Audio By Carbonatix
This year major festivals like Austin City Limits, Bonnaroo, and the revived Lollapalooza mashed up alt-rock mainstays with a colorful new breed of improv road warriors. These groups share a noncommercial, tour-intensive work ethic that assures grassroots devotion across the country. So get hip, kid.
Sound Tribe Sector 9, Artifact (System): STS9’s third studio album condenses the bi-coastal five-piece’s beat-drunk, jazz-tronic improvisations into a potent, cohesive dose, progressive and slick but never affected or shallow. Song by song, there’s rising and falling action here, a story told through compositions that unfold like shifting silicon sand dunes. There’s perhaps no band that better balances heart, soul, and intellect on music’s cutting edge.
Hyim, Hyim and the Fat Foakland Orchestra (self-released): Like the most capable fusionistas, San Francisco singer/songwriter/piano man Hyim Ross juggles the sounds on the world’s streets — Cuban tres guitar, New Orleans second-line brass, hip-hop bounce — to achieve a style as unique as it is invigorating. Hyim’s Orchestra includes a shamelessly tight rhythm section and an expanded palette of strings, horns, and massive percussion, but what really shines on his second self-released album is the songwriting. Lyrically and compositionally, Hyim’s deft blend of humor and pathos, experience and optimism reveals an emerging talent worthy of the designation world musician.
Lake Trout, Not Them, You (Palm): Despite the fishy, bucolic moniker, there’s something seriously sinister about Lake Trout. The Baltimore quintet has been crafting shadowy electro-rock for years but still inexplicably swims under the radar of even the most well-attuned cognoscenti. Brooding, narcoticized, and occasionally manic, Lake Trout falls victim to its impossible categorization, but that’s no reason to pass up the band’s fourth record. Not Them, You is a heavy, paranoid skulk through delicate melodies and dense arrangements, stirring echoes of Eighties psych-synth-pop on a digitally enhanced postrock bender. Throw in sax, flute, and Woody Ranere’s haunting vocals, and you’ve got a sound that’s both unclassifiable and totally intriguing.
Secret Machines, The Road Leads Where It’s Led EP (Warner Bros.): While the fist-pumping bombast of Secret Machines is best served in a long-play format, the foursome of tunes that end this EP is one of the headiest of the year. Covers of “Astral Weeks,” “Money” (the Berry Gordy version), and “Girl from the North Country” descend slowly with stunning, iceberg-heavy drama and enchanted psychedelia.
