As fun as it is to complain about “music these days,” and how it’s all been downhill since The Chronic came out, it’s even MORE fun to listen to — wait for it — good music. Every Tuesday, a.k.a. Music Release Day, we’ll highlight five albums worth (legally) downloading or driving to the local Best Buy (lolz) for. (Banner via)
Today, we’ve got selections from the Knife, Kurt Vile, and more.
Shaking the Habitual by the Knife
In the teaser trailer about their new album, Shaking the Habitual, the group’s first since 2006’s Silent Shout, the Swedish brother-and-sister duo known as the Knife said, “We made up our own sound sources used made up, homemade instruments played traditional instruments in non-traditional ways…we wanted to find a room where all sounds are just as odd, just as normal, where the border between normal and strange is erased.” It’s those final eight words that make Shaking one of the year’s best albums so far.
Shaking is, to put it bluntly, f*cking weird — occasionally uncomfortable, always mystifying, with its bewildering, hypnotic mix of pop, tribal rhythms, ambient nothingness, and shock-volt hip-hop beats and lyrics that deal with gender studies and the evils of capitalism. Yet, because the album’s so long (over an half and a hour), if you listen to the whole thing and get absorbed into the Knife’s uncompromising eccentricities, then the strange becomes routine and normal sounds boring. You might need a hibernation to recover, too.
Cyclops Reap by White Fence
Trippy, lo-fi psych-rock that’s pure San Francisco, White Fence’s third album will please fans of Count Five.
King Remembered In Time by Big K.R.I.T.
For more on Big K.R.I.T.’s mixtape, which comes out tomorrow, check out the Smoking Section.
Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze by Kurt Vile
Picture, if you will, a tall, skinny man on the edge of a cliff at sunset, gently strumming his guitar while his long hair blows in the breeze. Oh, and he’s not a dirty hippie. That’s Kurt Vile in a nutshell, and his new album, Wakin’ on a Pretty Daze, is full of graceful songs that recall the peaceful, easy feelings that the Eagles sung about. Unlike the Eagles, though, Vile is pleasant to the ear, his hazy songs basking themselves in the same sun as much of Neil Young’s discography, his guitars looped into a bewitching knot. Pretty daze, indeed.
Wheelhouse by Brad Paisley
You COULD check out James Blake’s Overgrown, but you should listen to “Accidental Racist” for a 47th time.
