point acknowledged the band as part of their programme or acknowledged they were exponentially greater than most everyone else who played? [...]

Frank Yang The return of Fiona Apple to the public eye may have been the story of the SXSW not nicknamed, "The Boss". Some six plus on from the release of her last album Extraordinary Machine , it's not been an absence of, oh, Kevin Shields proportions but the tales of shelved releases and label battles have certainly given her a mythology of similar proportions. I say this from the perspective of someone who's never counted himself a fan of her work but who's certainly heard the [...]

This past week, it felt like everyone was in Austin, TX. Between the tweets, Facebook posts, or random scans through the blogosphere, news about the awesomeness that is SXSW was utterly inescapable. But even while the majority of the music world's attention turned in that very particular direction, there was still a bunch of stuff going on that served as a consolation prize for those stuck everywhere but Texas. The lucky ones can sample this, too, like the icing on the already massive cake. Featuring tracks from Guided By Voices, Garbage, Jack White, and more, this should do the trick. [...]
![ABOUT GROUP’S START AND COMPLETE [6.0]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3466464_lg.jpg)
About Group - Don't Worry by DominoRecordCo About Group - You're No Good by DominoRecordCo Start and Complete , the sophomore release from About Group is the whirling exploration of a tremolo-heavy soundscape. Comprised of members of Hot Chip (Alexis Taylor), Spiritualized (Tom Coxon), This Heat (Charles Hayward) and electronic exploration specialist Pat Thomas, About Group came together as an unrehearsed experiment. Taylor, the principal songwriter of the album, gave acoustic demos to [...]