I started listening to NPR’s All Songs Considered quite religiously this last year and was subsequently introduced to a lot of good music. Here’re few of my favorite introductions this year.
“Little Scream is one person — her name is Laurel Sprengelmeyer. She’s originally from Iowa, now based in Montreal. She put out what I think is an absolutely captivating record. It’s got a lot of push and pull: It’s very powerful, very delicate, very dreamy and meditative, but also very poppy and catchy.” – Robin Hilton [source]
♪ Little Scream – Cannons (from The Golden Record)
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“[There was] a lot of electronica this year; I think the songs are getting better. The technology made the sounds really cool, and I think there was a lot more understanding of how to make these records more accessible.” – Bob Boilen [source]
♪ Apparat – Black Water (from The Devil’s Work)
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“The layers of the guitar are exactly what make this band hit all those sweet spots for me. There’s a beautiful wash that you get from the guitar, but then you also get lots of great melody. I went to see them at CMJ, and they were the first show that I couldn’t get into.” – Bob Boilen [source]
♪ Caveman – Old Friend (from CoCo Beware)
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“This is a record I particularly loved playing in the car. Each [song] takes a Sigur Rós song’s worth of build and compresses into a little bit more digestible three- and four-minute pop songs. This one starts slowly and just gets bigger and bigger and bigger.” – Stephen Thompson [source]
♪ Delay Trees – Gold (from Delay Trees)
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“It’s a look and a study, in song and in sound, of life in a small Scottish town. It doesn’t romanticize it — it paints sort of hard pictures of what life is like there and what people think.” – Bob Boilen [source] This last track is my favorite of the bunch — one of the most beautiful songs I heard all year.
♪ King Creosote & Jon Hopkins – Bubble (from Diamond Mine) [stream only]
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