In 2010 a pleasant little surprise landed in my lap. A CD of fuzzy guitar sounds, smothered with a sort of haziness around it and drowned in muffly, relaxing, vocals that spoke tales of heartbreak, love, getting ridiculously high, and playing with the cat delivered by California surf-pop band Best Coast in their debut album Crazy for You. I remember being completely enamored by just how relaxing and chill the album was, even when it went into a dark place.

The album was so melancholy and personal, but thanks to singer Bethany Cosentino, whose new line of clothing for Urban Outfitters drops this month, her lovely soothing voice  still made me just want to sit on the hood of my car and stare at the stars. I was excited for their newly released sophomore album The Only Place as soon as it was announced, wondering if it could surpass their first or be doomed to reproduce a slightly weaker sound (*ahem* Sleigh Bells). I must say that it does indeed deliver, and then some.

Expounding on the lo-fi California surf-pop that brought them to national attention with the help of producer/composer Jon Brion (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I heart Huckabees, and producer for Katy Perry and Kanye West), Best Coast unleashes a second album that completely blows away their freshman effort in terms of lyrics and music.

Bethany seems like a completely new singer, combining the hazy, breathy tone we’re used to with this new sort of rockish persona to great results, showering her voice over every song, not letting the music overtake her sound. Songs like Up All Night and Dreaming My Life Away hearken back to the hazy, dreamy songs of their first album. She also takes herself into a darker place than previous (focusing less on just relaxing and smoking blunts) delving into a more personal vein about relationships in songs like My Life and How They Want Me to Be. Best Coast’s other half, Bobb Bruno, brings these themes to life with his music, turning the album into one of the more relaxing ones released this year.

I have to say that Best Coast truly outdid themselves with this album. With its catchy hooks, dreamy atmosphere, and soothing vocals it’s one of the albums I’ll have playing over and over again in my car this summer.

Download Best Coast’s first single off their new album, “The Only Place” at their website, and check out the Drew Barrymore directed video for “Our Deal” (from Crazy for You) below:

Most likely to: make her grandmother proud.

Kate Bush has only one actual physical child, but when it comes to artistic offspring she’s about as fertile a Myrtle as anyone is likely to find. The mixture of prog, post-punk, singer-songwriter and theatrical music hall traditions that she concocted three decades ago on The Dreaming remains one of the great visionary leaps in the history of pop music and it’s a vision whose nooks and crannies will likely still be giving up secrets and insights decades from now.

The legions of Kate’s children range from those bearing an obvious family resemblance like The Cocteau Twins, Tori Amos, Bjork, CocoRosie, Joanna Newsom, Florence Welch and 99% of everyone who ever trod the stage of the Lilith Fair. Less obvious branches of the Bush family tree are My Bloody Valentine, Outkast, Animal Collective, Radiohead, Flaming Lips and Atlas Sound – really, anyone who has ever tried to marry the seemingly unmarriageable strains of punk austerity and prog opulence while maintaining their own unique identity in the process ought to be sending Kate Bush a nice card every Mothering Sunday (which this year was on March 18 in the UK, so maybe next year the ingrates will remember).

24-year-old Michigander Alex Winston falls squarely in the “doesn’t she look a lot like Grandma?” camp. King Con, Winston’s full-length debut, is full of catchy but slightly askew pop hooks, thundering percussion butting up against sedate grooves, songs covering all sorts of quirky topics ranging from jealousy among polygamist wives to Amish teenagers out on Rumspringa, and massively layered choirs of Winston’s own, often helium-powered voice.

King Con is pretty instantly engaging in its youthful exuberance. Winston has inherited Bush’s (and Amos’) complete fearlessness to risk sounding silly or melodramatic as she gooses her voice into leaping into places saner minds might tell her to avoid, as well as Florence Welch’s penchant for anthemic pop rousers. That combination makes songs like “Sister Wife” and “Medicine” (with its defiant chorus of “I WON’T TAKE MY MEDICINE!!!!”) about as irresistible as cake batter ice cream delivered to you by puppies on a hot summer day.

What really lifts Winston above other young singer-songwriters treading similar territory (besides such obvious things as better songs and an ability to somehow imbue a voice that recalls the creepy adolescent chirp of Alison Shaw of Cranes with the whiskey growl of Amy Winehouse) are the oddly incongruous touches she layers into her songs. “Fire Ant” alternates between a rinky-dink toy piano riff and hyperactive drums while a male chorus lifted straight from Martin Denny’s faux-exotica echoes everything she sings. “Velvet Elvis” continues the exotica motif while Winston calmly coos that she’s going to “kill the bitch that bats an eye” at her beau, before erupting into another furiously percussive chorus.

Alex Winston is the best kind of artsy – she’s kooky and a bit daft but is way too much fun to ever be threatening or intimidating. Everything she does on King Con is delivered with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. She’s a serious artist who’s way too confident in her abilities to take being a serious artist seriously – sort of like her spiritual Grandma Kate when she’s sitting down to write songs about the eroticism of doing the laundry or turning into a mule to chase ghosts out of the house.

Check out the animated video for “Fire Ant”:

Most likely to: pin down a dream, rough it up, take a snapshot, and move on.

Emily Wells is one-woman band for the next millennium. Rather than strapping on a bass drum, clanging cymbals, and wearing her harmonica, Wells melds violin, oddball toy instruments, and myriad beats with her smoky voice to create music which breaks free of most musical and creative preconceptions.

On Mama, Wells’ most recent full-length, Wells pulls more overt folk influences into her musical fold than she did on The Symphonies: Dreams Memories & Parties (2008). To record Mama, Wells left behind the L.A. garage studio where she recorded Symphonies, in favor of a rented cabin in Topanga Canyon.

Whether from the change in venue or simply a change in heart, Mama sounds earthier and less overtly urban than Symphonies. With its hypnotic chorus (“I just want to feel better / I just want to feel right”), “Dirty Sneakers and Underwear” lets a diffuse cloud of prairie dust triumph over the less visible grit of the city.

Mama’s first single “Passenger” offers Wells’ prototypical beats, but she’s scaled back the tempo from allegro to largo. The songs strings create a languid scaffolding that supports the rest of the sounds. Wells slows down enough on “Passenger” to let the listener hop in beside her. When she sings, “I will be waiting for you” it feels like she could be waiting for you, even if you are smart enough to know better.

“Fire Song” plays out like a Steinbeck novel set to strings. In a song as big as any canyon landscape, Wells communicates loss, as well as the desire to move beyond her past as she sings, “They’ll just say you lost it in the flame / putting out the old desire so you don’t have to give it names.”

Wells often blends hip-hop, classical, and folk influences. On Mama, the hip-hop surfaces only on “Mama’s Gonna Give You Love,” a lullaby-cum-rap that infuses shades of “Hush Little Baby” with a down tempo loop: “Tuck you in just one last time / Tell you little baby, it’ll be all right.”

While there is no one song as gripping as Wells cover of the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Juicy” (from her 2009 EP Dirty), Mama will satiate Wells’ longtime fans. She’s likely to gain new admirers, too, since devotees of Thao Nguyen, Andrew Bird, Polly Jean Harvey, and even Billie Holiday will all warm to Wells.

Watch Wells’ self-directed vid for single “Passenger” below:

Most likely to: Be told “I love you too.”

We hipster music critic types sometimes have a difficult time of it.  We’re supposed to like all kinds of crap that no normal human being would enjoy just because it’s “challenging.” In that light, it’s hard to ever know for sure how we’re supposed to feel when a band that starts out stirring up a cacophonous, but still enjoyable, shitstorms of noise eventually ends up laying down smooth grooves that wouldn’t horrify even little Sally down the street. We almost feel obligated to bitch about it. “But…but…that’s not how these things are done! Damn it, if you start making music everyone can like, how am I going to feel superior by liking you?”

A good case in point would be Brooklyn’s Bear in Heaven. Back in 2007, their debut longplayer Red Bloom of the Boom could best be described as the halfway point between M83 and Faust. It was full of tunes that felt like cut-and-paste pastiches of symphonically layered keyboard epics and harsh industrial noise and hitting every note in between in the course of one five minute track. Then, the follow-up, 2010’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth, smoothed out their sound considerably and streamlined it down to a catchy brand of synth-based dance music dosed with large dollops of psychedelia. It was more conventional, but still pretty bent.

And now comes I Love You, It’s Cool, on which Bear in Heaven pretty up their music even more than on Beast Rest Forth Mouth. This is the point where cries of “sell-out” would normally begin to be heard, but it’s doubtful that too many will be heard. For one thing, the audience for Red Bloom of the Boom, that five-year-old experimental debut, likely numbered in the dozens at most, and therefore almost everyone who’s discovered the band has done so after they’d already taken the first steps towards accessibility, and are unlikely to get too bent out of shape about it. For another thing, in today’s pop music environment where the mass audience turns up its nose even at seemingly commercial sure things like Goldfrapp, Bear in Heaven are still weird enough that there’s no real danger of them being discovered by the great unwashed masses of Katy-loving Philistines.

Most of all, though, no one’s going to get too upset about Bear in Heaven’s increased conventionality because the results are just so damn good. On I Love You, It’s Cool, Bear in Heaven come off like a Yankee version of French electronic music. Echoes of Air and the aforementioned M83 can be heard all through the album as the Brooklynites build indelible hooks out of lushly layered synthesizer licks and trippy bass lines, while Jon Philpot’s ethereal vocals float over the proceedings like the disembodied voice of God.

The entire album overflows with gorgeous soundscapes that don’t just skirt the lines dividing synth-pop from trance music from psychedelia – they render any divisions between those genres obsolete. Where Bear in Heaven started out as a group that could veer between sounding like The Human League to sounding like Pink Floyd at the drop of hat, they’ve evolved into a band that doesn’t need to do any veering. Now they manage to sound like The Human League and Pink Floyd simultaneously and sometimes toss in some Cure or Joy Division or Portishead just to mix things up. It’s a damn lovely piece of work.

In an indie-rock world where being difficult is sometimes praised as an end unto itself, Bear in Heaven demonstrate that being accessible is not a bad thing at all. Bear in Heaven show that it’s possible to have one’s cake and eat it, too, and that a band with talent and vision can make music that is every bit as creative and challenging as anything the most abstruse experimental combo churns out, and is a stellar bit of ear candy.

Check out the vid for single “The Reflection of You”:

Most likely to: Hit the (rock) history books..

Sees the Light establishes that ex-Vivian Girl Katy Goodman plans to treat La Sera like a full time gig. The second La Sera release banishes its side project feeling forever (see ya, Kickaball Katy), though it stays true to the gestalt of her self-titled 2011 debut.

The album’s 10 songs are fuzzy little earworms that feel good when they get their hooks into your consciousness, ensuring that Sees the Light is eminently listenable. Goodman sounds like Debbie Harry fronting the Pixies (“How Far We’ve Come Now,” “Break My Heart”), Weezer (“I Can’t Keep You in my Mind”), and the Velvet Underground (“I’m Alone”). Sees the Light nods and curtsies to the Velvet’s “See the Light.”

If Sees the Light was merely a trip down rock ‘n’ roll’s memory lane, there wouldn’t be much worth writing about or listening to. La Sera’s sophomore effort walks the fine line between inspiration and out right imitation. Plus, pop nuggets including “Please Be My Third Eye” take listeners on a retro-infused dream ride in just over two minutes.

On “Love That’s Gone” the lilting melody still isn’t afraid to kick some ass, but the kiss-off happens so gently that it would be easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention: “I know that you’ll be leaving / please be on your way.” Remember to try that line out on the next guy who tries to break your heart.

Goodman recorded Sees the Light in California, and the sun-drenched warmth of the Golden State peak out through her music’s maudlin haze, yet these songs sound just as good on a rainy, grey day, when even the sunniest soul can use a lift. Though she sings, “I’ve done wrong” on “Break My Heart,” it’s tough to find anything wrong with Goodman’s creation.

Watch the video-within-a-video for Sees the Light‘s “Real Boy” and “Drive On” below:

Most likely to: relocate Stockholm to Appalachia.

Attention Americans! The gauntlet has been thrown down! With their second album, The Lion’s Roar, the pair of Swedish sisters who comprise First Aid Kit have demonstrated the outright gall to release an early contender for “Americana Album of the Year” honors, likely shaming actual American musicians in the process.

Obviously, this is a state of affairs that cannot be allowed to stand. The U.S. of A. has long since sent its manufacturing jobs and a large chunk of its tech support positions overseas, but for crying out loud, we have to draw the line somewhere. Once we start letting Scandinavians record the music named after us more engagingly than the average Nashville resident, well, let’s just turn out the lights and be done with it.

Klara and Johanna Söderberg, with the help of such unpatriotic traitors as Conor Oberst and The Felice Brothers, have definitely put us in a pickle. The siblings from the Stockholm suburbs write high and lonesome tunes that twang in all the right ways and harmonize like it was the Everly Sisters who sang the praises of “Bowling Green” and not the brothers. Just listening to “I Found a Way” or “This Old Routine” causes visions of Thomas Hart Benton paintings to rise before one’s eyes.

Shamefully, First Aid Kit honor American country music traditions far more than the domestic breed of shitkickers does anymore. American country musicians these days love to namedrop the giants of the genre in songs that sound nothing at all like the genre they’re supposed to be honoring. But when the Söderbergs sing “I’ll be your Emmylou/and I’ll be your June/if you’ll be my Gram/and my Johnny, too,” they do it in a song that Emmylou, Gram, Johnny and June would recognize as country music. Let’s see The Band Perry do that.

Yes, musically First Aid Kit sounds more like Kansas than the band Kansas ever did. The Lion’s Roar is Harry S. Truman set to music. It’s amber waves of grain and E Pluribus Unum. It’s the City of New Orleans chugging away down the Illinois Central. It’s Coach Eric Taylor and Buddy Garrity sitting in an old Dodge on the outskirts of Dillon listening to the high school playoffs on an AM radio station out of Cross Plains while jets on their way to San Antonio leave lonely vapor trails overhead in the gloaming of a Texas autumn.

However, citizens, all is not lost! There’s a slight chance of preventing the Swedish takeover of Americana before it’s too late. For on certain songs, most notably the title cut, the Söderberg sisters betray a distinct awkwardness with English phrasing. They throw in words that don’t quite work with the tune and end up stretching the melody out of shape – not enough to wreck the song, but enough to make it feel right weird sometimes. So they haven’t quite cracked the code yet, but they’re on the threshold.

Sadly, though, it’s probably too late to prevent the inevitable; First Aid Kit are most likely destined to become a better Americana band than 97% of bands from America. The only recourse left is a counter-attack. The call is going out for some Nashville types to study up on traditional Swedish folkmusik and start unleashing kulnings and wailing away on the nyckelharpa. Maybe if we mount a serious threat to become better at their music than they are, the Swedes will stop doing Americana better than we do.

Watch the video for The Lion’s Roar‘s title track below:

Most likely to: require closed captioning.

Back in the day, the term “one man band” used to conjure the image of some reject circus freak who played the tuba, violin, piano, guitar (and/or sitar), harmonica and bass drum. All while riding a unicycle. Sure, the visual was great, but the actual music sucked ass. Thankfully, these days, “one man band” can mean one guy who plays all (or most) of the instrumentation. Such is the case with Crushed Stars. While Crushed Stars is the formal name of the act, in all reality, it is just one man: Todd Gautreau. And the guy is so good at what he does, it’s hard to not find yourself wanting to break all his fingers for being such a musical glom.

Crushed Stars, such as it is, has been around since 2001. ’08 saw the release of Gossamer Days, 2010 saw the release of Convalescing in Braille, and this year we get In the Bright Rain.

Much of the new album exists in a space where guitar and vocals hang in the air. Nothing is quick and sharp. Instead, vocals drift in and out. Ironically, not much is “bright” about this effort; instead, the songs are dark, slow and moody. Guitar notes linger in the air, almost effortlessly giving way. The mix also makes the vocals a bit difficult to understand. And that’s my biggest complaint about Bright Rain; on a majority of the songs, I don’t know what the hell Gautreau is saying. His delivery is on the Lou Reed end of the spectrum, and there is so much reverb, that the words are largely unintelligible. While I cannot thank his label enough for at least attaching a bio sheet, perhaps including the lyrics would help critics like me to properly judge the music. (And if you want to know what the bio sheet says, go read about the dozen or so reviews on the net. Most of them never fucking bothered to listen to the actual music, and just reran the bio sheet, passing it off as their own. Seriously, check it out. Coconut don’t play that shit.) As a general rule of thumb, if I can’t decipher what the singer is singing after three listens, it’s a negative. Which is a shame, because in this case, it really draws away from some great sonic landscapes.

“Copenhagen” is just such an example. Once the melody kicks in with percussion and guitar, the song comes to life. Maybe it’s ironic that the only cover on the album – “House on The Hill” (an Epic Soundtracks cover, something I may or may not have glommed off said bio sheet) – has one of the clearer vocal deliveries. Even “Leave Town” stands out because the delivery is a bit less muddy than other songs. Lead track “Brighter Now” has a summer-y, early-R.E.M. vibe and an addicting hook. Most of the songs are on the slow, contemplative side.

But it’s well worth giving a few listens. There’s so much going on that it’s easy to miss nuances. Gautreau can develop a melody and take it to new places. The violin in “Color Kites” gives the song pop and an added sense of drama. Sounds wash in and out, adding texture. He accomplishes the difficult task of having a lot go on, but it adds warmth. After going through the album, a few days later I found myself humming some of the tunes. I knew it was Crushed Stars when I was totally making up the words.

So I found myself really liking the music. With Bright Rain, Gautreau has created a thick, lush world, and every song seems to occupy a different space. And if you like what you hear and want to check him out live, guess what? Tough shit. Turns out Gautreau is no big fan of playing this stuff live. So just enjoy the music, and hum along.

Check the video for “Brighter Now” below:

Most likely to: darken up the dance floor.

Ternion, We Have Band’s second full-length, diverges from their 2010 debut WHB. While the trio retains the rhythmic bompity-bomp and layered vocals, their newest crop of songs are dosed with a density that was completely absent from their previous release.

We Have Band is a trio comprising former record-label employees Darren Bancroft and husband and wife Thomas and Dede Wegg-Prosser. The three friends share vocal duties, and clearly also possess a kick-ass 80s record collection.

We Have Band covered the Pet Shop Boys’ “West End Girls” on their first EP, yet on Ternion they turn to the darker side of British electro-pop for inspiration. Unfortunately Ternion lacks the subtle playfulness that made WHB’s “Honeytrap” and “You Came Out” so entertaining.

Lead-off single “Where Are Your People” sounds like Black Celebration-era Depeche Mode. “Visionary” catches the ear with its ode to New Order’s “Temptation.” Playing “spot the influence” on Ternion grows tiresome, but it’s hard to avoid. When the mood does lift, it still maintains a dark edge reminiscent of Kele Okereke – fitting, since they have previously remixed Bloc Party.

We Have Band explores rhythm on Ternion. The bass line on “Tired of Running” thumps as plainly as a heartbeat. “Rivers of Blood” leads off with bald tribal toms. According to We Have Band’s Facebook page they are fans of fellow Brit’s These New Puritans. While TNP are absolute masters of dark, bottom heavy electro-pop, in the hands of We Have Band those same tricks feel more like a teen who tries on a Goth persona for the weekend.

Ternion’s tracks are nuggets of maudlin movement, honed in the studio until they gleam as if they were spit-shined with the band’s tears. Taken as a group the songs are overworked, overwrought, and leave me with the wish that We Have Band c’mon and get happy again.

Feast your eyes upon the video for “Where Are Your People?” from Ternion:

Most likely to: add 70 to 90 and come up with 10.

I had the best of intentions, and God knows I tried – I really, really tried – but there are some things that are just plain impossible. One of those things was keeping up in any meaningful way with every genre, sub-genre, offshoot, side alley, dead end, rivulet, wellspring and torrent of alt-rock in the 90s. I made what I felt was a more-than-credible effort to do so – a fact attested to by my frightening lack of anything resembling a pension fund, since I spent my prime earning years tracking down nearly every release I could by any shoegazing, alt-country, indie rock or Brit-pop band that got a brief mention in Option magazine. But even so, plenty of stuff I’m sure was highly worthwhile ended up firmly off my radar.

One of the branches of alt-rock that I just didn’t have time for in 1994 was the scuzzy, bloozy, skronky primitivism of the Pussy Galore family tree. Because of this, I was only passingly acquainted with bands like the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Boss Hog and Royal Trux. What I heard about those bands’ bare-wire take on garage rock was intriguing, but when it came down to deciding between the new album from Cornershop or the new one from Royal Trux, Cornershop was going to win out.

So it’s with fresh (or possibly untrained, depending on one’s perspective) ears that I come to Rad Times Xpress IV, the new album from Jennifer Herrema’s Black Bananas, which is apparently a continuation of RTX, which was her continuation of Royal Trux following the departure of former partner Neil Hagerty. Considering that the line-up of Black Bananas is the same as RTX, and that RTX was supposedly an acronym for “Rad Times Express” and this is the fourth album by the same cast of characters, one has to wonder why exactly this album is by “Black Bananas” and not “RTX,” but whatever – Herrema is a child of the ‘90s alt-rock scene, and back then it was considered gauche to be in only one band when you could be in seven. So she comes by it natural.

So what do my fresh (or untrained) ears hear when listening to Black Bananas? Mostly classic rock filtered through the aesthetic of The Clash’s disavowed Cut the Crap album. There are stadium-sized rock & roll riffs all over this thing, but they’re all slathered with sundry extraneous sound effects and synth-farts that don’t really add anything except an extra layer of grime to the proceedings. Herrema sings in a cool tough-chick voice that’s been processed to sound like a voice mail message from Joan Jett after she’s butt-dialed you while singing along to a Bad Company 8-track in the car.

The effect is basically that of a 1970s classic rock band that’s too hip to admit to loving the idea of being a 1970s classic rock band. There are hot riffs. There are non-ironic guitar solos. There is all kinds of cock-rock swagger and the “cock”-iness is not lessened one bit by the fact that it’s being delivered by a woman who twenty years ago was considered to be a sex symbol of the grungy 90s. I have no doubt Herrema could kick my ass from Scranton to doomsday without breaking much of a sweat. But all the rock and roll coolness is kept at arms’ length by an air of indie rock detachment and sonic fuckery.

The main downside of Rad Times Xpress IV is that there’s not much variation of mood or tone during the proceedings – it all proceeds at roughly the same volume and tone with the same amount of sonic tomfoolery thrown into the mix for the whole album. Still, a few tracks stand out enough to be instantly memorable. “Hot Stupid” mixes Toto’s “Hold the Line” and Foreigner’s “Hot Blooded” with 80s hair metal vixens like Lita Ford or, well, Vixen. “TV Trouble” buries a synth-rock base under a ton of caustic shit, while “Overpass” is one of the few songs on which Black Bananas really open up the throttle and gun it, sounding like David Bowie’s “Jump They Say” by way of Steppenwolf.

All in all, it’s pretty cool. I’m definitely more interested in going back and checking out Royal Trux and RTX now than I was before I heard it, so that’s got to be a good recommendation – though in all honesty I’m still probably not going to put them at the top of my list. I liked this album quite a bit, but if there’s a new Cornershop album out I’m probably still going to pick that up first. But at the very least, Herrema’s back catalog is now on my “yes, I will check this out someday” list, while it formerly resided firmly on the “sorry, I can’t listen to everything” list.

Listen to Black Bananas’ “Rad Times” below:
[Audio clip: view full post to listen]

Most likely to: play a show at the top of Mount Olympus.

I’ve come to the conclusion over the past year or so that I greatly respect, and often actively search for, art that demonstrates the skillful use of restraint. I’m still unsure whether my recent foray into ambient and hushed electronic music was the cause or the result of that discovery, but that’s not important. What is important is that “loud” art and I (think M.I.A, graffiti, drum solos, pop art collages, etc.) are like oil and water, never meant to be in the same room with each other. This is why I was rather surprised to find myself listening to Olympic Games, the debut album by Finnish krautrock-revivalists Siinai, earlier this month. If I usually tend to gravitate towards Brian Eno and Stars of the Lid while I work and write, why was I jamming out to what sounded like Vangelis meets Holy Fuck? The answer is much less surprising. Olympic Games is a collection of psychedelic soundscapes and invigorating climaxes that, while in need of an editor, takes you on an evocative instrumental space-rock head trip.

Opening track “Anthem 1+2” is, stylistically speaking, the perfect introduction to what lies within this bizarrely structured album, and with a title like that I would be doing the album a disservice to not discuss it first. The album opens softly and we are greeted by a percussionless fog, shimmering and wreathed with lonely strands of guitar chords. Over the course of the next few minutes, what sounds like a sampled string section slowly crescendos and builds the tension to near-uncomfortable levels. And nearly six minutes later, they suddenly launch into action and begin pounding out a crowd-pleasing melody so unashamedly huge that it would make Zeus himself blush. Penultimate track and clear album highlight “Victory” also uses this method to great effect, exemplified by the uncontrollable urge I get to repeatedly punch the air whenever I hear its final two minutes. However, the steady build and climax of “Victory” are noticeably more dynamic and the payoff is more successful as a result. These are the band’s shining moments, when they admirably encapsulate the raw emotions of the fiery Olympic spirit, both in the profound struggle and the rise to victory.

Interestingly, the use of builds and tension is one of Siinai’s greatest strengths as well as their greatest weakness. They have a habit of creating very lengthy song movements, adventuring deep into the sonic space they create in an attempt to lull the listener into a spiritual trance. Only sometimes, that space is one that was never worth exploring, such as on the tortuously murky “Anthem 3” or the hollow back half of “Munich 1972.” The music here sounds completely directionless, all style with no attention paid to substance. They sound as if they were created with the intention of representing the moral low-points in a mythical hero’s character arc, but instead of raising the stakes it simply left me tapping my watch, waiting on the next track to drag me out of that aural limbo.

Thankfully, such unpleasant segments are few and far between. While “Mt. Olympos” bears some similarities to the aforementioned tracks (percussionless to the point of almost being ambient music), it instead sounds like emerging from a cave and beginning to slowly ascend into the sky. A single harmonized chord is cocooned in reverb and creates a delicate, featherweight atmosphere while arpeggiating synths explode above in a slow-motion lightning storm, whizzing about like fireflies.

Other notable moments include “Marathon,” with its heavy motorik groove and excellent use of shakers, as well as “Finish Line,” the monumental and fist-pumping closer that would sound right at home next to the Chariots of Fire theme. Both of these tracks showcase the band’s skill at creating a thoroughly enveloping atmosphere while keeping the compositions relatively simple. Don’t let that fool you into thinking that they’re amateurs, or worse, lazy—they simply have an excellent grasp on how best to let their songs develop, which in this case is at a near-glacial speed. By keeping the compositions minimal, usually as one or two distinct movements within each song, it makes the transitions all the more visceral and effective. Their ability to do a lot with a little not only emphasizes how much potential they have for future projects (keep an eye out for their collaborative album with Spencer Krug, dropping this spring), but it also neatly exemplifies that theme of restraint that I mentioned previously. Even when they’re making music that sounds like it was lifted from the Rocky credits sequence, they still know when to dial back the intensity and sink into a machine-like groove.

Watch the video for Olympic Games opener “Anthem 1+2″: