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Devin Townsend released two albums in ’09, distinctly different. Addicted, released second, was a raucous, massive metal sound, more typical of Townsend. Ki was darker, subtler, and perhaps even more intense for that. Most of the songs have a clean guitar reverberating throughout, underpinning the compositions, always building, hinting that there may be an iceberg [...]

I know, I know: hipsters suck, and they all latched onto Animal Collective last year. I’m sorry, but even a broken clock wearing skinny jeans tells the right time twice a day. Merriweather Post Pavilion is exciting, memorable, hypnotic. It’s hip, true, but in the best way. It feels new, throughout, melding computer beats and [...]

Lots of bands seem to be returning to an 80s aesthetic: booming drum tracks, analog synth lines, reverb, reverb, reverb. But nothing I heard last year recalled the decade of excess like Sainthood. Tegan & Sara, rather than simply using the production techniques of two decades ago, distilled an essence of early 80s rock that [...]

Nerd rock! So Many Dynamos (palindromes get my attention) has a math rock underbelly, but lyrically the songs are more indie, if you’ll forgive the vagueness of that label, which is only outdone by “electronica,” a nigh-useless genre I haven’t found a way to improve upon. So Many Dynamos – Glaciers [Audio clip: view full [...]

Maybe it’s not quite the groundbreaker Axel Willner’s previous effort was, but the man is still making clever, subtle electronic music that straddles the lines between dance and IDM, and also creating its own paradox by being not quite background music but not requiring attention throughout. If that makes little sense, well, the music does [...]

Super Furry Animals hail from Wales, in the UK, which wouldn’t be all that significant except that they often use Welsh in their lyrics. It makes them cooler, in a rock-’n’-roll, screw-you sense, that they don’t give a damn about making all the songs on their albums easily accessible to the English-speaking public. I doubt [...]

I’m going to try and knock the rest of these out as fast as I can, ’cause this is getting ridiculous. April indeed. Pogo is a DJ from Perth, Australia, who’s carved out a fantastic niche for himself by slicing movie soundtracks for melody and percussive elements and adding beats and basslines. Most of the [...]

I’ve been fascinated by the Canadian music scene since I was hit with Rush, Triumph and Saga all in the early 80s. I latched on to Rush with a deep and abiding passion, and I’m still an admirer, though my tastes have changed a bit from those early days. In particular, the bustling Canadian indie [...]

Silversun Pickups dropped their second great album in a row this year [edit: That is to say, this is the second great album for the band, not in '09 itself]. They’re a compelling live act, and even Brian Aubert on his own with an acoustic guitar is a pleasure to watch and listen to. I [...]

This little gem of an album is short (under 25 minutes), but it’s got some of the best loop-based tracks I’ve heard this year. That said, I don’t know how much of it is truly looped, since the band members are competent musicians, clearly steeped in the jazz tradition, and plenty capable of playing out [...]