by Sleigh Bells
(N.E.E.T./Mom + Pop)
One reason this record is a landmark is that it subverts the usual rule of thumb when sampling Funkadelic: Do it for the funk. The chunk these guys swipe is an acoustic-guitar-driven folk-rock groove from “Can You Get to That?”—a head-nodder, not a body-shaker. But that subversion of form—emphasizing the “-adelic” rather than the “Funk-“—is mere icing for what’s going on while the record plays. Sleigh Bells are noisy all over, but they’ve written the most delectable set of melodies of the year, and this is the least noisy and most delectable of all. In fact, on the chorus, Alexis Krauss offers two at once: the main lyric, which carries everything easily—you know it’s right when you stop noticing that Funkadelic loop—and a wordless one that swoops around it and is perhaps even lovelier. It’s almost embarrassingly rich—probably my track of the year.
by Tape
A Stockholm trio that makes experimental improvisatory music—only instead of being forbidding, Andreas Berthling, Johan Berthling, and Tomas Hallonsten create gorgeous chamber music, somewhere between delicate jazz improv and clicks-and-cuts-style electronica. They’ll puzzle over a motif for several minutes before finishing inconclusively, yet it’s satisfying to listen to. Two of the four tracks here, “Beams” and “Moth Wings,” are reprises from 2008’s superb Luminarium; the others, both dubbed “Unknown,” are in the same vein. The one lasting 4:17 is my pick to click, but it’s all terrific sunset music.
by Saadi
(Serious Business)
Born Boshra al Saadi in Damascus and raised in Pittsburgh, Saadi is a New York woman through and through, as this five-song EP, covering an odd amount of ground, proves. The title track is beholden to post-punks like the Bush Tetras, but the Serious Business remix bolsters it with a steadier, more up-to-date DFA-manqué groove. She finishes with a nice, gender-reversed Dylan cover (“Daddy, You’ve Been on My Mind”), and in between are two short singer-songwriter originals I don’t turn off. Nice.
by the Unwed Teenage Mothers
(Tic Tac Totally!)
From Oxford, Mississippi, four songs in seven and a half minutes: ramalama guitars that occasionally break into fast solo babble, skittish hi-hats in a hurry, voices mewling things like “Got a teenage brain” and “I’m gonna blackout, blackout tonight” and “If that’s love, make it go away” like they’re on a fairground ride. 