1. Liturgy, “The Ark Work”
As 21st-century listeners, we’re constantly on the hunt for new music that’s capable of defying our expectations, scrambling our senses and wringing unknown pleasure out of thin air. So, here’s some of that. It comes from a controversial metal quartet unafraid to utilize hurricanes of glockenspiel, monotone Brian Wilson incantations and some of the most violent rock drumming you could ever hope to hear. These guys are either creating their own world or destroying it.
2. Kendrick Lamar, “To Pimp a Butterfly”
When the most lauded prodigy in all of hip-hop releases an album devoid of club crushers and potential radio fare, he’s sending an unspoken message that underscores every ferociously political, deeply personal and unabashedly cerebral rhyme crammed onto his lyric sheet: He wants us to hear this music as individuals.
3. Courtney Barnett, “Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit”
“I wanna go out, but I wanna stay home,” she sings over the loose-fit jingle-jangles of her debut album, a recording that mysteriously flirts with greatness by stalling in its pretty-goodness. But when it’s all over, Barnett might end up becoming rock-and-roll’s new poet laureate of ambivalence. Or maybe not.
4. Father, “Who’s Gonna Get (Expletive) First?”
From the weirder margins of Atlanta or, more specifically, from the weirdest margins of his skull, this young rap phenom delivers his rhymes as if he’s transcribing his inner monologue. (And according to the transcript, he has a good sense of humor, a warm heart and a voracious id.)
5. Bandit Gang Marco, “You Don’t Know Me”
Proof that Lil Jon’s legacy of rap-music-as-shouting-contest is alive and well, the most exhilarating songs on this Atlanta newcomer’s recent mix tape — “NVSTY” and “NO CASH” — appear to have been written and recorded with the caps lock on.
6. Ryley Walker, “Primrose Green”
On his second album, the Chicago singer-songwriter needs only a few flicks of electric guitar to transform his pastoral folk songs into scorched earth.
7. Chastity Belt, “Time To Go Home”
This Seattle post-punk quartet knows how to conceal its intensity in deadpan. When singer-guitarist Julia Shapiro casually suggests that it’s time to “light everything on fire,” you might have to interrupt your head-bobbing to do a double-take.
8. Ameriie, “Out Loud”
They had the formula down pat: He would draft a beat that sounded as if he had kicked his drum kit down the stairs, and she would sashay through the mess. Now, a decade after their ecstatic hit “1 Thing,” producer Rich Harrison and singer Ameriie are reunited on this familiar-sounding new single that hopefully signals more to come.
9. Stone Jack Jones, “Love and Torture”
This Tennessee songsmith’s alluring brand of noir-Americana comes into clearer, bleaker focus on his fourth album, sometimes to chilling effect. Over one dirge called “Circumstance,” Jones sounds as if he’s harmonizing with his own death rattle.
10. Feufollet, “Two Universes”
Originally a troupe of teenage zydeco preservationists, this all-grown-up Louisiana band is striding out into new turf, writing its own handsomely hybridized country tunes. There’s already a firmness in its footing and a spring in its step.
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