So what makes Toronto's Quest For Fire more than just another pack of rockers slouching their way onto an already crowded wave? While it may not have been virgin territory, QFF's debut smartly balanced stoner rock’s need for bluesy lethargy with a sound that made the most of the band members' pedigree (one that covered everything from bar rockers The Deadly Snakes to the hardcore blitzkrieg of Cursed)—in other words, underneath the haze were well-written songs full of wounded heart, human tales and well-nuanced aggression. It was heavy for sure, but it was a lot more than that: it had real soul.

Lights From Paradise builds wisely on this formula with a similarly strong record that increases in meaning with each listen. Chad Ross’ half-awake croon in particular nails the group’s appeal, managing to sound casual, desperate, wise, and menacing, all in equal measure. And his subject matter benefits greatly from being rooted in the personal, rather than in realms of fantasy. Sure, sometimes smoking with dragons while bedding mysterious demon women is cool, but it’s nice to know that this kind of stuff can be used to explore themes not already covered by Fighting Fantasy gamebooks. So while fans of all manner of stoner rock—from Boris and Dead Meadow to even heavier fare like High On Fire—will find lots to like here, so will those who crave a little more meaning from their music. Stoned or not, this record sounds amazing.

A serious rarity on the vinyl market, Like A Ship (Without A Sail) is also a rare work of inspiration in every sense of the word: gospel music so rarely sounds this groovy, updating Ray Charles’ sacred soul-jazz to suit the times (“Blessed Quietness”), and at times also showing the influence Hathaway had on Barrett (“Wonderful”). Honestly, as a hardened atheist, I’d join this choir nonetheless just to thrill in the pure oxytocin-induced joy of singing this music. My vote for most sublime reissue of the year!  

Known for producing the Winter brothers, Barbara Lynn, and a lot of oil, Beaumont, from the sounds of this collection, had quite a lively and diverse scene. Local bands with their eyes on the big-time demoed material at the Lowland studios during the classic-rock era. Numero, in typical fashion, listened to every single tape in the studio’s archive, and after two years they assembled this impressive set of could-have-beens.

Of course, there's some southern blues-rock here, thanks to bands like Circus and their fitting-to-form cowbell. Most interestingly, though, the best material here avoids clichés. Insight Out are unmistakably country-tinged rock, and “It Makes You Feel So Bad” is a paean to friendship à la The Band’s “The Weight”, while Morning Sun do good takes on CSN (“Where’s Love Gone Today” features hilariously out-of-time cowbell) and Emitt Rhodes bubblegum (“Let’s Take A Walk In The Woods”). Meanwhile, “Dream Away” by Hope could have been in Neil Young’s ear just before penning his “Harvest Moon”. 

And who knew that Texas had a pub rock scene? The Next Exit go all Dr. Feelgood and proto-Television on “Take A Look At Your Friends.” Linda Crowe gives an unexpectedly fast piano-led waltz, channeling Dionne Warwick more than Janis Joplin, on “I Still Remember”, and the delightfully-named Sassy will break your heart with his Bobby Charles-esque “She’s My Daughter.”

On it goes over twenty-two tracks (twenty-eight if you fetch the double vinyl!); Lone Star Lowlands will easily sit among the top rock comps released this year.  

Tages' fifth and final LP was Studio, released in late 1967 and now finally available for the non-Swedish world to savour in all its melodic glory, especially if you're already partial to albums like The Zombies' Odessey And Oracle or even Sgt. Pepper. But no matter how much Swingin' London pop rubbed off on Tages' style, they still weren't afraid to psych things up with traditional Swedish classical and folk influences, instead of simply strumming a sitar.

With bonus tracks consisting of their last few singles, socially-conscious lyrics about then-taboo topics like unwed motherhood and transvestism, charming flower-power idealism, and more hooks than a meat locker, Tages' Studio is something that's worth checkin' out—a hard-to-beat pop-sike treat and one of the most impressive reissues I've heard this year. 

I'm here to say that's all bunk. This band is in pursuit of a lot of things on Transit Transit, but if they wanted a tacklebox full of earcatchers, they’d write them. Autolux are a hell of a lot closer to, say, the Dirty Three re-imagined as a pop band from the future. And lest that seem like an overreaching, ignorant and/or unhelpful comparison, allow me to elaborate. The two keys to the music of the Dirty Three are patience—you’ve gotta stick with it in order for things to fully express themselves—and a slightly unconventional approach to each musician's role. And as different as the two bands’ overall styles are, the same applies to Autolux.

Guitarist Greg Edwards’ playing rarely chooses to stabilize or dictate, instead drifting in and out courtesy of sinewy lines and fuzzy punctuations. Bassist/singer Eugene Goreshter handles his two duties so casually, it seemingly borders on indifference—a decision that threatens to set each of these ten tracks on an irreversible drift. But instead, his approach keeps the songs beautifully away from the overstated vocals or hamfistedly obvious basslines of most pop-rock acts. Verse/chorus tunes stay liquid and pleasingly amorphous.

And then there’s the drummer, Carla Azar. One of my best friends and I both play the drums, and Azar possesses the most beguiling style either of us have heard in many years. Her accent placement and decision-making is mesmerizing, pulling out key bricks from the foundation, delighting in the tumble, and then pushing herself to rebuild it all over again in a newly refined structure.

Put all of this together, and you get a band successfully attaining the least rewarding of goals—a brand of pop/rock that is neither arty enough for critics, nor immediate enough for the average fan. It’s a near-suicidal limbo in which to place oneself, but I for one am very glad they feel compelled to do so.

The World Ends continues on from that already-legendary series, though not in title, yet this could have easily been titled as the second volume to Nigeria Rock Special from a couple years back. That this one is a double CD (divided into two separate double-vinyl sets with bonus tracks for guaranteed deep grooves to shake floors with) adds to the question of why label boss Miles Cleret may have considered putting his Nigerian crates on ice. I, for one, am still hoping they will start focusing on single-artist collections and original album reissues. Until then, let’s dig into the music presented here, shall we?

Though virgin ears would never think of this as 'rock', Nigerian rock kept its African roots while happily taking in the sounds of Anglo-American youth culture, bringing the guitar to the fore at the expense of horns, which lessened in importance in the early '70s rock bands. The guitar increasingly became a lead instrument, in contrast to both the complex arpeggios of highlife rhythm patterns and the waka-waka comping role that the guitar played in Afrobeat. In post-Biafran War Nigeria, the youth were looking for something new, and this collection documents how young musicians sought a break from older modes associated with the past.

If you already have Nigeria Rock Special, you’ll have some idea of what to expect here, which, in Woodstock terms, is much more Santana and Sly Stone than, say, Canned Heat or Ten Years After—groove still rules here over heaviosity, hips and feet-shaking over headbanging. “Nwantinti/Die Die” by Ify Jerry Krusade opens with a Spector-esque teenbeat teaser before a drum comes in, sending the track into a much more rump-shaking direction. Many of the tracks here sung are in non-Pidjin English, and The Action 13, with their overt rock riffage replete with proto-Neil Hagerty near-free soloing, exemplify this.

I could keep going, but I’ll save it for the inevitable next installment of Nigerian music from the great people at Soundway. Trust me: there’ll be more to come.

After the pathetically early death of Jay Reatard this past New Year, fans were left wondering who would inherit the monumental task of continuing what he started, but along comes Sachsen's Oliver Scharf to pick up the Reatarded torch and show the Yanks how to have fun again, with the Janes' sunshininess filtered through home-recorded DIY fidelity and enough stop-starts and syncopation (as on “Good Bone”) to keep spirits up and the body moving for a whopping 31 minutes (and that’s 15 tracks too, like the way it used to be!). It’s the small sonic details, like the occasional frantically-strummed nylon-string guitar instead of an electric, frame-tapping as an alternative to keeping time with a hi-hat, and an aggressively frenetic approach to tempo and rhythm that further suggest that Stephen Pope and Billy Hayes would have been better off working for Sgt. Scharf instead.

Don’t make their mistake—choose Hanoi Janes!

Then again, Mark Linkous never shied away from dark moods and themes in all his work leading Sparklehorse since 1995. That’s not going to stop a mini-industry from combing through the lyrics of this collaborative album between Linkous, producer Danger Mouse, director David Lynch, and a cast of singer-songwriter contributors, though, for hints of Linkous using this album as a proxy for the suicide letter he never left behind—the title itself refers to a spiritual crisis in Christian belief, albeit one that is meant to be temporary, not final.

Dissected as a musical whole, Dark Night is a triumph, if only for the fact that the voice of such a singular artist as Linkous is not lost to the other proverbial cooks in the kitchen (including Julian Casablancas, Iggy Pop, Gruff Rhys, Suzanne Vega, the late Vic Chesnutt, Granddaddy/Admiral Radley's Jason Lytle, and previous collaborators Nina Persson and Shin/Broken Bell James Mercer from Danger Mouse’s rolodex).

Barring Black Francis’ incongruously heavy-handed clunker, this is a cohesive statement, bound by David Lynch’s mastery of atmosphere and realized by the ubiquitous but absolutely vital Danger Mouse, who is increasingly becoming better known for his rock productions than his hip-hop. The individual performances are mostly stunning and show different facets of each artist, most surprisingly with an unrecognizable Suzanne Vega taking a potentially career-resuscitating turn on the whispered/sung “The Man Who Played God,” one of my favourite tracks from this summer and a far cry from “Luka,” to be sure.

Shame that this album was tied up in legal limbo at the time of Linkous’ death; it’s the first Sparklehorse album to firmly capture my imagination. Now that it is out, you can choose from a variety of formats, but make sure to get one with the 100-page collection of photographs by David Lynch, intended as a “visual narrative” accompaniment to the music. 

Steve Lambke is Baby Eagle. That's his face is on the grainy cover of Dog Weather, his third album and first full-length for You've Changed Records, following 2006's self-titled debut and 2007's No Blues. Each Baby Eagle record has found Steve paired up with a different group of musicans (including John K. Samson, Christine Fellows, and Shotgun & Jaybird), giving each group of songs its own flavour. This time around he's employed the talents of Shotgun Jimmie (again), Daniel Romano, and David Trenaman and Colleen Collins from east-coast rock duo Construction & Destruction. The band does a good job of adding their own flourishes, but when all is said and done, it's all about Steve.

The albums starts off with "Day of our Departing," the longest track here and also the perfect preview of things to come. With a laidback folk-rock framework, the songs mostly act as a showcase for Steve's wordy narratives. Once based in Toronto (where he played in a little band you might have heard of called The Constantines) but now living in Sackville, NB, his new settings certainly seem to have informed his lyrics. Song titles such as "Fisherman or Fish," "River Bank Sitter," and "Thistle in Bloom" give you a good idea of what to expect. However, this isn't the case of another city slicker putting on a fake drawl and singing about subjects they know nothing about—everything on this album feels natural. There are songs about dogs and songs about the weather, and songs about a whole lot more. Small moments in our lives that pass us over but make up who we are. This record is a moment in time worth revisiting. Get it.

Well, more fool me. With 14 songs over 27 minutes, this is in many ways antithetical to Nascimento’s overblown album, though equally hard to define. Many songs are fragmentary yet fully realized, densely packed with quirkily muscular musicianship and atmosphere that could have only been produced in the '70s. Here, there are echoes of Paul Williams’ melancholy (“Faca Seu Jogo”), Serge Gainsbourg’s stoned funk (“Você Fica Melhor Assim”), and Pierre Barouh’s international bohemian folk-jazz Saravah label (“Pensa Você”); and, in this post-Tropicalista period, Borges even cleverly morphs a Nilsson-tinged ditty into a psychedelic forró (“Não Foi Nada”)!

This is a wonderfully odd, shape-shifting album that will have you scratching your head for years to come.