A Record A Day: Peeping New Albums on the Daily

Record #177: St. Vincent's 'Actor'

I’m late to the party on this one. Actor is this year’s release from Annie Clark, known to most as St. Vincent. I’m most impressed by the diverse and remarkably moody tones all over this record. From delicate woodwinds to crunchy guitars to Clark’s beautifully pristine vocals, this record sounds amazing. The songs themselves are also varied and incredibly distinctive. Clark seems to have quite a way with meshing intricate vocals and guitar parts in her arrangements—not unlike Dirty Projectors. I find this record more idiosyncratic and forceful than most of the latter-day output from Joan as Police Woman or Cat Power, both of whom have been compared to St. Vincent lately. Solid, interesting record.

Record #176: Richard Swift's 'Atlantic Ocean'

Richard Swift’s latest, Atlantic Ocean, was released back in April. While I personally don’t find it quite as compelling as 2007’s brilliant Dressed Up for the Letdown, this one is loaded with mid-tempo, charismatic indie-pop gems with a somewhat different approach. There is unmistakable Motown and psychedelic influence on tracks like “Lady Luck” and “GOT…NO…TIME,” on which Swift expresses his more visceral and soulful side vocally. Atlantic Ocean is still full of lilting, brainy piano pop with shoals of blips and boops, and per usual, this has enough catchy tunes to tide you over until the gifted and prolific architect of pop albums releases his next—I imagine it won’t be too long.

Record #175: De Novo Dahl's 'Tigerlion'

De Novo Dahl are a local indie-pop band that have existed in countless formations and lineups for the better part of a decade. A couple of years ago, they were signed to a major (mostly metal-based) label, and the record that followed, Move Every Muscle, Make Every Sound, was a sugar-coated slice of synth-pop. Since then, the lineup has changed greatly, and principal songwriter Joel J. Dahl has been seriously re-working his approach. Tigerlion is DND’s forthcoming record, and it consists of a decidedly darker, more thoughtful style of pop. It still contains the ear-catching vocal hooks Joel has always had a knack for, but this record is all about layers of diverse sound and an introspective style of modern baroque pop. There are hip-hop, indie-rock, electronica and power-pop elements all throughout this record, and I’m happy to say it contains some of the most mature and compelling songs I’ve heard from De Novo Dahl in a long time.

I’m not exactly certain when or in what capacity this record will be released, so I’m not going to leak a track, but I will whenever I can get the go-ahead. By the way, here’s a Top 40 list of the year’s better records that I put together recently. As commenters so often do, our readers were thoughtful enough to let me know what I left out.

Record #174: Deerhunter's 'Carve Your Initials Into the Walls of the Night'

Carve Your Initials Into the Walls of the Night is a heavily experimental CD-R recorded by two of the guys from Deerhunter in 2005 and released for free on their blog just a few days ago. It’s a collection of 10 tracks featuring mostly looped and manipulated vocals and tape machine-warped sounds of all sorts. Though there are few tracks on here that could be considered “songs” in any conventional stretch of the word, there are a lot of interesting and hypnotic foreign sonics. I enjoy some of Deerhunter’s other work, and because this was clearly just an attempt at trying something unfamiliar and heavily experimental, I wouldn’t judge it against the rest of their catalog. Sometimes, you’ve just gotta mess around with noises and see what works. Hell, it’s not like they’re making anyone pay for it.

Record #173: Yeasayer's 'Odd Blood'

Odd Blood is the forthcoming release from Brooklyn-based experimental, world-influenced indie act Yeasayer. It won’t be out until February, but it has already been heavily leaked. As Yeasayer themselves put it, “Presents are always spoiled for those who open them before they are supposed to.” Fair enough.

I was a pretty big fan of 2007’s All Hour Cymbals, and I’m excited to finally have another release from these guys. While the songs still feature Eastern-inspired elements, the vocal melodies are more confident and acrobatic than those on Cymbals, and the balance of instrumentation is much more electronic. There are pitch-shifted and warped vocals, with epic, synthesized percussion and a never-ending arsenal of alien sounds. I certainly wouldn’t consider the lyrics as impressive or distinctive as any of the record’s other elements, but that’s forgivable. This is a mostly interesting sophomore effort—it loses me a bit on the more long-winded, electro-jam tracks—but it proves that Yeasayer are capable of immense growth and not just content to revisit the same elements/approach that made their 2007 release so popular.