My Bloody Valentine, TBA (TBA)

The music masses have been waiting for a follow-up to My Bloody Valentine’s last album, the modern-classic-that-has-been-around-so-long-now-it’s-just-a-classic Loveless, for twenty-one years now. Many, myself included, had given up the faith, stopped chasing that particular white whale, and resigned themselves to crate-digging for early MBV obscurities. But when Kevin Shields reassembled the band in 2007, he did so with accompanying promises of a new record, allegedly 75% finished. Virgins conceived. The sky turned magenta. Popgeeks worldwide wept tears of joy into their Primal Scream bedsheets. But as the weeks turned into months and the months into years, it seemed Shields was making empty promises. The band continued to play sold out shows, but any talk of a new album was seen as just that: talk. That is, until last November, when Shields told the NME to expect a new album by the end of the year. Then, on Christmas Eve, the band confirmed that it had finished mastering three days previous. So, yeah, we don’t have a name, we don’t have a release date, sure, it was supposed to come out last month, but heck, it’s done. It’s coming.

I just hope it isn’t the shoegaze Chinese Democracy.

The Joy Formidable, Wolf’s Law (January 22)

The Joy Formidable are responsible for some of the most ferocious and affecting Indie Rock I’ve heard in ages. One of my favorite things about this Welsh three-piece is how they manage to sound so big, so restless, so undefeatable, and lead single “This Ladder is Ours” is no exception. More maximalist, blow-the-bloody-doors-off pop in 2013!

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Push the Sky (February 18)

After wading around in the sludgy blues-rock purgatory of Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! and the Grinderman records, Nick Cave seems to finally be returning to the surface. If “We No Who U R” is anything to go by, Push the Sky seems to be a return to the plaintive, sorrowful, nature obsessed poet last heard on 2004’s double album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. And while I dug my namesake album and Grinderman quite a lot, I’ve missed this guy.

ScHoolboy Q, Oxymoron (TBA)

While last year’s Habits & Contradictions was nothing short of fantastic, Oxymoron looks like it’s shaping up to be a whole different animal. It’s to be Q’s major label debut on Interscope, and in the wake of Black Hippy compatriot Kendrick Lamar’s phenomenal good kid, m.A.A.d city, he’s set the bar pretty high for himself, according to this interview. Here’s hoping he clears it.

David Bowie, The Next Day (March 12)

There is a new Bowie album coming out.

There is a new Bowie album coming out.

There is a new Bowie album coming out.

THERE IS A NEW BOWIE ALBUM COMING OUT AND IT’S THE FIRST ONE IN TEN YEARS AND I’M HYPERVENTILATING OVER HERE YOU GUYS

OH GOD HE’S BACK HE CAME BACK FOR US I’M SO HAPPY

THERE’S A VIDEO WITH PROJECTION PUPPETS AND A SONG OF NORWAY T-SHIRT AND ALSO A LITTLE PUP WALKING AROUND

VISCONTI’S PRODUCING AND THE SONG’S ABOUT BERLIN AND THE END OF THE VIDEO IS ODDLY REMINISCENT OF DAVID MALLET’S BOWIE VIDEOS FROM THE LATE SEVENTIES AND EARLY EIGHTIES

I’M SO EXCITED YOU GUYS

(cough, pant, cough, et cetera)

Achem. Sorry.

I just hope it isn’t the Bowie Chinese Democracy.

We’ll be back next week with more jokes at Axl Rose’s expense, but that’s all for now here at Now Take Them Out Devils HQ. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc, and gander at his Tumblr here, where he’ll be obsessively posting screencaps from Revenge for some reason.

Read parts one and two

The Almost-Best Albums of 2012 (In No Particular Order)

Killer Mike, R.A.P. Music

R.A.P. Music is one of the most streamlined hip-hop albums of all time. Mike jumps into a track, makes his point, and moves on with intense momentum without ever feeling rushed. El-P’s production is complex without ever becoming baroque. The whole thing is short enough to fit on one LP, yet it overflows with content. It’s a record that feels old school and brand new at the same time, where the political is the personal, where each track is just as good as the last, and you’re damned sure not gonna play favorites. From the unforgivingly blunt and brutal opening salvo “Big Beast” to the music-worshipping spiritual release of the title track, you are immersed in Mike’s mission statement, his manifesto. Heck, it’s called R.A.P. Music. No filler, no skits, just straight heat.

DIIV, Oshin

Even the staunchest defenders of Shoegaze and Dreampop have to admit that those genres have a tendency to get a little repetitive; indeed, some would even argue that it’s part of the charm: it’s ethereal music, music to get lost in. However, more often than not, the songs end up getting lost themselves, and you’re left with an album full of samey blah.

Oshin isn’t one of those albums. It’s vast and dreamy, certainly, but it’s also diverse and surprisingly structured. Instead of an intangible lump, it has a point a and a point b, visiting the likes of the slow chug and virtuous guitar playing of “Air Conditioning” and the propulsive Post Punk of “Doused” along the way. It’s one of the most fully realized records to come out of the current Brooklyn scene in a good long while.

Fiona Apple, The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Server You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do

What’s most immediately apparent about The Idler Wheel… are its contradictions. It’s fragile and strong as steel, melodic and dissonant, hysterical and sober, wrathful and loving, cynical and naïve, guttural and transcendent, sexy and grotesque. There’s the mental prison of “Every Single Night,” but there’s also the unbridled freedom of “Anything We Want.” There’s the unrequited love and loneliness of “Valentine,” but hold out ‘til the goofy double entendre of “Hot Knife.” I’m not certain if The Idler Wheel… is the best Fiona Apple album, but I do think it’s her best expression of herself overall: a bundle of incongruous ideas, fierce and vulnerable. Also, genius.

Frank Ocean, channel ORANGE

Do you need me to tell you that channel ORANGE is great? It topped the best albums of the year lists at Spin, EW, The A.V. Club, The WaPo, The NYT, Billboard, and many, many others. Rolling Stone put it at number two, but that’s only because Bruce Springsteen released a record this year. At the time of this writing, Pitchfork hasn’t announced their top 25 yet, but rest assured channel ORANGE will top it (and if it doesn’t… well, we’ll talk about that in part four). And you know what? Everybody ever is right. In a lot of ways, channel ORANGE is just as much a part of 2012 as “Gangnam Style” and “Call Me Maybe”. I heard it at house parties, dive bars, specialty coffee shops, blasting out of car stereos, backstage at CMJ showcases. It’s genuine and soulful and accessible and everybody should listen to it because it’s got a little something for everyone and a lot for almost anyone. If you haven’t given it a chance by now, then god, Jed, I don’t even want to know you.

But. It’s not my album of the year. It’s mad close. These four records all came close. But I’m going to discus my favorite record of the year, shit, possibly my favorite record in years, in the next entry of: Now Take Them Out, Devils!

To Be Concluded… Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

I’m handing out more run-on sentences/awards this week. Miss part one? Read it here.

The Peter Gabriel Award for Most Ambitiously Accessible Album of the Year goes to: Liars’ WIXIW

While Liars’ sound has changed a lot over the years, they’ve never been known to make an album that’s friendly on the ears. Admittedly, there would be moments, like Drum’s Not Dead’s “The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack,” Liars’ “Protection,” and Sisterworld’s “Proud Evolution,” but overall, their records had a tendency to revel in noise and the clatter of drums. Enter WIXIW, a mostly electronic effort that is shockingly temperate and more in tune with tourmates Radiohead than their old noise-punk cohorts. Honestly, it’s the most punk move Liars could have made, and WIXIW’s relative accessibility never compromises the band’s scope or imagination. Their best work since Drum, no question.

The Mysteriorum Libri Quinque Award for Occult Folk Opera of the Year goes to: Damon Albarn’s Dr. Dee

Dr. Dee started its life as a collaboration between Albarn, cartoonist and Gorillaz co-founder Jamie Hewlett, and comics legend Alan Moore (Watchmen, From Hell), but the project seemed doomed by Albarn and Hewlett’s splintering friendship, as well as Moore’s reputation as The Most Difficult Human Being in the World. Miraculously, Albarn still managed to pull his impressionistic folk opera about Elizabeth I’s court natural philosopher and master magician John Dee off, and just in time for the Cultural Olympiad in London. Like most contemporary opera, Dr. Dee suffers without its visual component, but it still makes for a compelling listen due to its surprisingly personal nature. At its core, the opera is about reaching for the stars, only to come back with a fistful of rhinestones, and whether there’s a difference between enlightenment and merely the illusion of it. One suspects that Doctor John isn’t the only D the title is referring to.

The Adam Sandler Award for Excellence in Artistic Bankruptcy goes to: Japandroids

I gotta hand it to you, Japandroids; you really go above and beyond to be awful. When your first record, Post-Nothing, came out three years ago, I found it to be a shallow collection of insipid anthems targeted at a demographic of overly-nostalgic twentysomethings. The way a song like “Young Hearts Spark Fire” attempted to bait its audience into feeling something with the most superficial of sentiments felt borderline offensive, and I didn’t think it could get any worse.

And then the next year they dropped “Younger Us.”

“Younger Us” was the exact same song as “Young Hearts,” except worse. Let me give you a sample of the lyrics here:

remember when we had them all on the run
and the night we saw midnight sun
remember saying things like “we’ll sleep when we’re dead”
and thinking this feeling was never gonna end
remember that night you were already in bed, said “fuck it” got up to drink with me instead!

Yeah, dudes make Paul Banks look like Leonard Cohen. At best, the song was fucking stupid. At worst, it was a cynical, lazy attempt to be the musical equivalent of those “hey, remember slap-bracelets and other such ‘90s things?” on Buzzfeed. It was “1979” mashed up with “Don’t Stop Believing” except stripped of both songs relative soul and charm. I didn’t think it could get any worse.

This year, Japandroids released their second album proper, Celebration Rock.

Y’know, not every band needs to be innovators. Not every artist needs to be a genius. There’s a lot of good music out there that just does its thing and goes home. And there’s a lot of mediocrity out there that is perfectly innocuous. That’s not Japandroids. That’s not Celebration Rock. It’s the same bullshit sentiment in every song. The same vague, generic platitudes. Imagine if you hit a young Bruce Springsteen in the head with a rock over and over again for hours and then forced him to write an album’s worth of nostalgiamistic hogwash. Celebration Rock is far worse. It feels like Japandroids is pumping out the same vacuous crap year after year, except every year it’s a bit worse. And the fact that the album cover of everything they release looks exactly the same (Futura + border + black and white photo of band members Brian King and David Prowse) doesn’t exactly hide that fact; if anything, it’s a deliberate fuck-you to an audience who keeps on buying it over and over again.

Japandroids are the worst.

The See? The ‘90s Revival Isn’t a Complete Dead-Eyed Waste of Time Award for Excellence in Indie Rock goes to: (3-way tie) PAWS, Blood Red Shoes, & Cloud Nothings

Much of the work that has come out of this current round of nineties nostalgia has felt like soulless products of an inevitable twenty year cycle. However, a few albums managed to steal liberally from two decades ago without becoming generic copycat sludge. Sure, PAWS’ Cokefloat!, Blood Red Shoes’ In Time to Voices, and Cloud Nothings’ Attack on Memory are all heavily inspired by Superchunk, Pixies, The Breeders, Throwing Muses, Lush, Sebadoh, The Afghan Whigs, and so on and so forth, but more importantly, they’re inspired. These albums, and the bands that made them, get it. They get the two-minute kissoff and the nine-minute guitar freakout, they know when do be goofy and when to be serious as the grave, they know how to connect with their audience in a way few ‘indie’ groups understand anymore.

That’s it for now, but don’t forget to check in over the next two weeks for parts three and four. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

The days are short, the nights are cold(ish), and midtown has thoroughly covered itself in a anxiety attack-inducing amount of holiday paraphernalia. The Salvation Army dudes that are very specifically not Santa line the thoroughfares, ringing their bells. The stores are packed with exhausted parents buying more than they can afford. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, folks: List Season. It’s a time for critics to come together, hold hands, and scream at the top of their lungs about whose opinions are objectively better. It’s a time for pandering to your base, for emphatic hyperbole, for arbitrarily picking what the seventeenth best album of the year is. More importantly, it’s a time for the media to canonize itself, to tell you what’s culturally important and what isn’t. After all, who would let you know what you like if we weren’t around?

Without further ado, allow me to hand out these honors that are totally real and I didn’t just make up right now:

The WU LYF Award for Band Most Likely to be Snubbed goes to: Chromatics

When Kill for Love dropped in March, folks were talking about it like it was the sequel to Nicolas Refn’s Drive. But March is a long time ago, and a lot of prettier prospects have shown up to the dance since, and the sleek yet empty charm has worn off. Expect this to be suspiciously absent from a lot of year-end lists.

Honorable Mention: El-P

The Scott Walker Award for Most Pants-Shittingly Terrifying Album goes to: The Seer, by Swans

After a while, it feels like it’s stalking you. You feel its presence even when you’re not listening to it. This two-hour hodge-podge of no-wave, blues, metal, and bizarrely straight-forward pop sets up shop in your head, enticing you to play it again and again. It haunts you, like Danielewsky’s House of Leaves. And don’t even get me started on that insane, horrifying, perfect album cover.

Honorable Mention: Bish Bosch, by Scott Walker (Disqualified due to its use of stock fart sounds)

The Chicago Award for Most Complementary Album Covers goes to: Beach House’s Bloom and Frankie Rose’s Interstellar

The Crystal Castles Award for Most Same-y, Mediocre Claptrap goes to: (tie) Beach House’s Bloom and Frankie Rose’s Interstellar

This isn’t to say that these albums sound the same (although they do come from the same reverb-y bedroom place covered in Slowdive and Felt posters), it’s that almost every track on them is virtually identical to the one that came before it. The music isn’t bad, by any means, it’s just boring, forgettable, and highly critically acclaimed. Make of that what you will.

The Ever Since They Put Twin Peaks on Netflix Instant, Everyone’s Been Ripping Me Off Award goes to: Julee Cruise

Well that’s it for now, but be sure to join us here next week for part two to find out about 2012’s best occult folk operas and aesthetic shifts! The fun literally never stops. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

One of the things I love most about pop music is its versatility. It’s a medium with room for everything: the political and the personal, the avant-garde and the lowbrow, orchestral finesse and two-chord anthems, stupidity and intelligence, beauty and brutality. Additionally, these elements can be arranged any which way, swapped out and mutated into something unpredictable and groundbreaking. And there are hundreds of millions of these things. There are pop songs about everything from the slave trade to lactating men, from stoned professions of lust to the sincere love felt for a desk, from street level survival to dying alone in space. If something exists in space and time, you can bet your ass there’s a song about it.

Being the popaholic waste of space that I am, I’ll listen to pretty much anything, but I do have a soft spot for songs about my favorite subject: pop music. What’s rad about songs about songs is that they have just as much range as pop at large. There’s self-reflexive navel-gazing, revolutionary manifestoes, nostalgia-drenched love letters, and condemnations of the mainstream. Pop songs about pop songs embrace the medium’s limitless potential and celebrate it. You can listen to a few of my favorites here or by pressing play on the embedded playlist below.

1. Losing My Edge – LCD Soundsystem
2. Heard About Your Band – Brakes
3. Top of the Pops – The Rezillos
4. This is Pop – XTC
5. Hitsville UK – The Clash
6. R.A.P. Music – Killer Mike
7. Heavy Metal Drummer – Wilco
8. Slap Dash for No Cash – Art Brut
9. The Medium Was Tedium – The Desperate Bicycles
10. The Song is the Single – BARR
11. Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About – Tullycraft
12. Let’s Kiss and Listen to Bis – Mikrofisch
13. Part Time Punks – Television Personalities
14. Rebellious Jukebox – The Fall
15. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – Ian Dury and the Blockheads
16. Radio Song – Danny Brown
17. Triumph of the Swill – Dead Kennedys
18. Meet the Beatle – Tall Dwarfs
19. The One on the Right is on the Left – Johnny Cash
20. Bad Cover Version – Pulp
21. We’re the Replacements – They Might Be Giants
22. Alex Chilton – The Replacements
23. Thirteen – Big Star

If anybody else has some favorite songs about songs, we would love to see them in the comments.

Simon Lazarus Vasta dives into a huge vault of records at the end like Scrooge McDuck at the end of every day and swears he won’t get out ‘til the third My Bloody Valentine album finally comes out. Well, that’s what he says, anyway; he’s always at the breakfast table the next morning. If you’d like, you can follow him on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc.