#1 Chromatics - Kill For Love
(Italians Do It Better)
I have been waiting for this album for 6 years! I was a huge fan of their last album in 2007. Both Night Drive by Chromatics and Beat Box by Glass Candy made it into my top 50 that year. That was also the first year of the Amoeblog and my first top 50 for Amoeba. Glass Candy will have a new album out in 2013. But in 2012 we got a brilliant new album by Chromatics. These guys are from the beautiful town of Portland. They have been around for about a decade. But really became a different kind of band back in 2007. Another perfect album of dreamy electronic love songs. These songs are seriously breathtaking and they make it seem so easy. These guys can do no wrong and always manage to create exactly what I need from them.
Listen to "At Your Door" by Chromatics...


#2 DIIV - Oshin
(Captured Tracks)
The band formerly know as Dive is now called DIIV. This was another album that I was highly anticipating this year. Captured Tracks has done it again this year and released another group of amazing albums. They had two albums in my top ten last year and they have two more in my top ten this year. DIIV is Brooklyn based Zachary Cole Smith of the band Beach Fossils. I actually like this project more than Beach Fossils. DIIV is exactly what I have come to expect from this label. This is shoegaze and dreampop in the year 2012. It brings me right back to the early 90s. I never really wanted to leave that period of music. So I am happy to revisit if often.

Album Picks:

Chelsea Wolfe – Unknown Rooms: A Collection of Acoustic Songs

CD $9.98

LP $16.98

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The electric touches to Chelsea Wolfe’s doom-folk sound are nice window-dressing, but as Unknown Rooms shows, they’re not necessary — perhaps even a distraction — from conveying the gothic folk sound Wolfe built on her previous two albums. Stripped of nearly all else except acoustic guitar, exquisite violin and viola, and Wolfe’s arresting voice, Unknown Rooms is Wolfe’s strongest statement yet. In “The Way We Used To,” which Wolfe’s voice expresses the soulfulness always lurking in the shadows of her sound, harmonizing a simple vibrato vocal line to great effect as Wolfe’s voice gets higher (and more emotional) than she’s ever shown before. “Spinning Centers” takes a similar cue, using singsongy vocals in an ever-so-unsettling backdrop to create a beautiful kind of witchy music that suggests something ancient and beyond simple explanation. A song title like “Appalachia” would imply an exercise in Appalachian folk reverence, but in practice the song’s almost harsh, trudging nature makes it into a woodsy elegy. Her voice and delivery occasionally draw comparison to PJ Harvey, a tough comparison that could drag her down, but Wolfe ensures her music is distinctive enough that she’s considered more than merely a Harvey disciple. The distinctive quality of the incantations in “Boyfriend” and mandolin-esque vocals of “Our Work Was Good” alone make Wolfe sound like the leader of her own cult, one which will surely grow with the release of this excellent work. Chelsea Wolfe will be at Amoeba Hollywood Sunday Oct. 21 to perform at 5 p.m. Be there!

Flying Lotus – Until the Quiet Comes – Oct. 2
 
The latest from the L.A. sound maestro features contributions from Erykah Badu, Laura Darlington, Niki Randa, Thundercat and Thom Yorke.
 

 






The Vaccines – Come of Age – Oct. 2
 
The second album from the NME-touted Brit punks.
 









 
Muse – The Second Law – Oct. 2
 
The Britpop group turned arena rockers’ next album may have an electro edge, given its first single, “Madness.”

Young British singer/songwriter Lianne La Havas stopped by Amoeba Hollywood, singing tunes from her debut record, the fine Is Your Love Big Enough? She launched right in, singing her sweet duet “No Room for Doubt” solo, smirking and garnering laughs when she reached the lyric “we all make mistakes” after flubbing a chord. From there, she took to a spread of songs from the album, moving from the dark, funky “Tease” to the robbin’ the cradle jam “Age,” drawing “woos” from the girls in the audience with the lyric “I fancy younger men.” La Havas let her guitar and lyrics do most of the talking, wisely, as the audience seemed to respond to individual lyrics more than anything — though she answered her fans “I love yous” when they came through between songs. Her fourth song, the single “Forget,” which she said was about some poor ex-boyfriend, became almost a country ditty sans the song’s big beats — except when she belted the chorus like a madwoman, then growing extra hushed for the verses, making use of dynamics to creepy effect. She closed out with the album’s title track, displaying the breadth of sound she gets from little more than her powerful voice and beautiful electro-acoustic guitar, summoning the power of a full band with a clapalong from the audience. See more photos from the performance here.
 
Friday night I also caught a show at the Bootleg Theater featuring Eternal Summers, DZ Deathrays, Bleeding Rainbow and Drug Cabin (featuring Nathan Thelen of Pretty Girls Make Graves). Drug Cabin started the set nice and mellow before Bleeding Rainbow (formerly Reading Rainbow) shoegazed things up with great male-female vocals and buzzing guitars. Australian power-duo DZ Deathrays tore it up with a lot of thrash, while, despite their lovable indie hit “Millions,” Eternal Summers kept up the noise with a powerful set. All in all, a fine night of indie pop gone wild.