Music Department Update: This Week's Top Albums

Brought to you by the music directors!

Top five new adds:
1. Monade with Monstre Cosmic: Singer/lyricist Laetitia Sadier kills this album, in a good way. Most of the lyrics are in French! Monade is a side project from Stereolab and brings you enough variety to consider them a good decision on Stereolab’s part.
2. Reed KD with The Ashes Bloom: A great album with a new twist on acoustics. Reed KD mixes guitar parts with cool beats. Lyrics are friendly and enjoyable. “Empty Bottles” is one of the best tracks on the album.
3. City and Colour with Bring Me Your Love: Soft guitar with soft vocals. Great music to listen to on a rainy day. The singer has been compared to Elliott Smith and Iron and Wine. Give City and Colour a shot and see what you think.
4. Jason Choi and the Sea with Leave the Night Behind: A solid album from Planetary. Some of the guitar parts sound cliché, but the lyrics are cute and simple. Tracks 2, 3, and 4 are good to play on-air.
5. Idiot Pilot with Wolves: Two musicians with a well-produced album. The quiet vocals are delicate and sound like that of Thom Yorke’s. The louder vocals are quite the opposite—some songs on the album even include screamo! The background noise is the most pleasant.

Top five albums:
1. Hot Chip’s Made in the Dark. Excellent indie rock vocals teamed with beats hard and funky enough for the dance floor, check out the breakdown on track 2. Comes complete with a great British sense of humor.
2. Stars’ In Our Bedroom After the War. The latest from the five-member Canadian group, Stars. This album sounds similar to past albums by the band, but has an even more intimate feel. The female/male vocals continue to attract fans in songs like “Midnight Coward,” “My Favourite Book,” “Personal,” and “Barricade.”
3. VHS or Beta’s Bring Out the Comets. Noisy dance-punk with matured songwriting and melodies and a polished production. If you like Daft Punk and the 80’s you’ll love this band.
4. Louis XIV’s Slick Dogs and Ponies. The subject matter gets a little darker in this effort but still overall good fun. Frenetic, angular melodies and rhythms with eccentric vocals.
5. Sons and Daughters’ This Gift. Singer Adele Bethel gives us some of the most interesting vocal parts in music today. Backed up perfectly by the catchy guitar riffs and driving drums.

--Jenn Brown & Keith Simpson