Autolux - Transit Transit (TBD)
Caddywhompus - Remainder (Community)
Field Music - Measure (Memphis Industries)
Liars - Sisterworld (Mute)
The Morning Benders - Big Echo (Rough Trade)
Simon Scott - Traba (Immune)
Marnie Stern - Marnie Stern (Kill Rock Stars)
Tera Melos - Patagonian Rats (Sargent House)
Tobacco - Maniac Meat (anticon.)
Tungs - Sleeping (Self-Released)
10. Zach Hill - Face Tat (Sargent House)
I was a big fan of Zach's ostensible solo turn on Church Gone Wild, and Face Tat is the closest thing he's done since. Impossibly dense and scattershot, this is an album of face-melting schizophrenic intensity, from a drummer who never seems to run out of ideas, and thinks nothing of piling them high in each and every track.
9. The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream (Blue Horizon)
There's been no dearth of 60s garage throwbacks, but Phosphene Dream stood out for me. Great harmony vocals, and perfectly chilly delivery that manages to be campy but never silly, and never substitutes attitude for strong songwriting.
8. Daughters - Daughters (Hydra Head)
Funny to think that this is what Daughter's lead singer Lex would consider a sellout. A frightening monolith of an album, Daughters distilled their sound from spastic noisecore to something much denser and emotive. The fact that they can be so divisive in the surprisingly doctrinaire metal community just proves they're doing something right.
7. Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts (Sub Pop)
I was bummed that Pre broke up until I heard this. Who knew these former no-wavers were hiding so many hooks?
6. Medications - Completely Removed (Dischord)
A complete left-field surprise from a band I assumed dismantled itself long ago. This was a refreshing return to their debut EP, a perfect mix of math-rock gymnastics and elastic melodies.
5. Child Bite - The Living Breathing Organ Summer (Joyful Noise)
This was a year of sleeper hits for me, and it took about five listens for this album to really sink in. For an album to be so willfully weird yet so immediately accessible never ceases to surprise me.
4. Zs - New Slaves (The Social Registry)
From a band that can do anything, we get everything. From track to track, it's hard to believe that you're listening to the same album: from ambient paeans to tribal death rituals, this was the sound of a band shaping the future out of thin air.
3. Weekend - Sports (Slumberland)
"Coma Summer," @ 1:30. The vocals become the guitars and the guitars become the vocals: devastation and rebirth all at once. In what seems a mostly hollow shoegaze revival, this band is taking us somewhere else.
2. Women - Public Strain (Jagjaguwar)
Instead of the wild vacillations of their debut, this album went deeper into each song, balancing consonance and squall in new and surprising forms. And of course, there's "Eyesore", a song that somehow manages to be imminently singable without any recognizable chorus to speak of. Let's hope they stick together.
1. Lower Dens - Twin-Hand Movement (Gnomonsong)
As evidenced by my embarrassingly saccharine review, words fail when it comes to this band. In a time when we're so hungry for new sounds to codify and genrefy, Lower Dens patiently prove that you can still dazzle and amaze with just vocals and the age-old lineup of guitar, bass and drums. "Dream-pop"? "Shoegaze"? "Freak-folk implosion"? With an album this good, who cares what you call it.
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