It’s still December 2012, but there’s plenty to get excited about heading into the new year, music- and movie-wise. Check out the preorders we have available below. 

In addition, new records hitting shelves early in the year include new records by Yeah Yeah Yeahs (Spring), the late, great Broadcast (The Berberian Sound Studio [Soundtrack], Jan. 8), Frightened Rabbit (Pedestrian Verse, Feb. 5), Unknown Mortal Orchestra (II, Feb. 5), Azealia Banks (Broke With Expensive Taste, Feb. 12), Veronica Falls (Waiting for Something to Happen, Feb. 12), Beach Fossils (Clash the Truth, Feb. 19), Iceage (You’re Nothing, Feb. 19), Girls Names (The New Life, Feb. 29), Johnny Marr (The Messenger, Feb. 26), The Mary Onettes (Hit the Waves, March 12), Low (The Invisible Way, March 19), Wavves (Title TBA, March 26), The Knife (Shaking the Habitual, April 9) and, of course, Guided by Voices (English Little League, April 30). My Bloody Valentine are supposedly releasing their long-awaited follow-up to 1991’s classic Loveless, the favorite album of many a music nerd, as they’ve just announced via their Facebook page that they finished mastering their new album. Any MBV fan knows that recording, let alone mixing, let alone mastering a new album by the shoegaze titans is a painfully long and arduous process at best, so this is very exciting news! Though supposedly the record will come out on their website first, we’ll let you know as soon as we hear anything about a new, physical My Bloody Valentine LP.

Atoms for Peace, the new band featuring Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist Mauro Refosco, have announced their debut record, Amok, will be released Feb. 26 from XL. The band released their first single, Default, this week, which also includes the song “What the Eyeballs Did,” which does not appear on the album.

The band debuted in 2009, performing the entirety of Yorke’s The Eraser at Los Angeles’ The Echoplex (the band shares its name with a song on The Eraser, as well as a speech by President Dwight D. Eisenhower). Since then, the band toured opening for Flying Lotus and played the 2010 Coachella Music and Arts Festival, while Radiohead released their eighth album, The King of Limbs.

You can here Yorke singing over an eerily beautiful electronic instrumental on the band’s official website, where you can also scroll over an apocalyptic L.A. landscape that includes many local landmarks (no Amoeba, although everything’s on fire so I guess that’s okay).

Scott Walker - Bish Bosch

CD $13.98

LP $29.98

DOWNLOAD $9.98

Bish Bosch not only completes a trilogy of some of the most remarkable albums of the past 20 years — Scott Walker’s Tilt and The Drift — it makes three astonishing, dense and challenging (yet rewarding) albums released this year, alongside Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s post-rock opus Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! and Swans’ divinely nasty The Seer. The album begins at its most difficult, with Walker wailing about “plucking feathers from a swansong” over brutal industrial beats and metallic guitars. This gives way to the surely divisive “Corps de Blah,” a 10-minute song that starts with Walker alone, singing with minimal accompaniment by electronic noise before he’s joined by atonal strings, relatively comforting guitar ambience (given the company its in), dogs barking and, finally, Walker singing about “sphincters tooting a tune” and picking scabs while actual fart sounds squelch in the background like horns. The song may leave some wondering if Walker has truly lost it — horror-movie lines like “nothing clears a room like removing a brain” don’t help — but it ultimately does what Walker does best: provoke. After all, why not use flatulence, something every person lives with daily, as a percussive instrument, and treat a lover as a scab lyrically? Amid lyrics which tough on the historical, histrionic and philosophical, “Corps de Blah” clears the air (ahem) a bit on Walker’s pretensions. It is painfully real, to the point that many will likely dismiss the song as infantile when its taboo subjects represent basic, ugly human elements those same people would wish away into non-existence. But this is still a rock album of sorts, and songs like the bleak-rock of “Phrasing” and heavy avant-jazz of “Epizootics!” offer more immediately grabbing moments than, say, “SDSS14+13B (Zercon, A Flagpole Sitter),” perhaps the aural equivalent of flagpole sitting (an early 20^th century practice of sitting atop a flagpole for days, hoping to break the last man’s record) as it runs past 20 minutes of Walker’s id run wild. Much more instantly pleasurable albums have been released in 2012 than Bish Bosch, but perhaps none is more daring.

Albums out Nov. 27:

Raime – Quarter Turns Over a Living Line

LP $29.98

Dubstep has been an intriguing if polarizing new genre thus far, at some point encompassing artists as disparate as Skrillex and Andy Stott, much in the same way a new, seemingly precise but ultimately nebulous genre like emo or grime ended up describing very different music. If Raime are dubstep, they’re the murky bottom of its pit. Songs like “Soils and Coils” offer little in the way of humanity or respite from the brutality of its funeral-march beats and stark, alien sounds. Which means it’s one of my favorite things from the genre I’ve heard yet. Anyone with a taste for bleakness should check this out.

Wu-Block – Wu-Block

CD $14.98

Wu-Tang Clan and The Lox team for a hip-hop superstar collaboration, featuring Method Man, Ghostface Killah, Raekwon, GZA, Masta Killah, Jadakiss and Styles P.

Album Picks:

Crystal Castles – III

CD $12.98

LP $17.98

Early interviews about Crystal Castles' stunning third album have seen frontwoman Alice Glass discussing oppression at length with Bono-ish fervor — not something typically associated with an image-conscious electronic duo known more for its antagonistic records and brawling live shows than its politics. But Glass and synth stud Ethan Kath can have it both ways, as III is another visceral attack of a record from Crystal Castles that ups the meaning behind their furor, both explicitly and implied, without losing any of their hedonistic attitude. In fact, III, while lacking some of the shock value of the first two records, is Crystal Castles’ most consistent statement to date. Tracks like “Plague” and “Wrath of God” still pack walloping beats, but they are more of mood pieces than, say, something like II’s “Baptism,” full of moody, heaving passages that draw you in and keep you rapt across the record. III is also smartly paced, keeping some of its more crowd-pleasing moments for later in the record, whereas previous albums were front-loaded. The fourth song in, “Affection,” shares a chord-scheme with MGMT’s “Kids,” though its warped vocals sound like they’re echoing from an abyss — not exactly radio-friendly material. Glass quits whispering and unleashes her trademark echoed yelps on the spare “Pale Flesh,” sure to be a live favorite, while “Sad Eyes” charges forth with unabashed club glee and hard-hitting beatwork. The album’s final quarter features some of its most remarkable moments, full of seedy club bangers, while its last song, “Child I Will Hurt You,” is a typically gorgeous closer from the band, layering Goblin-style keyboards over Glass’ haunting vocals, which often sing of pain inflicted upon the vulnerable, echoing the statement of that album cover, calling to mind suffering and comfort in equal doses. That concept isn’t as overt as it could have been, but when it does come through, as when Glass sings “I’ll protect you from all the things I’ve seen” on “Kerosene,” Crystal Castles create the aural equivalent of gunfire and a helping hand.