Nuggets of rock'n'roll truth from Andrew P Street
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KARISE EDEN My Journey
On this future op shop staple, The Voice offers predictably drab original songs, dramatic-to-histrionic readings of ‘It’s A Man’s World’ and ‘Back To Black’, and a truly horrific version of Cohen’s oft-ruined ‘Hallelujah’ for an album made for people who don’t care much for music but like buying things by people what were on the TV.
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THE LAURELS Plains Sydney’s masters of 60s-garage-meets-90s-shoegazw unleash an atmospheric debut album that plays to their considerable strengths and also reveals (as on the well groovy ‘Manic Saturday’) that there’s a pop band hiding under those fringes and guitar effects.
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FRANK OCEAN channelORANGE He might have grabbed headlines primarily for being the first out and proud hip hop star, but don’t let that overshadow the Odd Future mainstay’s smooth voice, remarkably diverse songwriting (r’n’b, soul, pop) and flawless production.
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DAPPLED CITIES Lake Air
If you felt that previous album Zounds needed more focus on the dancefloor, album #4 keeps everything that was great about these local boys and adds infectiously danceable beat.
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TIM HART Milling the Wind The Boy & Bear drummer shows that he is a fingerpickin’ country-folk artist at heart, but do we really need another Angus Stone just yet?
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THE CAST OF CHEERS Family
Had Bloc Party not reactivated earlier this year, TCOC would have been so ready to pick up the baton – but sadly they will instead be known as the band not quite interesting enough to be Two Door Cinema Club.
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JAPANDROIDS Celebration Rock Yes, they’re another guitar-n-drums two piece, but the hardcore-infused indie rock of this Canadian duo’s second album makes for one of the most upbeat, catchy and exhilarating records in recent memory.
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THE MAGNETIC FIELDS Love at the Bottom of the Sea The best Magnetic Fields album in a decade shows Stephin Merritt at his wry, romantic, bitchy best (cf: the perky death threats of ‘Your Girlfriend’s Face’, the doomed straight-man-on-straight-man romance of ‘Andrew in Drag’) welded to tunes that recall the band’s 90s classics.
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MA Dance Until My Heart Breaks Sophisticated electro pop – think late-period St Etienne, or Madison Avenue 20 years down the track when the pills don’t work quite as well – although tracks like the jangling, melodic ‘If That’s How You Want It To Be’ could sit comfortably on ABC evenings.
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THE SHINS Port of Morrow
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VCMG SSSS This collection of layered instrumental pieces proves Vince Clarke and Martin Gore – who haven’t worked together in 30 years, since the former actimoniously left their band Depeche Mode – still have a fierce love of 70s electronica.
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ROBERTA FLACK Let it Be
It’s possible that you genuinely need to own jazzy, adult-contemporary versions of Beatles hits (and if so, this will do the trick nicely), but if that’s the case you should re-examine your life and make some dramatic changes.
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MACHINEMACHINE Mysteries This local combo bash out lazy indie rock that sounds familiar to anyone who’s heard Pavement, Afghan Whigs, Knieval, Archers of Loaf etc, but that’s mainly because they’re that just damn good.
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OF MONSTERS & MEN Into the Woods
If you’ve been wondering whether Iceland would ever produce a bastard hybrid of Grouplove and Arcade Fire, then be assured in the affirmative on the basis of this spirited EP.
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FAIR OHS Everything is Dancing
If you’ve never heard Cloud Control, Vampire Weekend, Jinga Safari and every other band that mixes up East African influence in their indie rock, this is going to be a revelation – and if you have heard any of the above, you’re not going to even remember this one.
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THE BIG PINK Future This A big, confident follow up to 2009’s A Brief History of Love sees the UK now-duo embrace keyboards and dance rhythms over their often anthemic pop songs (cf: ‘Stay Gold’).
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CLAIRY BROWNE & THE BANGIN’ RACKETTES Baby Caught the Bus
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ROBYN LOAU Only Human The former Girlfriend popstress makes a powerfully contemporary pop album, provided that it’s actually 2006 – although her vocal on her unexpectedly faithful cover of Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ is impressively bang on.
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SNOW PATROL Fallen Empires More epic grandeur from the Scots quintet – though more drenched in synths than hitherto – that is clearly made for the planet’s stadia, yet still somehow manages to be insidiously stirring.
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WITCH HATS Pleasure Syndrome
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BUSH The Sea of Memories
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THE BON SCOTTS We Will All Die at the Hands of CGI Quirky folk-pop with acoustic instruments, brass and memorable lyrics that evoke the ragged Australian indie folk tradition of everyone from the Bedridden to early Alecks and the Ramps.
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AUSTRA Feel it Break If the last Ladytron album failed to move you, then this disc might be just the thing to reawaken your love for icy, female-sung retro-flavoured electro.
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WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS In the Pit of the Stomach The band with the best name of 2011 comes across as a better-than-average post-hardcore band, but repeated listens reveal a guitar-pop debt to the spiky likes of Franz Ferdinand.
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TIM FINN The View is Worth the Climb As with just about every Finn solo album there’s a frustrating sense of missed opportunities and lazy writing, made even more infuriating when he still comes up with sharp, gorgeous singles like ‘People Like Us’ that throw the rest of the disc into harsh relief.
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BJÖRK Biophilia
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THE ANSWER Revival
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JANE'S ADDICTION The Great Escape Artist
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MIC CONWAY & ROBBIE LONG Street of Dreams
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SUPERHEAVY Superheavy
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LOU REED & METALLICA Lulu
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FUTURE OF THE LEFT Polymers are Forever EP The first fruit of the Welsh post-hardcore combo’s new-look four-piece line up proves that more can be more, with the rockin’ title track one of their best singles yet.
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COLDPLAY Mylo Xyloto |
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KASABIAN Velociraptor! It’s probably the UK combo’s most solid and varied album yet, with the odd clunky lyric or familiar chord progression overshadowed by the fact this record has 2011's best title.
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FEIST Metals |
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BLINK-182 Neighborhoods |
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BLITZEN TRAPPER American Goldwing |
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KIKUYU Hunter Gathered Sez Wilks’s intimately breathy voice and her trusty organ make for nine tracks of uncluttered pop beauty, sung in an immediately recognisably Australian accent.
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WAVVES Life Sux |
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ROYAL HEADACHE Royal Headache |
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WILD FLAG Wild Flag |
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MASTODON The Hunter |
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COBRA STARSHIP Night Shades |
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THE VASCO ERA The Vasco Era
![]() It may have (reportedly) almost killed the band, but Sid O’Neil wrings another album’s worth of raw tales of desperate losers and bad choices from his psyche, welded to some of the Victorian trio’s most unhinged rock’n’roll to date. |
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LADY ANTEBELLUM Own The NIght |
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SNEAKY SOUND SYSTEM From Here to Anywhere |
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LOVERS ELECTRIC Impossible Dreams |
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THE PANICS Rain of the Humming Wire They’ve come close before, but the Perth indie quintet have now created a sweeping Australian classic in the mould of the Triffids’ Born Sandy Devotional and Midnight Oil’s Diesel & Dust.
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KANYE WEST & JAY-Z Watch the Throne Two genuine hip-hop superstars spit out an album that’s a whole lot less tortured than either of their own most recent discs – though Justin “Bon Iver” Verson’s vocal on ‘That’s My Bitch’ is the strangest thing you’ll hear this year.
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RICHARD IN YOUR MIND Sun It sounds like the bedroom-demo first album mixed with the groovy psych arrangements and songcraft of their second disc, which makes for an heady indie-rock brew.
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UPS & DOWNS Out of the Darkness: Sleepless, Singles and Other Stories
![]() A great 80s Sydney band gets a long-overdue career-spanning anthology, though it would still get four stars if the only song on it was the magnificent single ‘The Living Kind’.
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ESKIMO JOE Ghosts of the Past The ’Joe could have picked up Powderfinger’s “music for straight men to hug to” audience here, but instead they’ve gone a step too far into mid-period Coldplay.
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