Dan Deacon – Gliss Ripper
On record or in concert, Deacon offers escapism at its finest. As he explained before the release of America, Deacon uses music as a means to make sense of his surroundings. At the most basic level, he excites an unbridled dance party — even if only attended by one. Bodies react to “Sheathed Wings”, “Mind on Fire”, and “Learning to Relax” before minds can wrap themselves around the narratives contained within. That is the technique that Deacon has been so mindful of since he began instigating collective performances in clubs back in 2002. He understands that attention spans can be short, and if you want to get a message across, you’d better make the beat infectious. Read the full review on Consequence of Sound

JJ Grey – Ol Glory
Like many of the group’s previous albums, “Ol’ Glory” is rooted in the Jacksonville area of northeast Florida, where the band got its start in the late 1990s. “I don’t venture too far away from home, or at least the spirit of home,” Grey says, though the songs he prizes the most have a universal feel. “I just want it to be as free as a conversation with someone and let it go where it will,” he says. Read the review on WSJ

Torche – Restarter
But Restarter push Torche back toward the more punishing pole of its sound. The brief “Undone”, for instance, counts as one of the heaviest pieces in Torche’s catalog. Brooks leads multiple marching sections, but when he pauses, they slip into the sort of down-tuned, instrumental slogs that consumed multi-minute chunks of their early records. This allows Torche to be brutal while still moving, a trick they’ve rarely mastered. This doesn’t mean they’ve suddenly slid into doom or sludge metal. These 10 songs are actually no less memorable than those on Harmonicraft; “Minions”, “Blasted”, and “Undone” rank as new shoo-ins for any hypothetical best-of-Torche collection. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Ibeyi – Ibeyi
We’ve heard some snippets of their eponymous debut record in the lead up to its release. “Oya” smacks of Björk’s warped pop noises, with Ibeyi’s tangled harmonies battling a barrage of trippy percussion, and an uneasy sense of otherworldly malice lingering in the shadows. It’s smoother and more reticent than something like “Hyperballad”, but the progressive electro-folk-pop sentiment remains. “River” sees goofy piano steps bounce around doom-pop choirs, strutting preacher man snaps and off-kilter rhythm/language twists. It’s a tormented, volatile cut. Read the full review on Line of best fit

Steve Earle – Terraplane
Terraplane comes across as a mostly pleasant surprise. This is a blues album that opts to boogie rather than weep, celebrate not commiserate, as Earle pours himself into the genre’s tropes: pining for Ms. Wrong (“You’re the Best Lover That I Ever Had”); striking a deal down at the crossroads (“The Tennessee Kid”); and splitting a comical he-said, she-said duet with Eleanor Whitmore (“Baby’s Just as Mean as Me”). The real heroes of the album, though, are Earle’s backing band, The Dukes, who sound like a genuine blues outfit rather than a group trying to squeeze into the genre. Read the full Review on Consequence of Sound

Jose Gonzalez – Vestiges & Claws
Despite taking a smaller look at the universe, this is actually his densest solo work yet. Having been focused on his band Junip, it sounds like he’s become more comfortable with fuller instrumentation on his own. Alongside his trademark whispery voice and fingerpicked acoustic guitar, he employs guitar overdubs and more percussive elements. One of the highlights of coming to a new González record is marveling at his guitar virtuosity. Read the full review on Consequence of Sound

Father John Misty – I love you Honeybear
Honeybear is conflicted music that leaves me with conflicted feelings. Tillman is funny, but his humor is driven by meanness and self-loathing; he’s sweet, but he can’t manage to say anything nice without smothering it in jokes, like a dog compulsively trying to cover up its own shit. He opens the album by forecasting the apocalypse but most of the time comes off as the kind of mystic who gives up and embraces the debauchery, the patrician in some yoga sex ring, a bimbo Nero who fiddles while Los Angeles burns and occasionally gets sidetracked gloating about how hot his wife is. Yes, he gets high, but he never really leaves the dirty, dirty ground. Read the full review on Pitchfork

JD Mcphereson – Let the Good Times Roll
Little, crucial details open up McPherson’s sound on Let The Good Times Roll. His bassist and right-hand man, Jimmy Sutton, goes electric in the title track, giving the band a push in rave-up mode. In “It’s All Over But The Shouting,” McPherson and Neill play around with essential ’50s recording techniques like echo, making them weirder than before. “Bridgebuilder,” the ballad McPherson wrote with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, hearkens back to pre-rock pop and doo-wop. “The All-American” reminds McPherson’s fans that he’s only one man in a long lineage with its direct nod to the great post-punk rock band The Blasters. Read the full review on NPR

Ty Segall – Live in San Francisco
Ty Segall Band’s Live in San Francisco is the fifth installment in the series. This isn’t his first live record (that was 2011’s Live in Aisle Five) and it’s not even his first appearance in the series (his prog-loving side project, Fuzz, was also included), but it’s an important addition. Along with Castle Face co-founder John Dwyer and his band Thee Oh Sees, Segall was a defining voice in the city’s late ’00s garage rock bubble and he and Dwyer are also, arguably, its most popular exports. And while it’s clear that Segall is prolific—he’s put out a double LP and a singles collection just within the last six months—this record isn’t filler. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Belle & Sebastian – Girls in Peacetime want to Dance
Now after almost twenty years of recording, Belle & Sebastian have made the biggest stylistic leap of their career. Forget all the descriptors you previously associated with the Glaswegian six-piece. Their ninth album, Girls In Peacetime Want To Dance, doesn’t so much re-invent them, it practically serves as a reboot.

Opening with ‘Nobody’s Empire’, easily the most personal song bandleader Stuart Murdoch has ever written, it brings the Belle & Sebastian story to its origin, detailing Murdoch’s struggle with Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (chronic fatigue syndrome). For almost seven years he was unable to work and has stated that this isolating experience was the key factor in encouraging him to pursue a career as a songwriter. Melodies came to Murdoch, characterised here as “a girl who sang like the chime of a bell / she touched me when I was in hell.” Music became his focus and ultimately, along with faith, saved him from a fate that – lyrically at least – he compares to death. Read the full review on the 405

Dememberists – What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
Things begin with “The Singer Addresses His Audience”, an acoustic ballad/metacommentary on the expectations and experiences of the Decemberists. Similar to how Panic! at the Disco begins Pretty. Odd. with “We’re So Sorry”, this piece finds Meloy literally speaking of the changes the band has gone through over the years. With his typical tinge of melancholy, he reflects, “We know, we know, we belong to ya / We know you grew your arms around us / In the hopes we wouldn’t change / But we had to change some / You know, to belong to you.” Strings and vocal accompaniment soon complement his self-aware lament, and by the end percussion and various dissonant sounds combine with a luscious chant, creating an anthemic encasing as only the Decemberists can provide. In short, it’s a phenomenal way to begin. Read the full review on Pop Matters

Viet Cong – Viet Cong
Viet Cong count two members of Calgary-based ex-band Women among their number. Band in “emerging from other band’s ashes” shocker, etc. Of course, this is not a piece of information that should direct any anticipation towards receipt of Viet Cong’s debut album, and nor would they likely appreciate a fairly detailed examination of why it’s a Very Exciting Thing that this album exists, but here we are. Women were a very fine band that didn’t work for two main reasons: one was a notorious, slappy mid-show bust-up between brothers Matt and Pat Flegel which signaled the personal demise of the band; the other was the death of guitarist Christopher Reimer in 2012, which signaled the ultimate demise. Both of the albums that Women succeeded in making before those circumstances overtook them, especially 2010’s Public Strain, were perfectly diseased gems of invention, works of surf-pop breeze tuned down and flawlessly emaciated, leaving only the barest shards of loveable pop for a listener to dangle from. Read the full review on the Quietus

Sleater-Kinney – No Cities to Love
No Cities to Love represents a union of Sleater-Kinney’s past, a fiery rebirth from riot grrrl ashes. Every S-K album is represented here — the early roar, the eventual popcraft, and ultimately, the technical virtuosity. Tucker and Brownstein’s lyrics make this connection explicit, with No Cities being, foremost, a reflexive celebration of their return to music making (see, for example, the one-two punch of “A New Wave” and “No Anthems”). The personal (“Hey Darling”) and the political (“Price Tag”) find their way in, but No Cities is more interested in the professional (which, in this hall of mirrors, also consists of the personal and political). Winking references come in rapid-fire succession, keeping the album’s thematic scope from being much more than a self-conscious comeback. Still, what a breathless — and breathtaking — comeback it is. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing