For us, 2011 was another year of taking in as much as we could and sharing the best with you. Next year, however, will be a homecoming of sorts, a return to rock-'n'-roll roots. We'll soon be able to share the projects that we have in store — across multiple mediums — but for now, dig into this rock-focused list of must-own albums.

And for more, revisit (or simply visit) our lists from 2010 and 2009:

100 Unheralded Albums from 2010
50 Unheralded Albums from 2009

Steven Drozd: The Heart Is A Drum Machine (The Score) (Twinkle Cash Co., 1/18/11)

Steven Drozd: "Born"

A multi-instrumentalist and the third-most-tenured member of The Flaming Lips, Steven Drozd marked his first official solo release early this year with the nearly instrumental accompaniment to the documentary The Heart is a Drum Machine.

The music shares a lot of characteristics with the Flaming Lips of the past dozen years – synthesized grooves, big rock beats, fuzz bass, airy keyboards, and different instrumental flourishes weaving in and out. But listeners are unlikely to confuse the two, and the score succeeds as a standalone album as well as a film accompaniment.

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: Tao of the Dead (Richter Scale Records / Superball Music, 2/8/11)

…And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead: "Weight of the Sun"

There has been no shortage of grand themes and allegories in the canon of Austin post-punk quintet …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead. The band’s newest album, however, better matches its ambitious themes with its music, presenting an epic pair of pieces for Tao of the Dead.

The album recalls progressive albums of yore, from the likes of Rush and King Crimson, but channels them into easily digested movements. Stretches of heavy distortion and drum thrashing will appeal to the more metal-minded Trail of Dead fans, but there’s also plenty of hook-laden, radio-ready alternative rock.

Wires Under Tension: Light Science (Western Vinyl, 2/8/11)

Wires Under Tension: "Electricity Turns Them On"

Light Science is the exciting debut from Wires Under Tension, a duo comprised of violinist/multi-instrumentalist Christopher Tignor and drummer Theo Metz. With help from a few friends, including Jared Bell of Lymbyc Systym, the two combine live performance with electronic manipulation, sounding something like a progressive Dirty Three with horns, hip-hop beats, and post-rock guitar swells.

This seven-track release is a dense, fluid collection that retains consistency thanks to Metz’s steady rhythms. Electro-mechanical piano, clavinet, and synthesizers mesh with loops and samples to round out an impressive first release.

Pitom: Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes (Tzadik, 2/22/11)

Pitom: "Head in the Ground"

Combining heavy, fuzzy rock jams with Jewish melodies, Pitom is one of many projects from guitarist, bassist, and composer Yoshie Fruchter. Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, the quartet's second release on Tzadik, follows the same path as its predecessor, but it does so with a bit more cohesion and restraint.

Built from the ground up with distorted bass and violin, the band's music carries similarities to that of Skeletonbreath and Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses. Whether driving a song with an infectious melody, commingling with the violin in the high end, or simply taking over a track with raw ability, Fruchter knows when to go full throttle (the punk power of "An Epic Encounter") or pull back (the dark slow jam of "A Resentful Repentance").

The Psychic Paramount: II (No Quarter, 2/22/11)

The Psychic Paramount: "RW"

Though relatively silent for the past six years, New York noise-rock trio The Psychic Paramount returned in February to release its first full-length since 2005. Effected guitar loops, devastating low-end grooves, and bashing rhythms again form the core of the band's sound, but II is a direct yet dynamic rock explosion.

Between the guitar, the cymbals, and the effects, the mid-range gets a constant workout. Those who are turned off by this kind of music may find it to be an exercise in patience, but the lengthier durations are a testament to the trio's skills at climax and denouement.

DeVotchKa: 100 Lovers (Anti-, 3/1/11)

DeVotchKa: "100 Other Lovers"

Following the fame from its Oscar-winning soundtrack for Little Miss Sunshine in 2006, Denver multi-instrumental quartet DeVotchKa has playfully tinkered with its sweeping, emotive sound. Though it already tossed together elements of folk, rock, Mexican, and Gypsy music, it remained united by the sullen croons and songwriting of frontman Nick Urata.

That unifying factor remains, but its newest album, 100 Lovers – its second post-Sunshine full-length – continues to expand the band’s scope. The material adds new and often subtle flavors to DeVotchKa’s repertoire. Uninitiated listeners might hear more of the same, but 100 Lovers is perfect for content fans – moving in new directions without a radical departure.

Stateless: Matilda (Ninja Tune, 3/1/11)

Stateless: "Ariel"

Matilda, Stateless' second full-length, showcases the British electro-rock group's continued maturity. Lead singer Chris James hits an impressive range of notes, from reverb-cloaked backing croons to soulful leads, atop an amalgamated mix of styles, sounds, and beats.

With contributions from The Balanescu Quartet, DJ Shadow, and Shara Worden (of My Brightest Diamond), Matilda is stylistically inventive, with familiar worldly touchstones reworked into new contexts.

Grails: Deep Politics (Temporary Residence, 3/8/11)

Grails: "I Led Three Lives"

With cinematic soundscapes, Westernized Indian melodies, film-noir mystique, 1960s psychedelia, and crushing heaviness, Grails is an instrumental rarity. The Portland band's newest offering, Deep Politics, is an engaging and epic mix of acoustic intonations, indigenous sounds and melodies, spaghetti-western motifs, somber piano balladry, and more doom-filled, Eastern-infused stylistic transcendence.

And thanks in part to arrangements by Timba Harris, the mighty violinist from unparalleled genre annihilators Estradasphere and Secret Chiefs 3, Deep Politics vies to be Grails’ best album yet.

Parts & Labor: Constant Future (Jagjaguwar, 3/8/11)

Parts & Labor: "Constant Future"

After establishing itself early last decade as an interesting new name in noise rock, Parts & Labor delivered a flurry of releases over the span of just a few years. Since then, the band has scaled back to a trio built around the fuzzed guitar, bass, keyboard hooks, and tight rock rhythms.

Featuring some of the band's sturdiest songs yet, Constant Future is direct, potent, and catchy. Behind Dan Friel and BJ Warshaw's echoing, harmonized vocals are dirty, thick grooves that power the overlaid electronic freak-outs.

Adebisi Shank: This is the Second Album from a Band Called Adebisi Shank (Sargent House, 3/15/11)

Adebisi Shank: "Micro Machines"

Released to European acclaim in 2010, the aptly titled second album from Irish electro/math rockers Adebisi Shank achieved North American release this year thanks to the peerless Sargent House.

The management company / record label describes the trio as a blend of Fang Island’s shredding riffs with Battles’ electronic quirkiness and rhythmic playfulness. That description isn’t off the mark, but readers won’t get a sense of the band’s real abilities until they hear its hyper-melodic, polyrhythmic, and — most importantly — jubilant songs in full.

Second Album delivers a maelstrom of zany electronics, unusual distortions, and triumphant, rapidly ascending scales mixed with vintage synths, marimba, horns, and other accoutrements. This is all packaged between and around gloriously catchy and powerful rock riffs, resulting in a manic and buoyant sophomore effort.

Tom Waits: "Bad as Me"

Tom Waits is legend, larger than life. Few musicians are as cloaked in mythology. Yet his music has always been what music should be: comforting in places, jarring in others, pushing boundaries while always honoring the legacy of American songwriting. Bad as Me, Waits' first studio album in seven years, is all of these things, continuing the direction that he established with Closing Time in 1973 and hammered into the ground with Swordfishtrombones a decade later.

At the time, Swordfishtrombones signified a new Waits, a man unafraid to be confronted. The confidence came in large part from his marriage to Kathleen Brennan. They’re still married, and Waits credits Brennan as his support, collaborator, and muse. Here, every track was written and produced by Brennan and Waits together. Those tracks oscillate between manic and maudlin, flip-flopping throughout the entire album. Where a Depression-era blues tune ends, a ballad begins. Waits’ voice is a freight train and then a frail leaf.

That voice, of course, is a wonder. Waits can sound like a woman down on her luck, a Mississippi blues man, a possessed mule, and an army of brokenhearted ogres. Every harsh word has been employed to make sense of the ragged clatter that emerges from Waits’ throat. It’s as if his voice has always been 60 years old and his body only now caught up.

The record begins with the chugging “Chicago,” a runaway tune led by banjo, piano, and saxophone. At the end, Waits calls out, “All aboard!” in a nod to Anaïs Mitchell’s folk opera Hadestown, which itself was one giant nod to Waits and his world of devils and hobos.

That isn’t the only reference. On “Satisfied,” it’s doubtful that Waits can sing the word “satisfaction” without knowing he’s treading on Rolling Stones territory, but halfway through it becomes apparent it’s not an evocation — he’s singing at the Stones. “Now Mr. Jagger and Mr. Richards / I will scratch where I been itchin’,” he squawks, adding the chorus, “I will have satisfaction / I will be satisfied.” The punch line of the joke is that Keith Richards is playing guitar on the track.

Richards is elsewhere too, and he’s not the only superstar on the album. Flea plays bass. So does Les Claypool. Marc Ribot, who’s played with Waits since 1985, lends his Latin-infused guitar licks to just about every tune. Waits and Brennan’s son, Casey Waits, plays drums and emerges here as a versatile musician in his own right, switching expertly from a shuffle to a heavy blues riff to his dad’s iconic junkyard percussion.

Despite several blistering tracks, the best song on the album is also its softest. “Pay Me” is a tearjerker. It’s a ballad that Waits might’ve played at The Troubadour when he was first starting. Augie Meyers’ accordion and David Hidalgo’s violin wrap themselves around the piano while Waits sings, “I’ve sewn a little luck up in the hem of my gown / The only way down from the gallows is to swing / I’ll wear boots instead of high heels / And the next stage that I am on, it will have wheels.” An instrumental coda is the perfect end to the melancholy reverie, and in that moment, Waits seems like nothing more than an anonymous and soft-spoken piano player.

Of course, it’s only a moment. Three minutes later, he’s back to his droll wordplay and violent howls, talking at us in spoken asides and then cackling in our faces.

Tom Waits: Bad as Me (Anti-)

Tom Waits: "Bad as Me"

Few musicians are as cloaked in mythology as Tom Waits. Yet his music is both comforting and jarring, pushing boundaries while always honoring the legacy of American songwriting. Bad As Me, Waits’ first studio album in seven years, is all of these things. The songs oscillate between manic and maudlin, flip-flopping throughout the entire album. Where a Depression-era blues tune ends, a ballad begins.

There are multiple references throughout, the most obvious of which is when Waits calls out Mick Jagger and Keith Richards on “Satisfied.” The punch line of the joke is that Richards is playing guitar on the track. And he’s not the album’s only superstar. Flea plays bass; so does Les Claypool. Marc Ribot, who’s played with Waits since 1985, lends his Latin-infused guitar licks to just about every tune. And Waits’ son, Casey, plays drums, emerging here as a versatile musician in his own right.

Despite several blistering tracks, the best song on the album also is its softest. “Pay Me” is a tearjerker. An instrumental coda is the perfect end to the melancholy reverie, and in that moment, Waits seems like nothing more than an anonymous and soft-spoken piano player. Of course, it’s only a moment. Three minutes later, he’s back to his droll wordplay and violent howls, talking at us in spoken asides and then cackling in our faces.

- Text by Timothy S. Aames.

Russian Circles: Empros (Sargent House)

Russian Circles: "Mlàdek"

In 2009, instrumental rock trio Russian Circles released Geneva, an album that both introduced the worming bass lines of Brian Cook (of These Arms are Snakes) and showcased the band’s balance of metallic fury and melodic beauty. Complementary strings and horns also dotted the sonic landscape, creating a superlative post-metal opus.

Empros cuts away the complementary pieces of Geneva, instead focusing on the trio’s interplay. Cook has further ingrained himself in the Russian Circles sound, allowing the galloping rhythm section just as frequently to play the lead as Mike Sullivan’s effects-heavy, overdubbed guitars. And the usual ear for dynamics is present once more, building moments of tension and release to go with the killer riffs.

- Text by Scott Morrow.

Dub Trio: IV (ROIR)

Dub Trio: "Control Issues Controlling Your Mind"

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When dub-rock powerhouse Dub Trio last released a full album at the start of 2008, it marked a significantly heavier direction, with chugging hardcore and sludge-metal tendencies creeping into its unparalleled blend of grooves and riffs. The trio’s newest, IV, continues that trajectory, committing the group first and foremost to metal.

Dub remains a key factor, albeit more subtly. Few tracks bear the mark of modern reggae or dub music, but individual instruments are tweaked at key moments. “Ends Justify the Means” is the band’s first venture into the wobbly bass sounds of dubstep, but palm-muted and manipulated guitar stabs make it entirely new. And “1:1.:618” is an experiment in prepared piano and improvised effects, emphasizing the unpredictable nature of this inimitable outfit.

- Text by Scott Morrow.

Kid Koala: Space Cadet graphic novel and soundtrack (Ninja Tune)

Kid Koala: "Main Title Theme"

Canadian artist Eric San, better known as Kid Koala, is a non-traditional, storytelling turntablist, classically trained pianist, and accomplished visual artist. Like his 2003 release Nufonia Must Fall, Space Cadet is a joint graphic novel and soundtrack, each of which has been meticulously handcrafted between other artistic endeavors.

Over 132 pages of etchboard images, Space Cadet tells the tale of a guardian robot and a girl whom he raises to be a great astrophysicist-slash-space-explorer. It touches on themes of love and seclusion, as San sets the tone with a gentle and somber piano score. His turntable work makes intermittent appearances, usually to give the piano or other accompanying instruments (strings, horns, marimba) a warped and “drunken” feel.

The album’s tracklist provides follow-along page coordinates for the music, providing the type of audio/visual synthesis that is central to his “headphone concert” tour of 2011.

- Text by Portia Medina. Read our Q&A here.

Darkness Falls: Alive in Us (HFN Music / Fake Diamond)

Darkness Falls: "Noise on the Line"

Part of Copenhagen's blossoming pop scene, Darkness Falls is a two-woman dream-pop duo with throwback flair consisting of singer/keyboardist Josephine Philip and guitarist/bassist Ina Lindgreen. The two made a splash in April with their debut EP, and now on their first full-length effort, produced by DJ/composer Anders Trentemøller, they present a fuller and more dynamic sound.

In no small part from Philip's haunting harmonies, the music serves an atmospheric and hypnotic mood. The timbres are assorted yet thematic, united by guitar tones that drip with twang and surf-rock reverb. Accents of acoustic guitar, glockenspiel, Theremin, harp, and harpsichord join the spooky synths and sparse percussion for a soundscape that's alternately minimal and flourishing.

In all, Alive in Us is a promising debut that shouldn't be overlooked due to its Danish origin. And if you want to hear more of Philip's talents with Trentemøller, listen to the heartbreaking ballad "Even Though You're With Another Girl" on the producer's outstanding 2010 album, Into the Great Wide Yonder.

- Text by Scott Morrow.

Corridor: Real Late (Manimal)

Corridor: "Objective Lens"

Led by multi-instrumentalist Michael Quinn, Los Angeles-based Corridor is a quirky one-man pop experiment, crossing streams with classical and world sounds. But Quinn, who released a self-titled debut as Corridor in 2009, also cites influences such as industrial/folk art-rockers Swans, medieval English folk, and Django Reinhardt, creating one massive — but cohesive — confluence of styles.

Corridor’s blend of electronic looping and acoustic plucking is often dark and emotive, with an almost grunge/metal heaviness. Real Late also is populated by thumping tribal percussion and distortion on the verge of squealing, avant-garde hysteria. Even when venturing into dirge-ful, down-tempo territory, a jazz-like sense of melodic phrasing pulls it all back together.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson and Scott Morrow.

Mr. Gnome: Madness in Miniature (El Marko)

Mr. Gnome: "Ate the Sun"

Formed in 2005, Cleveland-based duo Mr. Gnome has been offering introspective, spooky indie rock ever since its inception. Even though the art-rock band is composed of just singer/guitarist Nicole Barille and drummer/pianist Sam Meister, Mr. Gnome finds a way to make a lot of noise.

Madness in Miniature, the duo's third full-length album, flexes its muscles frequently. Oscillating between raucous guitars, atmospheric soundscapes, persistent drumming, and Barille’s full-on belt-outs and soft-spoken vocal layers, the body of work immediately calls to mind the best stuff by Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Kills, with hints of Queens of the Stone Age peppered throughout.

“House of Cards” is the clear-cut hit here, featuring an array of sonic qualities: clean guitars at the intro and verses, riff-laden interludes and bridges, forceful choruses, both sweet and distorted vocals, creepy harmonies, pulse-pounding percussion, and Halloween-esque howling. This variety is reflected in the rest of the album, making Madness in Miniature an indie-rock success.

- Text by Michael Danaher. Read the full review here.

The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble : Mr. Machine EP (!K7)

The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble: "Pretend" (f. Emika)

On its debut album, You Make Me Real, German “acoustic techno” trio Brandt Brauer Frick introduced the world to its unholy marriage of dance-floor forms and neoclassical minimalism. Over the course of the last year, the band has performed, on occasion, as a 10-piece ensemble, which has enabled it to transfer its digital components into the hands of even more humans.

Now that 10-headed beast, known The Brandt Brauer Frick Ensemble, has released Mr. Machine, an eight-song EP. The title track kicks things off with a steady, spare drum beat and half-cooked instrumental detritus populating the wide-open spaces. From there, things should sound a bit more familiar, as four tracks are reinterpretations of tracks from You Make Me Real and three are reinterpretations, including "Pretend" by Ninja Tune recording artist Emika.

The production is incredibly rich without being dense, and each of the instruments is given equal measure of the spotlight. It’s definitely headphone music; you’ll want to catch every new wrinkle and texture.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson.

Honorable Mentions

The Boddie Recording Company retrospective release (Numero Group)

Deer Tick: Divine Providence (Partisan)

Dirty Projectors & Björk: Mount Wittenberg Orca (Domino)

East of the Wall: The Apologist (Translation Loss)

Giant Squid: Cenotes (Translation Loss)

Junius: Reports From the Threshold of Death (Prosthetic)

Justice: Audio, Video, Disco (Ed Banger)

Morkobot: Morbo (Supernatural Cat)

Nordic Nomadic: Worldwide Skyline (Tee Pee)

Gary Numan: Dead Son Rising

Prurient: Time’s Arrow EP (Hydra Head)

Ralfe Band: Bunny and the Bull OST (Warp Films / Ghost Ship)

Raleigh Moncrief: Watered Lawn (Anticon)

El Rego: s/t (Daptone)

Roedelius Schneider: Stunden (Bureau B)

Roots Manuva: 4everevolution (Big Dada)

Slugabed: Moonbeam Rider EP (Ninja Tune)

Star Fucking Hipsters: From the Dumpster to the Grave (Fat Wreck Chords)

Statik Selektah: Population Control (Duck Down)

Christina Vantzou: No. 1 (Kranky)

Wild Child: Pillow Talk (Major Nation)

Zakarya: Greatest Hits (Tzadik)

Colin Stetson: "Those Who Didn't Run" (excerpt)

Saxophonist Colin Stetson's distinctive reed work can be found in the music of Tom Waits, TV on the Radio, and Arcade Fire, among many others. His latest full-length solo album, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, was released in February of this year, and now he's back with a 10-inch EP, Those Who Didn't Run. Armed with bass and alto saxes and some advanced breathing techniques, Stetson creates heavy, droning horn sounds that are as post-rock as they are avant-garde jazz.

The two tracks on Those Who Didn't Run were recorded in a single take and run just over 10 minutes apiece. Whereas the title track (excerpted above) is drawn in pulsating minimalist strokes, "The End of Your Suffering" rides an off-kilter, high-pitched riff throughout, with occasional aberrant flourishes. With such breadth of texture and pitch, it's hard to believe that you're hearing horns.

Following this release, Stetson will embark on a year-long tour as part of Bon Iver's live band.

When DeVotchKa landed a Grammy nomination for its contribution to the soundtrack of 2006 film Little Miss Sunshine, it was a welcome vindication. The Denver-based quartet had been waging an uphill battle for recognition since the late '90s, when bandleader Nick Urata (vocals, guitar, trumpet, piano, Theremin) put together the first version of the band with largely different personnel.

“It took a long time to find the right quartet,” Urata says from his Denver home, where a blizzard rages outside. “I was a sideman for my whole life, so at the beginning [of DeVotchKa] I was having such a good time doing my own songs with my own band, I let anyone who wanted to play join in. When we finished the first record (Supermelodrama, 2002), everyone was done with school and needed to move on. [Multi-instrumentalist] Tom Hagerman was one of them, but in the long run it was good. It forced me to find people who wanted to play for a living. Finding Jeanie [Schroder] and Shawn [King] is a long story, but eventually Tom came back and we convinced him to stay.”

Urata grew up near New York City in a large Italian family. “My grandfather was a musician and had a great influence on me,” he says. “I began studying trumpet at age eight and was exposed to music from all over the world. There was always talk of Gypsies in our bloodline. As I got older, I began to pine for those old-world sounds.”

It’s those old-world sounds that make DeVotchKa so unique and hard to define. The band is tagged with blurbs like “Gypsy mariachis playing funky boleros at a Greek taverna” or “Eastern Bloc cabaret rock,” but its blend of rock and world music is part of a burgeoning new style one could call global pop. DeVotchKa’s mash-up of American R&B, Gypsy, spaghetti western, Argentinean tango, surf guitar, odd Balkan back beats, and angular funk sounds eccentric and strangely familiar, even to those unfamiliar with the band's myriad influences.

“Music-business people are always telling me there’s no place for [DeVotchKa],” Urata says. “But the fans are saying, 'Give me more, and the wackier, the better.' Almost every label in America turned us down. One of them, after a long courtship, walked away because we were too ethnic. Nine months later, right about the time they would have put our record out, we were featured in Spin as part of the hottest new trend in music.”

Undaunted, the band created its own label, Cicero Recordings, and followed up Supermelodrama with two more excellent recordings: Una Volta (2003) and How It Ends (2004). When the directors of Little Miss Sunshine put tracks from How It Ends on their soundtrack, it brought the band some well-deserved mainstream recognition, as did its one-off EP, Curse Your Little Heart, for independent label Ace Fu.

Enter Anti- Records, the adventurous LA label that’s home to Tom Waits, Merle Haggard, Billy Bragg, and Nick Cave. “We were interested in Anti- because they have Tom Waits,” Hagerman says. “They finally came to a show and signed us.”

A Mad and Faithful Telling, DeVotchKa’s new album, is their most ambitious yet, featuring ten luxuriously produced tracks that brim with international rhythms, lush orchestrations, and Urata’s soulful croon. The band produced the album with Craig Schumacher (Calexico, Giant Sand), who also helped with Una Volta and How It Ends.

“Craig has great musical ideas and keeps us from hurting ourselves when we record,” Urata jokes. “He’s good at placing mics for maximum effect and coaching a good performance out of us.

“There was an urgency when we wrote and recorded the last two albums. This time we were more ambitious musically and little more relaxed. I felt like we could sit back and let this one be itself without trying to interfere with the creative process. We left a lot to chance, with more improvisation and input from the other members — more spontaneity. The last few I had mapped out before we recorded, due to financial constraints and lack of confidence.”

The tunes on A Mad And Faithful Telling are marked by a clear, clean mix that gives every instrument its own distinct voice. “Basso Profundo” begins the album with Latin-influenced spaghetti-western sounds before moving into a Russian Gypsy jam during the coda. The backing vocalists sing a merry wordless hook that instantly embeds itself into your brain, while Hagerman’s fiddle goes into overdrive, zooming through the mix like a hummingbird on nitroglycerine.

“For me, playing violin is the most potent musical expression.” Hagerman says. “Communicating an emotion through a wordless musical phrase is really powerful.” Hagerman also shines on “Comrade Z,” an instrumental rave-up that’s part Balkan brass, part Gypsy fiddle insanity, with a driving, irresistible bass line. “We tried to cram as many notes into the motif as possible,” Hagerman says of the tune’s frenetic pace. “It’s a tune we started a long time ago. The string quartet we use on that tune gave us more choices in orchestration. I like arrangements where the strings take over the melody or rhythms that are usually played on guitar.”

“The Clockwise Witness” showcases DeVotchKa’s growing confidence in the studio. Toy piano and staccato strings set up the rhythm while Urata’s guitar, Schroder’s bass, and King’s drums counter with a dance-rock groove.

“Tom came up with the toy-piano riff a couple of years ago,” Urata explains. “We played a different version of it on the road, but when it came time to record, Tom wrote an amazing arrangement for strings and oboe. The new arrangement has a strict metronomic beat and reminds me of the seconds of our lives ticking away. The lyrics ask, ‘Is there redemption in living the straight life, or should we just trample everyone in our way for immediate gratification?”

Another dark track is “Blessing in Disguise,” a military waltz with a lyric of lost love and regret, with a lot of swing in the drums and string charts despite the martial tempo. “I wrote this on my own,” Urata says. “I was having a terrible time writing and couldn’t find anything good for months, then it wrote itself all at once. I tried to explain that process in the lyrics. In those rare moments of clarity, you realize that losing love or facing death, although extremely painful, can lead to profound changes. I wanted it to be somewhere between a wedding and a funeral march, so we brought in marching band instruments and recorded it all live in the same big studio room.”

“Undone” sounds like Roy Orbison fronting a Gypsy band while singing the tango; “Strazzalo” employs an odd oompha waltz; “Transliterator” features rocking disjointed funk that sounds vaguely like the Talking Heads, one of Urata’s favorite bands during his youth.

A Mad And Faithful Telling takes its title from a line in Edgar Allen Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, perhaps fitting because the lyrics Urata has crafted for the album are full of his usual concerns: mortality, lost or unattainable love, and the brevity of happiness. His vocals, which combine David Byrne’s uneasy yelp with Orbison’s powerful but restrained croon, often float free in the mix, adding another element of mystery to the music.

“I try to get across a mix of conventional wisdom and poetry, portraying emotional experiences with enough poetic license to make it interesting,” Urata says. “I like songs that are a little bit ambiguous. One day it means one thing, the next day it means something else, the way conversations you’ve had in the past can come back to you in a whole new context. The best stuff comes subconsciously; it has nothing to do with me. Once they’re finished, songs become their own entities that have nothing to do with you anymore. The vocal mix is dictated by what the song or that particular performance needs. Sometimes the band has to overpower the vocalist. I am a bit shy about putting the vocals way up front.”

Urata and DeVotchKa traveled a long road to achieve their current success, never compromising their sound or vision. Now that they’ve arrived, they find themselves lumped with other bands that are exploring Eastern European tonalities like Balkan Beat Box and Gogol Bordello, part of a so-called "Gypsy wave." It’s a pigeonhole that has mixed blessings.

“We have been type cast as a Gypsy band from the beginning,” Urata agrees. “In our case, it was a positive thing. As we got to know other like-minded bands like Gogol Bordello, we started telling people that Gypsy music has been going on for a long time, so where were you ten years ago? In fact, the Gypsy influence has been shaping music all over the world for hundreds of years. To say it’s some new anomaly is kind of laughable.”

William Elliott Whitmore: "Everything Gets Gone"

Folk songwriter William Elliott Whitmore graced the cover of ALARM 35 back in 2009, right after he had made the jump to Anti- (read story here). At the time, he was promoting his new album, Animals in the Dark, which saw his blues-infused creations bolstered by additions of pedal steel, organs, strings, and drums. Now, he's set to release a new full-length, Field Songs, which speaks to a uniquely American experience. Never one to hide his political beliefs, Whitmore was kind enough to share with us 10 of his favorite anti-war songs.

10 Anti-War Songs
by William Elliott Whitmore

1.  Operation Ivy: "Unity"

A bit of protest from the Bay Area's premier ska outfit.

2.  The Coup: "Head (Of State)"

Almost every song written by Boots Riley could be taken as an anti-war song, but this one gets specific.

3.  Portugal. The Man: "People Say"

A beautiful tune, one of my favorites of theirs.

4.  Country Joe McDonald: "I Feel Like I'm Fixing to Die Rag"

This is one of the ultimate protest tunes, and it's just tongue-in-cheek enough.

5.  Tom Waits: "The Day after Tomorrow"

Written from the perspective of a young soldier who just wants to get home to his family. Very moving.

6.  Crosby Stills Nash and Young: "Ohio"

Unforgettable melody used to describe a horrific event. Shows the callousness of law enforcers.

7.  The Shadow Government: "Big Bazooka"

Everybody wants a big bazooka.

8.  Bob Dylan: "Masters Of War"

A stirring minor-chord look at the ones that pull the strings and their lack of compassion for the marionettes.

9.  Gil Scott Heron: "The Revolution will not be Televised"

The first conscious rapper, Mr. Heron was emulated by many but equaled by none.

10.  Fugazi: "Repeater"

I was a name; now, I'm a number.

Jarboe: "The House Of Void"

It’s mid-August, and it’s cold in Denver. It’s been raining for something like 34 hours straight. I spent the bulk of that time locked in my condo, listening to Jarboe and her myriad projects, incarnations, and collaborations with buddies and underground metal all-stars such as Swans, Justin K. Broadrick of Jesu, and Neurosis.

My mood has been affected accordingly. The creaks in my house have taken on a menacing air; there’s intelligence in the light around me; I’m seeing colors; I’m remote-viewing back to weird, old-world landscapes; I just awoke from a dream about choking, and I’m deep in the throes of a particularly penetrating sweat. I need to get out of here. I think that my neighbors will be the largest beneficiaries of that move; my walls are thick, but they’re not Jarboe thick.

Following this kind of strangeness, it helps to think on some touchstones that are grounded in the commonality of it all. It’s 2008, and the Olympics are on; the Democratic National Convention will be rolling into town soon; war is not yet obsolete; mankind is still uncovering new ways to hate our differences with medieval aplomb; Jarboe is right back in the thick of a wicked, resurgent metal scene.

The avant-garde songstress says, with palpable excitement in her voice, that “throwing myself into the void, pushing myself hard, pushing myself to exhaustion — that’s what drives me. That’s why I like loud, aggressive music. That’s how I’m wired!”

She is a woman who seems hyperactively aware of those moment-to-moment changes that shape her consciousness, which extend past her art and music. She is straight-edge, practices extreme boxing, and her hands are callused from carrying her own equipment. She has refused to accept the role of novelty act in the very masculine world of metal.

"My artistic base is grounded in Swans. It’s how I was refined; it’s how I adjusted; it’s how I developed. It was such a big part of my life. I could never turn my back on that.”

But perhaps most telling are the actions that led her into the grips of the early ’80s New York no-wave scene. Upon hearing Michael Gira’s band, Swans, she set out for New York City with the sole intention of joining the band. Gira started her off on bass, but she was quickly recognized as an artistic force, and with vocal, keyboard, and songwriting contributions, she helped to shape the unique, heavy sound in one of that era’s most important underground metal acts.

Gira and Jarboe closed shop on Swans over a decade ago, but Jarboe remains lightning-eyed and howling. Her sounds are best not described from any clinical standpoint, as one could get lost in a string of descriptive words that don’t necessarily do justice to the tactility of her work (Old Testament-informed post-industrial dirge, a cross between yodeling and church-worship chorusing, etc.).

Jarboe’s works are temporal, as heavily influenced by current experience as they are informed by her Swans days. As such, it’s better to swoop in from above with general ideas about what she’s doing in the present that continues to drive her towards the extreme ends of multimedia art and music.

The physical representation of her sound is a good place to start; Jarboe has a history of intense cover art and intimidating album names. Her 2004 release, Anhedoniac, featured edgy, limited-edition, Wal-Mart-repellent nudes taken by Richard Kern. The most accessible of these depicts her naked and devoid of pigment, holed up in a cell and clawing at the bars on a window. As she explains, “It’s what I’ve done as a performance artist that led to my work with audio experimentations, feedback, and multi-track delays. It cracked me open to hear sounds in a different way; it shifted things to where I didn’t need a traditional melody.”

Her second release of 2008, Mahakali (following J2, a collaboration with Broadrick), continues in this vein, although the concept contributes heavily to the depth of the album. The cover is an animation-enhanced photo of Jarboe posing in a particularly threatening portrayal of the Hindu goddess Mahakali. Though traditional portraits show the goddess with a lolling tongue, Jarboe assured me that every muscle in her head contributed to the considerable tongue length in that shot, quipping through her faded Southern drawl that “it definitely gives you a greater appreciation for the talents of Gene Simmons.”

Mahakali herself lends a weighty contextual element to the sound of the album. The goddess is associated with the dichotomies of annihilation and creation, time and change. For Jarboe, this is an apt symbol for the state of the planet — politically, environmentally, and otherwise. It’s alternately a tragic concession of what needs to happen to move forward and a condemnation of those events that got us here. The goddess is often depicted as having many faces — a concept that flows volcanically through Jarboe’s work and life.

She uses the term “flexible reality” to describe the different phases, faces, and personas of her post-Swans act as The Living Jarboe. Sonically, she seems to toe the line of every diagnosable personality disorder as she weaves easily digested harmonies, Swans-esque industrial churn, a string section, and most notably, an arc of rangy vocals into her unique vision of black metal (“rangy” is perhaps not the word here, but I defy you to tell me what that word is).

Like some Wiccan version of Tom Waits, she uses her voice as an instrument that can be bent across the full spectrum of sound and style. The opening track on Mahakali, “Mahakali, of Terrifying Countenance,” has a techno-erotic paganism that bares no resemblance to the smoky sound that opens “The House of Void.” Somewhere in that track, her voice cuts sharply through the fog, only to become indistinguishable from what could be either a squealing guitar or her own manic shriek.

This awareness of her multifaceted personae is a condition that might explain her propensity to collaborate. As a serial collaborator, her sound tends to ricochet as it bumps up against the experiences of other artists. On Mahakali, Jarboe has recruited an impressive roster of talent to help shape the different faces of the album.

In a manner completely opposite of the across-the-ocean, file-sharing collaboration with Broadrick, she brought into the studio members of Dysrhythmia, Neurosis, Antony and the Johnsons (not Antony), Unsane, Amber Asylum, former Swans drummer Vinny Signorelli, Attila Csihar of Mayhem, and most strikingly, Phil Anselmo of Pantera.

She had the idea to insert Anselmo into an environment that is seemingly caustic to his black-metal personae. It works. His vocals on “Overthrown” are the howling, emotional core of the album. Anselmo’s voice here is as raw as red meat, but a cello is layered underneath, and a soulful harmony surfaces from beneath his otherwise tough sound. Backed by some aggressive acoustic bullying, the track is a rugged, Southern-gothic roar.

For all her faces, Jarboe remains existentially rooted in those days spent pioneering with Swans. In fact, Child of Swans was the working title for this new album. “The Swans were my education,” she says. “It altered the way I hear sound permanently. My artistic base is grounded in Swans. It’s how I was refined; it’s how I adjusted; it’s how I developed. It was such a big part of my life. I could never turn my back on that.”

The Sway Machinery: The House of Friendly Ghosts, Volume 1 (JDub Records, 3/8/11)

The Sway Machinery: "Gawad Teriamou"

Led by guitarist and lead singer Jeremiah Lockwood, Brooklyn-based band The Sway Machinery includes Yeah Yeah Yeahs drummer Brian Chase, brass players Stuart Bogie and Jordan Mclean (Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra), and baritone-sax player Colin Stetson (Tom Waits, Arcade Fire). Though something of a name-dropper’s perfect dream, The Sway Machinery actually resembles very little of its individual parts.

Instead, under the vision of Lockwood, the collective explores Jewish cantorial music within the broader sphere of world music, injecting the ancient tradition with Afro-rhythms and blues-tinged soul.  The distinct sound stems from two figures in Lockwood’s life: his grandfather, renowned cantor Jacob Konigsberg, who instilled in his lifeblood the ancient heritage of synagogue music; and Piedmont blues virtuoso Carolina Slim, who mentored Lockwood early in his career, as he played the streets and subways of New York City.  It’s a far-out mix that is sacredly funky, executed brilliantly by a collective with a dense amalgamation of contemporary sensibilities.

And to slice it up even more, The Sway Machinery has enlisted one of Mali’s most respected singers, Khaira Arby, for its second record, The House of Friendly Ghosts, Volume 1.  An invitation to be the first Jewish band to perform at the Festival in the Desert in Mali turned into a month-long stay where the band recorded and wrote with some of Mali’s great luminaries, including Super 11 and Vieux Farka Touré, son of the legendary Ali Farka Touré.  Inspired by Mali’s strong musical tradition rooted in local soil, The Sway Machinery recorded the album in the capital of Bamako, accenting its local sounds with Arby’s willful voice at the center.

In many ways, the record plays like a travel journal; tracks like “Women Singing in Timbuktu,” “Camels,” and “Turaeg Child Singing” are exactly what the titles suggest.  As a whole, the record offers many sincere moments like these, whether sound snippets from the streets or the work done in the studio. The project translates as an earnest effort to make sense of a culture through the language of music.

Though Arby is a perfect fit for the Afrobeat horns and the slew of new African instruments introduced to The Sway Machinery’s sound, she provides an interesting point of contrast to the band’s Jewish foundations and American funk and jazz flourishes.  But she respectively owns some of the record’s most standout tracks, making songs like opener “Sourgou” sound like they were played by a band less on a sojourn, more on a permanent stay.  The foot-stomping,  Afro-funk offering “Gawad Teriamou” flaunts Arby’s fiery but effortless vocal deliveries, given life by a Gypsy-desert guitar lick, infectious bass riff, and a stabbing brass section.

Lockwood provides the other half of the record’s vocals.  “Skin to Skin” is the first hint of what Lockwood has to offer, and listeners will immediately sense the intuitive connection between the musical traditions.  There are, however, stark differences. It’s a singing style that hinges on Hebrew syntax and traditional Jewish melodies, a hybrid form that isn’t fully understood until album closer “Shalom Aleichem,” where Lockwood sings completely in Hebrew.

In the end, the music is the link between the two worlds.  The Sway Machinery’s  combination of brass and rhythm is a force to be reckoned with — a true testament to some of New York’s most accomplished musicians.  Over Lockwood’s cantorial-infused vocals, and intertwined in Arby’s African cries, is a triumphant fusion that keeps a balanced variety, from the raw funk in “Youba” to the rock drumming and call-and-response blues dynamics in “All The People.”

The House of Friendly Ghosts, Volume 1 is also less overt than The Sway Machinery’s 2008 debut, Hidden Melodies Revealed, in reconfiguring the Jewish hymn. The result is a grand thesis of cross-cultural music that looks forward more than it looks back.  Bringing its Brooklyn sound to the crown of West Africa, the collective successfully shrinks cultural distance and blends the modern with the Jewish folkloric.

Colin Stetson: New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (Constellation)

Colin Stetson: "Judges"

Everyday music connoisseurs may not automatically recognize Colin Stetson's name, but they're likely to have heard his bellowing and diverse reed work — whether from his efforts with musical luminaries such as Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, and Fred Frith or, more recently, his opening slots for stadium indie acts such as Arcade Fire and The National.

Armed with a baritone sax and other horns, Stetson uses his solo releases to present looped, layered, and transcendental compositions that may leave listeners puzzled at how they're created.  Most sound only vaguely borne from horns, as Stetson utilizes circular breathing, chordal mouth/throat techniques, and singing through his instruments to achieve sounds that are uncommon to most.

New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is his latest, and it's full of swirling, cyclical pieces that can be both meditative and powerful.  Laurie Anderson and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) provide a few spots of guest vocals, but no amount of star power — including Stetson's famous tour-mates — could steal the spotlight from this one.

Julianna Barwick: The Magic Place (Asthmatic Kitty)

Julianna Barwick: "The Magic Place"

Creating her music almost entirely out of overdubbed and looped vocals, singer/songwriter Julianna Barwick is able to achieve a profound and resonant style. Her ascendant voice, particularly when presented en masse, takes a celestial quality and at times resembles high-pitched woodwinds, organs, or keyboards.

With distant wails and chants that swell and retreat, the music sounds like an experimental composer’s take on church choirs, and for good reason: Barwick refined her talents while singing in church and school choirs as a youth. There are a few complementary piano notes and a buried bass line here and there, but largely, it’s Barwick’s shining voice and compositional skills that are center stage.

Earth: Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (Southern Lord)

Earth: "Father Midnight"

Since restarting his cult-favorite band Earth in the mid-2000s, guitarist Dylan Carlson has offered a much less foreboding take on "drone doom" — using pedal steel, banjo, baritone guitar, and more to inflect a dark "Americana" vibe into what had focused on heavily distorted and slowed-down blues-rock riffs.

Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I is another return to form — and another new lineup.  Gone are the guest guitars from Bill Frisell; in his place, bassist Karl Blau and cellist Lori Goldston offer resonant low-end riffs that complement and harmonize with Carlson's melodies.

The songs, like usual, are long-form pieces that build around a few lengthy repetitions.  However, they're even a little longer than usual, with two that top 10 minutes and a closer that eclipses 20 — totaling 60 minutes over just five tracks.  All together, the material is another victory for down-tempo music, proving that slow songs don't have to be boring.

Pitom: Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes (Tzadik)

Pitom: "Head in the Ground"

Combining heavy, fuzzy rock jams with Jewish melodies, Pitom is one of many projects from guitarist, bassist, and composer Yoshie Fruchter.  Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, the quartet's second release on Tzadik, follows the same path as its predecessor, but it does so with a bit more cohesion and restraint.

Built from the ground up with distorted bass and violin, the band's music carries similarities to that of Skeletonbreath, an alt-rock trio that embraces worldly motifs, and Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses, another eclectic ensemble that combines doomy riffs and string work.  Pitom's lineup, however, has a key difference: Fruchter's pliable skills.

Whether driving a song with an infectious melody, commingling with the violin in the high end, or simply taking over a track with raw ability, Fruchter knows when to go full throttle (the punk power of "An Epic Encounter") or pull back (the dark slow jam of "A Resentful Repentance").

Honorable Mentions

Darkest Hour: The Human Romance (E1)

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie XX: We're New Here [remix album] (XL)

Rachel Goodrich: s/t

Gutbucket: Flock (Cuneiform)

Peña: Vol. II (Secret Stash)

Six Organs of Admittance: Asleep On The Floodplain (Drag City)

Tera Melos: Zoo Weather EP (Sargent House)

Teeel: Amulet (Moongadget)

Colin Stetson: "Judges"

Powerful, otherworldly, and beautiful, wind player Colin Stetson's upcoming record, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, commands attention from start to finish. Largely recorded live without overdubs, Stetson exploits techniques that yield dense layers of multiphonic sound that seem impossible to have come from a single instrument. Here sounding deep and sonorous as a foghorn, there alternating between percussive popping and plaintive moans, while elsewhere emitting swirling, cyclical lines that could nearly pass for strings, Stetson pushes his horns through every timbral possibility.

With such formidable instrumental prowess, one might expect a display of flashy improvisations, yet Stetson uses his command of his instruments in service of intricate compositions, rich in atmosphere and mood, and unmoored from any genre. Moreover, the pieces function together to create a coherent whole, emotionally resonant and deeply affecting.  A record that will sound arresting and fresh to even the most adventurous listeners, New History Warfare Vol. 2 (out on Feb. 22) is an early bright light among this new year's releases and likely to resurface on many year-end lists.

Adept at bass sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, french horn, and cornet, Stetson studied music at the University of Michigan. From there, stints on both coasts resulted in work with a wide range of music luminaries, including Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, and Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. More recently, Stetson has startled unsuspecting rock audiences as an opener for stadium indie acts such as Arcade Fire and The National.  Here he explains how this integration of influences creates his own musical worlds.

When I've played your music for people, the unanimous reaction has been "that's a sax?", which is all the more impressive given that much of it was recorded without overdubbing. Can you explain how you're able to create such a rich and diverse range of sounds, both in terms of technique and production?

Technically, regarding the instrument, I'm just employing a lot of extended techniques that improvisers have been using for decades. The basis for most of my pieces is in circular breathing; by breathing in through the nose and continuing to breath out of the mouth, you can create these longer, uninterrupted pieces of music. After that, it's a lot of "voicing," or using mouth and throat placement to form chords instead of single notes, specific arpeggiated lines to move those chords into individual and distinct melodies/harmonies, and also quite a bit of actual singing through the instrument.

Having been working this out for many years, when it came time to start recording this music, I knew that a straight-up stereo recording would only take a snapshot of what was happening, and would ultimately flatten the experience. There's no way to capture the essence of live performance in this manner, not if the idea is to recreate the same image through recording. So what I try to do is to capture every distinct and separate element I can, individually with separate and different microphones, so that this information can then be reorganized in the mixing process, and, rather than an attempt at recreating the live experience, we create an alternate version of that experience, something that is specific to the process of recording. In simpler terms, I wanted to make a record like a Haruki Murakami novel or a Terrence Malick film.

The use of extended techniques on reed instruments has become prevalent in modern improvised music, and your background includes studies with  avant-garde jazz players like Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill. But your work sounds very compositional in nature and some of the repeated patterns call to mind minimalism. How did you develop this sound?

As I stated before, all of the techniques I employ are pretty much found throughout the history of avant-garde improvisation and the free-jazz scene, of which I've been a part musically for most of my career. I was also raised on a glut of classic rock, mostly Hendrix, the Beatles, and Queen, then later got more into metal, studied classically in university, and have played everything from folk to noise over the past many years. My inclination towards song form and thematics comes from this arc, and the technique which I must use to make it happen is based on the extended history of the instruments I play.

You've also done a lot of work as a sideman for rock musicians, including folks like Tom Waits and Arcade Fire. Has your playing in these contexts had any influence on your solo work?

Most definitely. Working with Tom, for example, I learned, maybe more than anything else, the importance of character and scenery within songs. You have to leave the ego out of it, and only bring those things essential to creating that scene and bringing your characters to life. This has helped me to see different musics, and my roles in them, much clearer over the years. Also, it's caused me to think much more cinematically when composing albums. Recent work with Laurie Anderson has done much the same for me, but in different ways, and [it has] allowed me to see another example of someone creating a whole and distinct reality all of their own. It's really remarkable and inspiring.

The record is titled New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges. Underneath the dense fields of sound, it is generally somber and even mournful in tone, and includes meditations on the nature of war read by Laurie Anderson and a cover of a gospel blues lament by Blind Willie Johnson. What inspired the choice of thematic material?

The title New History Warfare refers to the hardship of finding and creating meaning in one's life, or to the process of consciously taking action toward impacting one's present place and time on a tangible level. "Judges" specifically speaks to the themes of this record — those being isolation and the pendulum swing between fear and transcendence. I find early American gospel music to embody the essence of the human condition. Through suffering, finding some path towards salvation. Joy from fear.

I suppose that all of the music in this series is my attempt at creating a personal gospel canon, not out of dogma, but rather from the human experience alone. The notion of alone-ness is amplified by the fact that this is music created solely out of one person's efforts and experience, and as I'm learning as I write, record, and perform this music more, I become more and more isolated physically, and so do I experience these themes cyclically, it seems.

Can you describe how the compositional process works for you? How do you get ideas that form the germ of a piece and how are those developed into what we hear on the record?

My songs are mostly born of focused improvisations. I'll normally find my way quickly to some stable pattern that will form the basis for the piece, and then I continue improvising in directions which feel right. Eventually, the thing takes shape, and I play it over and over and over until I become it to a certain degree. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks depending on how close I am to it in the beginning. Then, gradually, while I "wear" it, the song gets tweaked and maybe new sounds are revealed here and there, and it more or less evolves into something I consider finished. That being said, sometimes I just have an idea, and pick up the instrument, and a song comes out all shiny, new, and finished. When this happens, it is awesome.