New Magnetic Wonder by The Apples In Stereo, a surviving Elephant 6 group, successfully marries sunny 60’s pop melodies in the same vein as The Beatles or The Beach Boys. Jeff Lyne often gets thrown into the mix with backing vocals being run through a vocoder, which is more often than not the entire point of all the less-than-a-minute filler songs that plague the album. Is the point of them to conceptualize the record a little? It’s hard to imagine, as most of the lyrical content on New Magnetic Wonder is no-depth, happy-go-lucky stuff that, as opening track “Can You Feel It?” so successfully puts it: “makes you feel good.” To just complete the picture, many of the driving beats are complemented by metronome-like cowbell a la “Drive My Car” off of Rubber Soul. In some cases, the songs sound like they could be taken almost directly from a Beatles album: “Sun Is Out,” is a mix of the repetitiveness of “Magical Mystery Tour,” with the bass line of “Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da.” And, while the always-perky, feel-good attitude is sometimes a little too annoying to bear at the moment, New Magnetic Wonder generally gets the job done.

Whenever I listen to Strange House, the debut album by this 5-piece from Southend, England, I get a slight feeling of discomfort. These songs aren’t making me happy, but why should I expect them to, right? The band is called The Horrors, after all. Still, I’d hope that with a name like that, I could expect some thrills from the album that would provide for me some sort of satisfaction; this, unfortunately, is not the case. This album doesn’t scare me; it just makes me unhappy because I don’t want to listen to it. The songs aren’t interesting, and yes, there is a “spooky” horror-esque organ that accompanies most of the songs, but it’s just playing minor chords, bland progressions, and half steps. Admittedly, the second track “Count In Fives” provides some thrills, such as a grinding, testosterone fueled guitar solo at the beginning and an exhilarating “hey!” refrain following each line in the verse, but all these mechanics can only bring a song so far, as is shown by its three-minute length. By the end of the repetitive forty minutes (including bonus track “Death At The Chapel”) of your life that the album consumes, you really need to make sure that the next thing you listen to will satisfy you in one manner or another.

What made Clap Your Hands Say Yeah’s eponymous debut so enjoyable were all the little segments of songs that stuck in ones mind at the end of the day. Upon the first listen, it was very easy to disregard what was behind the music, rather focusing on the annoying vocals layered on top of the somewhat lo-fi instrumentals; giving it a second and a third spin would ultimately, however, pay off due to well constructed melodies and catchy bass lines and riffs. Some Loud Thunder, unfortunately, is almost entirely void of all these things that made Clap Your Hands Say Yeah shine, save for a small few of the latter tracks. The album opens with the title track, which rather than beginning the slate of music to follow with a bang, leaves the listener with a lo-fi, insignificant feeling. Successor “Emily Jean Stock,” has church bells and bland, forgettable vocals ride over an acoustic guitar that has no punch. This presents the fault that continues through the rest of the album: there’s barely anything to latch onto. The lowest of the low is “Satan Said Dance,” a five-and-a-half minute dance-punk fluke, with bothersome instrumentals that never let up. The succession of “Yankee Go Home” and “Underwater (You And Me)” is the clear highlight of the album, with both of them lasting, triumphantly, in the same way that the best tracks of the first album did. Only two great tracks out of eleven, however, is not enough to make an album succeed; it’s a shameful sophomore effort from a band with so much more potential.

The sophomore effort by this trio from Sunderland, England provides a style of music not commonly found in the sea of new material that’s released every day: nearly-sublime pop. Utilizing lots of electric, but not overly distorted, guitar, piano, keyboards, perfectly-produced drums, and well-placed strings, Field Music has created a concise collection of tightly-written songs; and this means pieces of music that have been intimately composed, rather than a collection of riffs, chord-progressions, and solos or fills that fall on-top of those. This is perfectly exemplified on the highlight of the album, “A House Is Not A Home;” after completing this song, one has the feeling that they’ve listened to a piece of music that was intricately made with the purpose of pleasing their ears, rather than as proof that the musicians who made it can play their instruments. And, that’s not to say that Field Music doesn’t know their instruments; at no point while listening to the album does one get a feeling that they’re being overwhelmed by a certain sound, because of how well each individual piano or guitar part is placed, and how well the interplay between instrumentals and vocals is executed. Pair that with some great pop melodies and 60’s-Beatles harmonies, and at just over half an hour, you’ve got a record that won’t be boring you any time soon.

“Sunday’s lost/In melancholy/If you don’t know it now/Then you will do,” sings Damon Albarn (Blur, Gorillaz) during the leadoff track, History Song, on the debut eponymous album by his new project, The Good, The Bad & The Queen; and surely, the content of the album would suggest that every day is Sunday. For 12 tracks that span a total of 42 minutes and 54 seconds, the man that has hidden behind a cartoon for the last six years sings memorable melodies (for the most part), over lots of finger-picked acoustic guitar, selective piano parts, a prominent, thumping bass, some electronic beats, and a string part here and there; sure, it creates an atmosphere of sameness, but a moderate level of consistency is held therein. And, those tracks that stray from the pack, rather than falling short due to eccentricity, rise above and make the album more than just a mundane “not bad, but nothing special” effort. On the other hand, even within those “stand-out” tracks, a feeling of sameness remains consistent, and never really lets up until one finishes listening to the album, and indulges in something else. But the formula is solid, and Albarn shows that even after undergoing numerous musical changes, his song writing still hasn’t let up.

On their 2004 debut, Funeral, Montreal’s Arcade Fire hit the world with one of the very greatest indie rock albums to date, and now add another album to that collection. This time, however, they’ve opted for a slightly more mainstream approach that, thankfully, has not affected the quality of their composing in the slightest. What’s great about this is it seems as though every sophomore effort from a promising new indie act fails, almost abysmally, to meet expectations, and often sounds too much like a lower quality repeat of their debut; Neon Bible is, by no means, one of those cases. The strings are still prominently there, though it seems as though the guitar is less prevalent; the song “Intervention” starts out, and runs for a while, with only pipe-organ, sounding like the most well-written, enjoyable church song you’ve ever heard, aside from the words. And, this brings up another point: lyrics. This isn’t any Sheryl Crow album, and if you know anything about Funeral, you shouldn’t expect it to be. To again refer to “Intervention,” one of the most clearly heard refrains on the album is, “Working for the church while your family dies/They take what they give you and they keep it inside/Every sparkle of friendship and love/Will die without a home.” These kind of intense, pessimistic lines can be heard all through the album; in the end, however, one doesn’t feel pissed off because of all the negativity; the internal message in the lyrics often has a different air to it, and a song like “Keep The Car Running” could be seen as some sort of left-field motivation. Either way you view it, upon finishing the album everything makes perfect sense, as only a truly astonishing work of art can.

Let’s just start off by admitting that the Arctic Monkeys are by no means playing music that is outstandingly different from anything else. As a matter of fact, the music they’re putting out bears lots of resemblence to many contemporaries playing in the same scene to draw commercial attention; bands such as the now-deceased Libertines (though each of the principal songwriter’s has kept their own with their bands Babyshambles and Dirty Pretty Things) and Franz Ferdinand will often come to mind when listening to the outings of the Arctic Monkeys. There are, however, a number of unique elements to their sound that really stand them apart and above the rest.

The first and perhaps most essential element in the separation of them from other bands is frontman Alex Turner’s teenage-lifestyle driven, storytelling lyricism; an example of the former would be heard in the last song on the album “A Certain Romance,” wherein Turner alleges, “There’s only music so that there’s new ringtones.” The song immediately preceding this (From The Ritz To The Rubble) seems to start in the middle of a story (“Last night these two bouncers/And one of ‘em’s alright/The other one’s the scary one/His way or no way, totalitarion”) of the narrator having to deal with bouncers at a club, the night-life that one would expect these Sheffield boys of around 20 years old to be forced to deal with in their late-day outings, reaching them out to a demographic that can relate to what Turner writes about.

Another essential element is how the guitar-driven “punch” of their sound is handled. Right from the first chord of opener “The View From The Afternoon,” the listener is attacked by a full-throttle distortion battle. And, on the album, the band develops a format to their introductions, starting with a simple guitar chord progression/riff that is joined by a catchy guitar melody, wherein the song will shortly shift to the progression played throughought the verse, and Turner will chime his wit into the picture therein. Of course, some songs escape this formula, but it largely exists; and, it does the band no damage as it works. The best example of this formula is probably on the second song and hit single “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor,” containing this introduction formula, paired with teenage-esque lyrics, and completed with lyrics that at one point during the song reference Shakespeare’s “Romeo And Juliet” to the bands advantage. And, this formula is really what makes this album flow together so well. And, that is also how I would reccomend listening to the disc: from start to finish. In my mind, it plays better when you treat it as a single work, being “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not,” rather than singular songs on that CD.

So, have a listen to it and then calm down with something softer and more soothing. But the point is, have a listen. And another one. And then another.