My favourite albums of 2015

This year has seen such an embarrassment of riches, I've found it exasperating trying to keep up. Case in point: I think I'd only just started to digest disc two of the three that comprise Joanna Newsom's monumental Have One On Me when she released the impossibly dense Divers in October. Then, when I learned that January 2016 will see new releases by Shearwater, The Besnard Lakes and David Bowie, I laughed out loud. How does anyone absorb all this wonderful music with just one pair of ears?!

The following 10 albums felt the most deep and satisfying, and knocked me about in various beautiful ways:

10. Never Enough Hope – The Gravity of Our Commitment (Milk Factory Productions) 
I have Roommate's Kent Lambert to thank for introducing me to this monster: four massive pieces totalling 80 minutes of some of the most intelligent, dense and wonderfully played instrumental jazz-rock. Notable for including the instrumental talents of luminaries such as Colin Stetson on saxophone, Dina Maccabee (Julia Holter's touring band) on violin and Nick Broste (Roommate producer) on trombone, but amounting to way more than the sum of its parts, it's dizzying to imagine how composer Toby Summerfield pulled all this together. Imagine Frank Zappa's epic '70s Wazoo ensemble updated for the 21st century, or Jaga Jazzist minus the synthesizers. Pretty mindblowing. 

9. Destroyer – Poison Season (Merge)
Until now I've never fully understood the appeal of Dan Bejar's droll songcraft. He's always come across as an aging hipster with one too many ironic accessories, tongue firmly in cheek, and one foot out the door. Maybe I've just never got the joke? However, on Poison Season he's invested his MOR pastiche with a degree of intimacy that feels more engaging. His lyrics are oblique, but his delivery is more direct, and the music is unashamedly gorgeous. I still don't trust Bejar, but for as long as Poison Season is playing, I'm bewitched by his bullshit.

8. Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld – Never Were The Way She Was (Constellation)
Saxophone and violin – and that's it. Admittedly, Colin Stetson is the kind of player who's able to make a single instrument sound like a weird, underwater dub orchestra, but it's the mesmerising interplay between his saxophone and Sarah Neufeld's violin that's most notable here. Like the tree on its cover, Never Were The Way She Was is dark, gnarled and far-reaching, persistently refusing to be relegated to background music.

7. Jaala – Hard Hold (Wondercore Island) 
Short, sharp and sinuous, the debut album by Melbourne-based art-rock quartet Jaala shields its tender, bruised heart amid dazzling guitar-bass-drums interplay worthy of prime Magic Band, while at the centre of it all, Cosima Jaala's voice ricochets from a wounded coo to an ear-splitting scream. (Plenty of open-ended major-seventh chord voicings to satisfy my inner music geek, too.) I was gutted to have missed December's album launch, so one of my new year's resolutions will be to catch Jaala live in 2016. Looks like they'd be unbelievable.

6. Jim O'Rourke – Simple Songs (Drag City)
It's been a six-year wait since The Visitor, so a new Jim O'Rourke solo album is a cause for celebration. Thankfully, Simple Songs is an achingly beautiful salvo from a master craftsman. Here he's unashamed of pulling classic '70s rock and MOR moves. With typical O'Rourkian verve, these songs are far from simple. Knowingly absurd at times, but never resorting to cheap shots. He's too damn good for that. He may have his back to us, but the man is wearing his heart on his (cardigan) sleeve.

5. Björk – Vulnicura (One Little India)
Ouch. It's sad to think that Björk suffered a painful separation from partner Matthew Barney in order to create her greatest album since Vespertine. Album as open-heart surgery? Perhaps. But what's most heartening about Vulnicura is alluded to right there in the title: the cure for her vulnerability, the salve to her volcano of emotions, is to express her pain through the process of musical creation itself. And what music, updating the awesome strings-and-beats template of Homogenic with the help of Arca and The Haxan Cloak. 

4. MG – MG (Mute)
While most critically acclaimed electronic music this year seems to have been preoccupied with warping the boundaries of what's possible/listenable (Oneohtrix Point Never, Arca, etc.), leave it to an old master like Martin Gore to create one of the mightiest electronic albums I've ever heard. A gloriously deep, thick and crunchy record that combines the best of minimal electro, kosmische and science-fiction soundtracks, MG is an unbelievably satisfying experience, a lesson on the wonderful music you can create on vintage synths if you know what you're doing. The sketch of a knob on the front cover feels like an imperative: turn it up.

3. Fred Thomas – All Are Saved (Polyvinyl) 
Listening to this album feels like rooting around under the sofa cushions for the remote control, only to find a photo of your beloved departed dog, an unopened bottle of beer, a dusty cassette compilation made by an old friend, a dog-eared journal, and a pack of gum. It's surprising, ridiculous, hilarious, infuriating, brilliant, silly, beautiful, profound, knowingly throwaway and deadly serious. And the baffling thing is that the deeper I dig into what I love about All Are Saved, the more elusive its appeal becomes. All I can do is put it on again, writhe around in its warm recesses and itch-scratching edges, and let Thomas's inspired outpourings work their dark magic. 

2. Jenny Hval – Apocalypse, girl (Sacred Bones)
It may be confrontational and unsettling in both its lyrics and musical settings, particularly on opener 'Kingsize', but there's no denying that Apocalypse, girl is a humane and beautiful record, dazzling in its artistry and deeply moving on many levels. While it's not an album I can listen to often, each time uncovers new wonders in both Hval's vocal delivery and the eerie musical settings she's painstakingly crafted with Lasse Marhaug. A work of art.  

1. Roommate – Make Like (Strange Weather)
Having been unhealthily obsessed with this album for the last few months, I think I'm finally ready to take a break from it. There's no denying the hold it's had over me – more so than any other album released this year. I've already detailed all the reasons I love it, plus I've interviewed Kent Lambert about its creation, so all that's left to say is this: if you haven't heard this album, I strongly recommend you spend some time with it (and its predecessors Guilty Rainbow and We Were Enchanted). It's not flashy, it's not trendy, but like a good friend, the time you spend in its company will be handsomely rewarded.

And here are 10 more I also love:
Oren Ambarchi & Jim O'Rourke – Behold (Editions Mego)
The Balustrade Ensemble – Renewed Brilliance (Serein)
Ian William Craig – Cradle For The Wanting (Recital) 
Steve Hauschildt – Where All Is Fled (kranky)
Julia Holter – Have You In My Wilderness (Domino)
Julia Kent – Asperities (Leaf)
Matchess – Somnaphoria (Trouble in Mind)
Lee Noble – Un Look (Patient Sounds)
Joanna Newsom – Divers (Drag City)
The Singleman Affair – The End of the Affair (Strange Weather)  

The Balustrade Ensemble – Renewed Brilliance

The music of The Balustrade Ensemble sounds as if it's perpetually suspended aloft by the faintest of breezes, its half-remembered melodies shimmering across a dusty room and refracted through the sheerest panes of glass. Beatless, wordless, fragile and ethereal, it sounds like The Cocteau Twins underwater, or Boards of Canada played on archaic instruments.

Compared to its predecessor, Capsules, released on Dynamophone back in 2007, Renewed Brilliance is even more vague, hazy and elusive. It's as if the already degraded radiance of The Balustrade Ensemble's music has undergone another round of aging, deepening its lustre and accentuating its fragility. In that regard, I wasn't as immediately drawn to this release. However, with time, it has proven just as beguiling.

Its most melodic and superficially vibrant pieces – opener 'Bathyal Reel', 'Show Us To The Sky' and 'Aerial Verandis' – feel like a clear continuation from Capsules. Grant Miller's guitar tones ping and shimmer, cushioned by wavering beds of organ laid down by Liam Singer, or the distant tape-looped voice of Wendy Allen. At the more abstract end of the spectrum, sound manipulator Scott Solter has transformed the original instruments beyond recognition, rendering 'The Lowing Herd Wind' as celestial exhalation, its tonal partner 'Summerhill' all aquatic atmosphere. Elsewhere, the eerie rustlings of 'The Arch Scope Cleave' are reminiscent of the wonderful Fennesz, while the closing tracks 'Processionary' and 'Goodbye Leona Dare' leave the strongest impression, the music's tender vulnerability teased into memorable melodic shapes.

The lingering feeling is that it's often the most subtle and inexplicable musical gestures that have the most lasting impact. Even though Renewed Brilliance insinuates itself delicately, as most ambient music does, like coloured light shone through water, its mood resonates deeply. While it's playing, little seems to be happening. Once it's over, its absence aches.

Renewed Brilliance is released by Serein on 27th November.

Roommate – Make Like

Make Like

Amid the devalued, ever-evolving music stream, most craft are bright and flashy yet flimsy and insubstantial, offering little more than brief respite from the waves before they dissolve into nothing or sink from view. Precious few craft give pause, feel solid or lovingly constructed, make you feel you could sail in them a while. Roommate's Make Like – which came to my attention thanks to a glowing review on Coke Machine Glow – has stood me in excellent stead for weeks now, its reassuringly lived-in, woody timbre holding me close like an old friend. I have no plans to abandon this ship anytime soon.

Roommate

Roommate is the songwriting vehicle of Kent Lambert, now four albums deep. Kent and his band – including Sam Wagster on guitar, Gillian Lisée on bass, and Seth Vanek on drums – have brought all their sensitivity and expertise to bear on these eight songs. As much as I'm warming to their preceding albums – Songs The Animals Taught Us (2006), We Were Enchanted (2008) and Guilty Rainbow (2011) – the more I listen to Roommate's discography, the more Make Like feels like a culmination of all that's come before it – a distillation of an aesthetic and a refinement of purpose. Just shy of forty minutes, the album is astute, economical, meticulously performed and produced, and deeply affecting, both lyrically and musically. It's a thoroughly satisfying whole, an unselfconsciously classic-sounding record with masterful segues and a neat division into two sides that no doubt rewards listening on vinyl (the album was mastered and cut by the legendary Rashad Becker). In what remains of 2015, it's quickly assuming the same prominence in my life as Adult Jazz's Gist Is had in 2014.

What's most beguiling is how the album reminds me of several other artists and bands I love without being obviously influenced by anything in particular. At moments I hear the measured cadence and melodic nous of early Shins; the aching piano-driven beauty of Automatic For The People-era REM; the stoic magic of the sorely missed Sparklehorse. However, its true beauty, and singularity, only reveals itself with intimacy.

Make Like gets its (secret) claws in early thanks to something as simple as a drum beat. Back in the early '00s, I took a road trip across the US with my close friend Will. The album on continuous rotation during that trip was The Sebadoh, which kicks off with the great Jason Loewenstein song 'It's All You'. The drum beat that begins Make Like's opener 'People On Screens' is similarly catchy. Drum sounds tend to be fetishised to an absurd degree, but my instinctive response to this beat is to get fired up, ready to stick around for the duration.

As a commuter myself, the image of 'People On Screens' is all too familiar: half-asleep humans glued to their smartphones, unable to bear being alone with themselves, semi-engaged with shallow, distracting content. The song crams in enough devious production details (shakers, synths, effects) to make Spoon jealous, before building to an agitated crescendo of flanged guitars. Then, a segue into 'Secret Claw', which cements the feeling of experiencing something special, its eerie swells of brass and piano akin to a giant existential yawn.

Despite being one of the least musically dynamic tracks, 'Dancer Howl' is easily the most lyrically affecting – and seems to hold the key to the themes of the whole record: fear, dishonesty, redemption, all wrapped up in the mystery of human stupidity. Towards the song's climax, as Gillian Lisée joins Lambert on vocals, handclaps crunching disconsolately behind them, the atmosphere is close to overwhelming. Rounding out the first side with peals of aching pedal steel, 'Curses' features a winning vibraphone and piano melody that vividly reminds me of something I can't quite put my finger on (dEUS, perhaps?).

The first half of side two is unashamedly gorgeous. 'Wilderness' evolves from a desolate piano ballad into a delirious, widescreen extravaganza akin to The Besnard Lakes, before seguing into the fidgety 'Old Golden', with its anxious refrain, "I am choking on an old golden rule". While the closing two songs took the longest to win me over, they end the album on an ambiguous note, inevitably sending me back to 'People On Screens'; indeed, the lyrics of 'Riot Size' suggest this circularity with the lyrics, "Shiny things on tiny screens inviting us to fight, to justify". Plus, the way 'Tri Twi' weaves its tapestry of jazzy flutes and wah-wah guitar suggests a hazy, cinematic dissolve, leaving one indelible line to ponder at the album's climax: "I've been you / One day you will have been me, too".

A thread of heartening resilience runs through Make Like's atmosphere of confusion and frustration, while the balance it sustains between the widescreen and the intimate rewards repeat listens with fresh revelations. Ultimately, perhaps the single enduring idea I take away from this extraordinary album is a line from 'Dancer Howl': "Don't make like hate, when you're really just afraid".   

Make Like is available now on cassette, vinyl and digital download.

Rae Howell – Invisible Wilderness

As I edge ever closer to silence in the realm of music reviewing, consistently struggling to find things to say, it can be the most tenuous connections that draw me back to writing. Over 10 years ago, not long after settling in Melbourne, I saw The Sunwrae Ensemble supporting post-rock band This Is Your Captain Speaking, and wrote about the gig for Luna Kafé. Considering 'Sunwrae' isn't exactly the jackpot of Google search terms, it's no surprise that Rae Howell, former leader of The Sunwrae Ensemble, got in touch in the hope that I might be interested in reviewing her latest release. Howell has relocated to London, and recorded this album in the US, but she returns to Australia this month to support its release.

Invisible Wilderness is, dauntingly, a double album of solo keyboard compositions. The first disc is the more traditional presentation, a relatively 'pure' recording, performed on a Steinway concert grand, the Rolls Royce of pianos. The second disc introduces the delectable tones of the Fender Rhodes electric piano on a few tracks, such as the gorgeous 'Train In The Night' and the plaintive, jazzy 'Do You Mind'. And, in a similar vein to Nils Frahm's Felt, the recording often foregrounds the incidental piano noises that most engineers seek to minimise: the gentle thrum of the hammers on the strings; the creak of wood; the gentle squeak and clack of the instrument's pedals.

Considering this release comprises, for the most part, nearly two hours of solo piano, I'm surprised how seldom my interest wanes. (Admittedly, it is the kind of music that's easy to pop on in the background while reading or working.) The two tracks that appear on both discs in slightly different forms – the title track and 'The Owl & The Eagle' – predictably feature the album's most memorable melodies. The album's longest piece, 'Faraway Castle', is reminiscent of Yann Tiersen's wonderful soundtrack to Amelie. And 'Synapse', the brief but haunting closer to disc two, is a tantalising taste of potentially fruitful future directions.

'Synapse' contrasts markedly with 'Incognito', the first disc's second track, a cruelly early juncture at which my misgivings about this album first arose. Cloyingly saccharine, the piece wouldn't sound out of place in a sentimental movie soundtrack, and is especially conspicuous among the more restrained moods of the other pieces. Another misgiving about this release mostly concerns its length. Disc one stretches to nearly 70 minutes, which is a demanding duration to focus on nothing but solo piano. Disc two's 47 minutes feel less like an endurance test, mainly due to the variety in tone and the emergence of more engaging textures. (However, separating the divergent styles across the discs robs the listener of potentially interesting cross-fertilisation between the approaches.) A further, minor criticism is that, considering the sophistication and elegance of the music, the cover art is ill-fitting in its cartoonish simplicity. 

I feel grateful to have been introduced to this ambitious release, one that is frustratingly broad, yet often disarmingly beautiful. Future listens will no doubt unearth greater depths.

Mining Tax – Degenerational Report EP

I won't pretend to have a particularly firm handle on what's going on in Australian politics these days, but one thing's for sure: most of what Tony Abbott and the Liberals have done to Australia since being voted in has been an utter fucking joke. (If there was ever a question of whether Abbott is snugly nestled in the pocket of the devil, there's a handy blog detailing the extensive damage Abbott has inflicted upon this country.)

Perth-based duo Mining Tax – Alex Griffin (Ermine Coat) and Mitchell Henderson-Miller – cut straight to the chase with the title of their debut EP Degenerational Report. While Mining Tax seem, on the surface, to be yet another '80s-aping outfit, more style than substance, the opposite is in fact the case: this is minimal synth-pop of a warm, incisive and intelligent stripe. Griffin's impassioned and occasionally very witty vocals are smothered by Henderson-Miller's fuzzy synths, evoking the muffled voices of the thousands of frustrated Australians who can't wait to kick Abbott out of the PM's chair next year. 

Popping this 20-minute beauty on gives me the same thrill as I got at school when the teacher would wheel out the TV and VHS player on a trolley so we could watch a documentary in class.



Degenerational Report is out now on Workplace Safety CD-Rs.

Flying Saucer Attack – Instrumentals 2015

It's hard to know what to say about this new album by Flying Saucer Attack. I first heard FSA at uni in the mid to late '90s, and they had a vague and faintly cosmic mystique unique to pre-internet bands. All you had to go on might be the album cover and a review in the NME or a mention by John Peel. Back then, FSA were a duo (David Pearce and Rachel Brook) who stirred faint beats and vocals into their mix of atmospheric languor and MBV-esque guitar-storms. Instrumentals 2015, the first FSA album in 15 years, is just Pearce, his guitar and effects.

I don't know if these pieces have been tinkered with over the years or if they were all recorded recently. The title would suggest the latter. But it doesn't really matter either way. The context is fairly meaningless. All there is is the music. And it has the same vague and faintly cosmic mystique as it had in the mid to late '90s.

There's certainly no lack of this kind of guitar-driven ambient music around. Chuck a rock and you're bound to hit someone who plays the guitar through a string of effects pedals. However, it's rare to find someone who plays the guitar in such a beguiling way. Pearce isn't reinventing the wheel, but he does create a yearning, melancholic atmosphere akin to Windy & Carl at their most minimal and forlorn.

Describing how each of these 15 pieces sound is beside the point, really; they begin and end as though they're drifting in and out of the room, making sure they colour the air without drawing too much attention to themselves. Pearce's sound is purposefully hesitant and ambiguous. Whether the individual pieces fade out after a couple of minutes or stretch on for six, seven, ten minutes, there's the sense that in leaving the music sounding unfinished, Pearce has expanded the music's horizons, leaving it open to interpretation.

Repeat listens to this album bring fresh perspectives on the music, but no definitive answers. In that regard, Instrumentals 2015 feels so open-ended that what you take away from it largely depends on what you bring to it. I started with faint fond memories of their self-titled debut album. I walk away with a nagging sensation that there's something there worth unearthing, just beyond my grasp. So I keep coming back to explore.        

A.Karperyd – Woodwork

As far as I can fathom, the motivation behind a lot of experimental electronic music is to take sounds that have obvious beauty, then manipulate them to such an extent that their heavily degraded character has an irresistible pull on our emotions. It's like hearing something with nostalgic resonance irreparably damaged by time, but still bearing some grains of its former radiance. You have to burrow through the noise, squint into the glare, let your ears fall out of focus. Something lost always seems sweeter in retrospect.

On Woodwork, Swedish artist Andreas Karperyd occasionally brings to mind the muted throb of Loscil ('Natural Nature', 'Woodwork'), the awe-inspiring grandeur of Fennesz ('Correlation and Dependence') or the recent wave of dark industrial ambient ('Low Light Conditions'). However, there's sufficient individual character – plenty of grain and craft in this Woodwork – to prevent any accusations that Karperyd's music is derivative. Indeed, according to his label Novoton, Karperyd has been releasing music since the late '80s, including a collaboration with Wire's Graham Lewis, so he's had plenty of time to evolve as an artist – which you can hear in Woodwork's lived-in atmosphere.

What makes this album worth returning to is the depth and pliability of sounds Karperyd deploys: the deeply satisfying rhythmic beds of 'Natural Nature'; the aching EBowed guitar snaking its way through 'Winter Tone'; the glimmering, light-filled tones of 'Villovagar'. The eight tracks never feel rushed or forced. These parallax soundfields take their own sweet time to flex and warp around you. 

Meg Baird – Don't Weigh Down the Light

For a couple of years I worked as a booker at a rehearsal studio cum venue, where we would host acoustic acts on a Saturday night. I soon learned there's a particular kind of acoustic music people flock out to see on a Saturday night – and it's not the kind of music I tend to enjoy. Upbeat, bluesy, rootsy stuff, with proficient musicianship and singalong bits, gets people out drinking and dancing on a Saturday night – which was my job, really – but the music itself bores me rigid. The few interesting acts I found (such as the staggering Alkali Fly), I couldn't book on a regular basis because they were too introspective, fragile and downbeat. Meg Baird's spectral folk music is in this vein. Earnest, unsullied, and occasionally very beautiful, it invites close listening and deep engagement – but can float past unheeded if you're not tuned into its subtle, autumnal flavours.

Having released four albums with psych-folk band Espers, along with two previous solo albums, Baird is a commanding singer-songwriter, projecting her compositions with conviction, while allowing a wavering vulnerability into her voice. Most of these songs are built from strong, resonant, fingerpicked acoustic guitar and Baird's high, keen vocal, with additional instrumental colour from electric guitar, organ, piano, bass and percussion played by Baird and her partner Charlie Saufley.
 
The album cover immediately brings to mind Joni Mitchell's Blue, which is a bit of a red herring – Baird looks serious and a little haunted. A closer comparison is probably Nick Drake at his most minimal and deathly (circa Pink Moon, perhaps), though Baird's compositions rarely approach Drake's in depth or complexity (whose do, really?).  

Don't Weigh Down the Light (great title) is certainly lovely, and its tone is affecting, but for the spell to be sustained over the course of an album, I can't help feeling like the songs need to spark off each other more than they do here. Or perhaps this just feels like an album from an earlier, less distracted time? 



Don't Weigh Down the Light is available from Drag City in LP, CD, mp3s and FLAC formats from 23rd June.

Jim O'Rourke – Simple Songs

There he is (I assume it's him). There's his back, anyway. He's shunning us. Or is he musing on something that lurks within the cover's inky black expanse? Either way, he's smoking a ciggie, dimly lit in red and green (is he stopping or going?). Bucket hat on. Cardigan snug. Oh Jim, you probably hate this new album already and it's only just being released...

He may be notorious for disowning his musical output, including my beloved Eureka, but I trust Jim O'Rourke. I trust that whatever musical direction he goes in – whether one-time member of Sonic Youth, collaborating with experimentalists like Oren Ambarchi, or releasing ambient drone via Bandcamp – there'll be something going on I can sink my teeth into. His Drag City releases have always been the most accessible, and Simple Songs is probably the most palatable of the lot. Exquisitely palatable, in fact.

I like the way Jim is unashamed of pulling classic '70s rock and MOR moves. Admittedly, the melodic flourishes he throws in here and there are probably tongue-in-cheek references – I'm sure I picked up some direct 'quotations' of Led Zeppelin's 'The Rain Song' and Queen's 'Don't Stop Me Now' on 'End Of The Road' – but it's all handled deftly, so it never comes across as pat. With typical O'Rourkian verve, these songs are far from simple. Knowingly absurd at times, but never resorting to cheap shots. He's too damn good for that.

On a purely sonic level, Simple Songs is delicious – and eminently crankable. Jim's spoken at length about his working process when it comes to recording acoustic instruments, and Simple Songs has the same wondrous instrumental depth as The Visitor, mixed with some of the playful Southern boogie of Insignificance. Then, when you start registering his usual wry, misanthropic lyrics, laying low in the mix to keep you guessing, the sour balances out the sweet and the whole cake slips down real smooth. The thirty-eight minutes fly by.

Straight out of the gate, 'Friends With Benefits' and 'That Weekend' are two of the most immediately satisfying vocal-led songs he's yet released. He riffs all over the shop, cramming in enough melodic ideas to fill an entire album. The Supertramp-esque 'Half Life Crisis' lays on the snark ("I can tell from your face you're a degenerative case"!) and some tasty unison guitar leads from the Thin Lizzy songbook, before 'Hotel Blue' and 'These Hands' dial back the groove for some wonderfully languid piano and pedal steel. 

There are no production tricks to generate interest; the songwriting, arrangements and dynamics hold me rapt. There's something deliciously immersive and pillowy about the way the album flows, but when Jim lets rip, you know about it. His throaty roar of "All seats are taken!" during 'Blue Hotel' sounds genuinely impassioned, and the second half of finale 'All Your Love' is basically an excuse to go full-prog on the drums – in a very precise and musical way, of course. 

It's been a six-year wait since The Visitor, so a new Jim O'Rourke solo album is a cause for celebration. Thankfully, Simple Songs is an achingly beautiful salvo from a master craftsman. No doubt this will be my favourite album of 2015 – or I'll eat Jim's bucket hat.

Simple Songs is available from Drag City in LP, CD and FLAC formats from 19th May. 

Lower Dens – Escape From Evil

When Escape From Evil was posted on NPR's First Listen a week ahead of its release, I couldn't get into it at all. I love Lower Dens' previous albums Twin Hand Movement (2010) and Nootropics (2012), so to find myself disappointed with this long-awaited third album was frustrating. My reaction was similar to when I first heard Wild Beasts' Present Tense – what the fuck is it with bands I love suddenly employing 80s synth sounds and production?! Thankfully there was a lot to enjoy about Present Tense once I got past my objection to the synths – and there's a lot to enjoy about Escape From Evil, too.

Now the album's out and I've had the chance to live with it for a week, the over-riding impression is that Lower Dens have learned how to successfully adapt their sound yet again (the change-up from Twin Hand Movement to Nootropics was, in itself, pretty striking). Following the departure of guitarist Will Adams and miserable sessions working on new songs, Jana Hunter sought a new direction that favoured immediacy, clarity and emotional directness. The best way to understand this evolution in sound is to compare the version of 'Non Grata' that appears here with the version that appeared on a split 7" with Horse Lords released back in 2013. The earlier version has a similarly icy aesthetic to Nootropics, betraying a clear debt to Kraftwerk; the new version on Escape From Evil introduces buoyant layers of instrumental counterpoint, edging it more towards the lurid synth-pop of the 80s. It's certainly the track on the album I found it hardest to warm to, despite the fact it's superficially catchy.

While Nootropics was stark and initially forbidding, these new songs are bright and muscular. This is partly thanks to production help from Chris Coady, Ariel Rechtshaid and John Congleton – which brings the synths to the fore and makes the rhythm section really pop – and partly down to some striking guitar work from both Hunter and new member Walker Teret (Arbouretum, Cass McCombs). At the heart of it all is Hunter's smoky voice, as alluring as ever, but intoning what are, for the most part, some pretty lacklustre lyrics, such as this clanger from 'Electric Current': "I only want to dance with you, all night, on the street". What rescues it all from becoming a shallow, neon nightmare is the conviction of the execution and Hunter's sharp songwriting instincts.

First single 'To Die In L.A.' is, inevitably, one of the peppier cuts, but the aforementioned 'Non Grata', the galloping 'Company', with features a seasick, serpentine guitar solo, and stunning closer 'Société Anonyme' are just as upbeat – the latter akin to The Smiths, with nimble guitar lines worthy of Johnny Marr. Gorgeous second single 'Ondine' is an early highlight, while 'Your Heart Still Beating' introduces some steamy breathing space into the middle of the set. The closest this album gets to the Lower Dens of old is probably the morose torch song 'I Am The Earth' and opener 'Sucker's Shangri-La', with its prominent, echoing guitars.

Ultimately, though, I feel ambivalent about this release. It's easy to be cynical about the band's new direction when you think of the recent success of fellow Baltimore bands Future Islands and Beach House. If this album wasn't by Lower Dens, would I spend as much time with it, testing my aversion to 80s production? I think what keeps me intrigued is Hunter's vision: a balance between the stark and the flushed; between distance and intimacy; between the affected and the guileless. I'm conflicted, which is part of what keeps me coming back for more.

Fred Thomas – All Are Saved

Even though Fred Thomas has released dozens of albums, whether solo or in his band Saturday Looks Good To Me (plus numerous other outfits), I'd not heard any of them before All Are Saved, his latest on Polyvinyl. If any of his previous albums are even half as good as this gorgeous, warped gem, I'll have a long and fruitful time digging back through his discography.

Listening to this album feels like rooting around under the sofa cushions for the remote control, only to find a photo of your beloved departed dog, an unopened bottle of beer, a dusty cassette compilation made by an old friend, a dog-eared journal, and a pack of gum. It's surprising, ridiculous, hilarious, infuriating, brilliant, silly, beautiful, profound, knowingly throwaway and deadly serious. All Are Saved is truly an unexpected delight.

It starts and ends with songs about dogs, littered with tape hiss, cymbal crashes and tape echo. The lyrics – some of the funniest and most heartbreaking I've heard in ages – either tumble out in torrents of half-remembered ideas and f-words, or are measured carefully in Slint-like cadences, half-spoken, half-sung. So all the words don't become too much, Thomas throws in juicy instrumental synth confections 'July' and 'Thesis (Lear)' to keep things spacious and radiant.

While offering up a few reference points helps me understand where this fits in my personal history of musical enthusiasm – 'When They Built The Schools' is Radiohead's 'There There' half-asleep on the couch; 'Cops Don't Care Pt. II' is a prime Tobin Sprout cut from a lost '90s Guided By Voices album; and 'Monster Movie' is Elliott Smith with a backbone – the baffling thing about this album is that the deeper I dig into what I love about it, the more elusive its appeal becomes. All I can do is put it on again, writhe around in its warm recesses and itch-scratching edges, and let Thomas's inspired outpourings work their dark magic.

[All Are Saved will be released on vinyl, cassette, CD and digital by Polyvinyl on 7th April.]

Feather Beds – The Skeletal System

I'd like to think I'm an omnivorous listener, open to many genres and styles, but really, who am I kidding? I'm inexorably tied to the music of the mid to late '90s, when I was in my late teens and early 20s: Yo La Tengo's I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One, The Flaming Lips' Clouds Taste Metallic, Sparklehorse's Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot. I rarely listen to those particular albums any more because they're so familiar, but their enduring appeal lies in the balance between songcraft and soundscaping – there's always a tune to hitch your ear to, plus plenty of interesting stuff going on within and around the songs to explore on repeat listens.

Michael Orange mines the same rich seam, and his debut album as Feather Beds, The Skeletal System, is a short, sweet distillation of this aesthetic. Nothing is played absolutely straight, but nothing is showily odd. The video for 'Animal Fat' visualises this effect nicely:

 

I know it's a kaleidoscope; you know it's a kaleidoscope. But can you look away? No. It's hypnotic. Understanding something doesn't necessarily make it less alluring. I hear what Orange is doing and it all sounds just right to me. I appreciate the craftsmanship that gently eases the album from more focused, melodic passages into ambient washes of sound. There's a lightness of touch, a gentle flexing of arrangements to make reflections glint off surfaces. A blurring. The pleasure of parallax as you stare out of a train window. Although I could happily zone out to tracks like 'Airbrushed' if they were two or three times as long, the restraint demonstrated on this lovely album keeps me coming back.

The Skeletal System is available as a limited edition CD on Happenin Records and for streaming on Spotify.