Album Reviews

A year-and-a-half back, CSS were among the headliners of the Culture Collide Festival in Echo Park, and though word is it was a fun show, it seems as if the members of the Brazilian group had a more meaningful experience than anyone else.

Inspired by the festive atmosphere (which Los Angeles is not at all known for), the band packed up and headed for the California sprawl to make 'Planta' with producer David Sitek. (Keep in mind that another Sitek album, Beady Eye’s ‘Be,’ is also out this week, so maybe the real story on indie blogs should be whether Sitek is hurting for cash or something.)

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Jason Isbell was 22 when he first hooked up with the Drive-By Truckers, whose two singer-songwriters had a decade and a half in age on the newcomer. By the time Isbell exited the group a few years later, he had caught up with his bandmates, figuratively at least, with songs that were wise beyond his years. On his three previous solo albums, Isbell charted the same terrain he and the other Truckers frequently explored, one where working-class people whose options were quickly running out in life.

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Last time out, on 2010’s ‘Invented,’ the early-to-mid-30s members of Jimmy Eat World wrote and sang heartbreak songs that didn’t sound all that different than the heartbreak songs they wrote and sang a decade earlier, when they were a lot closer to their awkward teen years. It wasn’t exactly a comfortable fit. Who wants to hear guys who should be settling into fatherhood whining about lost love and pimply-kid stuff like that?

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When you name your band Big Deal, it's like a social contract you sign with listeners. You should either try to live up to the moniker or be so comically not a big deal that you fulfill the still-ample cultural need for ironic entities.

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On 'The Hurry and The Harm,' Dallas Green, aka City and Colour, sounds fully aware that more people will hear this album than have heard any of his previous ones. City and Colour have spread beyond the dorms of sensitive Canadian girls, and 'The Hurry and the Harm is louder, fuller and more ambitious than the project's previous three LPs.

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Eleanor Friedberger's second solo album since the 2011 announcement of an extended hiatus for her band, the Fiery Furnaces, doesn't follow the tradition of sophomore slumps. Whereas debuts are often strong because songwriters have had their entire lifetimes to craft them, Friedberger's 2011 solo effort 'Last Summer' was made by and artist with a decade of band success in her purse. Alhough brother Matthew wrote the majority of the Furnaces' material, it's hard to believe Eleanor was hanging onto 'Last Summer' throughout the whole experience. Rather, the record felt like a contained project by a singer that has been a part of many albums going it alone -- and succeeding.

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As Disclosure inevitably expand their audience following the release of this, their debut album, age will likely be a focus of conversation. At 22 and 19, respectively, Guy and Howard Lawrence, the brothers behind this electronic duo, are not scary young to be releasing a debut album. They are, however, scary young to be making what many expect to be the premiere dance album of 2013 not attributed to artists identifying as robots.

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Over seven schizophrenic studio albums, Alaska's Portugal. The Man have built a career on sonic illogic, jumping from psych-rock to emo to prog-like stations in a bizarre cable package. But with 'Evil Friends,' their eighth overall effort (and second for major label Atlantic Records), they've made the unlikely transition toward the streamlined mainstream, working with "it" producer Danger Mouse on a set of highly manicured, highly sculpted pop nuggets.

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Brad Oberhofer has a creative drive that is impressive to view from the outside. The demos that got him discovered and became 'Time Capsule' revealed an authenticity, enthusiasm and raw nature that even clean-ish production couldn't erase.

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Zach Rogue is incredibly gifted at writing one particular style of song: quirky, tuneful, big-hearted indie rock. And over the course of three wonderful albums (2003's 'Out of the Shadow,' 2005's 'Descended Like Vultures,' and their commercial breakthrough, 2007's 'Asleep at Heaven's Gate'), Rogue himself seemed perfectly content with that fact. Then came 2010's 'Permalight,' a batch of sterile, awkward, woefully over-produced electro-pop that smoothed over all of the band's idiosyncrasies in an attempt to sound culturally relevant.

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