Best New Albums

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  Mac DeMarco

  Mac DeMarco

  Salad Days

  By Marc Hogan; April 1, 2014

  8.5

  Mac DeMarco's second full-length isn’t a departure from its predecessor so much as a richer, increasingly assured refinement. As with Real Estate’s Atlas, DeMarco’s new album is also ostensibly one where the chill bro gets all mature and stuff, and here his inner conflicts return with a suitably nonchalant vengeance. At its best, it's an outstanding crystallization of his gifts, the real-talk advice of Jonathan Richman with a far more accessible poetic dreaminess.

  • Mac DeMarco: "Passing Out Pieces" (via SoundCloud)
  • Mac DeMarco: "Brother" (via SoundCloud)
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  Cloud Nothings

  Cloud Nothings

  Here and Nowhere Else

  By Ian Cohen; March 31, 2014

  8.7

  Cloud Nothings' latest album moves in one direction and at a breakneck pace. Dylan Baldi is simply unwilling or unable to stop writing hook-filled songs, rendering Here and Nowhere Else even more tense and thrillingly conflicted than its predecessor. The band continues to make powerfully utilitarian music for people who don’t seek out this type of music just to be told what to think. They siphon punk’s righteous physicality and leave self-righteousness, victimization, and nihilism as the subject matter of the privileged. In ridding themselves of talking points, Cloud Nothings espouse a desire to live in the present moment, and on Here and Nowhere Else, their music becomes a pure resource of energy that allows the listener to do what they will.

  • Cloud Nothings: "I'm Not Part of Me" (via SoundCloud)
  • Cloud Nothings: "Psychic Trauma" (via SoundCloud)
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  The War on Drugs

  The War on Drugs

  Lost in the Dream

  By Stuart Berman; March 18, 2014

  8.8

  If the mesmerizing motorik hum of the War on Drugs' earlier records gave leader Adam Granduciel an outlet to escape his problems, Lost in the Dream is where he pulls a U to survey the emotional wreckage. The result is the band's most lustrous, intricately detailed, and beautifully rendered record to date. In essence, the War on Drugs have evolved as a band on an album-to-album basis in precisely the same fashion as so many of their songs: what at first seemed like a fairly straightforward, traditionalist roots-rock exercise has very gradually, very subtly blossomed into something wondrous and profound.

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  Perfect Pussy

  Perfect Pussy

  Say Yes to Love

  By Lindsay Zoladz; March 17, 2014

  8.6

  Syracuse five-piece Perfect Pussy sound like a hardcore band fronted by Joan of Arc: A swirling maelstrom of fire engulfs a singer who shouts with the ecstatic conviction of someone who would rather die than apologize. Following a searing, four-song demo tape released last year, their proper full-length debut Say Yes to Love is an unrelentingly intense experience—23 minutes of five people pushing themselves to their absolute limit. Say Yes to Lovei s a convincing argument for reviving that practice of reading along with the lyrics while listening. Meridith Graves' lines are full of vivid, visceral, and often unsettling images and the sort of bold confessions plenty of people wouldn't tell their best friends. It doesn’t feel corny or hyperbolic to call this record life-affirming, so perfectly does it capture the flashes of gratitude, self-knowledge, and inexplicable joy that often follow an experience of great pain.

  • Perfect Pussy: "Driver" (via SoundCloud)
  • Perfect Pussy: "Interference Fits" (via SoundCloud)
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  Real Estate

  Real Estate

  Atlas

  By Jayson Greene; March 3, 2014

  8.8

  
  On Real Estate's rich, sad third album, Atlas, the once-ideal pool party band has turned to soundtracking the cleanup: Everyone's gone, the sky's threatening rain, there are cigarette butts floating in the pool, and we've all gotta work tomorrow. The result is at once their most forlorn record and their most beautiful. Atlas gazes calmly and wisely into the face of some troubling questions: Mortality, the passing of time, the problem of loneliness. With it, Real Estate have made more than just their third excellent record in a row, more than just their best-ever record. They’ve made the first record of their career that feels like it might teach you something over time.