'You and I’ Exhibits Jeff Buckley at His Most Candid

American ignorance withheld Jeff Buckley’s first appearance at the Billboard No. 1 position for 11 years after his untimely 1997 death. Through the lens of America’s gross underappreciation for an artist its people almost exclusively know through his cover of Leonard Cohen, a posthumous album comprised mostly of cover songs seems to be a miracle. Yet even through the European perspective which appropriately views Jeff Buckley as a guitar virtuoso and the true voice of a generation, the posthumous album of unreleased Buckley material entitled You and I still seems to be a miracle. 

Popular culture has deferred Buckley into the role of the wallflower amongst the greats of 90s rock. Scarcely referred to as a legend for his guitar playing ability, his touch and dexterity on the fretboard rival that of Jimmy Page. His voice, often criticized for its overt emotionalism, covers ground between Nina Simone and Robert Plant. Never had there been a more perfect archetype for music greatness and never had such a talented presence on earth been so brief. Though the years past prevent You and I from having the same satiating effect that Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk had the year following Buckley’s death, You and I revives an early image of the young and burgeoning talent by revisiting his artistic self-discovery. 

Buckley’s haunting aura is immediately felt in the negative space surrounding Buckley’s guitar trills on the opening Bob Dylan cover “Just Like a Woman.” His guitar playing is simultaneously inviting and distant, sparse but flawless. His gentle strumming yields the foreground to his voice until stingingly precise guitar solos command attention. His singing balances grit and levity while delivering Dylan’s lyrics, sounding tenderly affectionate at times and then seductively crass at others.  

His cover of Sly & the Family Stone’s “Everyday People” builds upon a street busker aesthetic that is reminiscent of his live performances at Sin-é. The young Buckley’s voice reveals his eagerness for the spotlight, singing “Sometimes I’m right / Others I’m wrong” with a humble softness that allows his vocal projection to explode at the chorus. He whittles the song down to a light conga introduction, percussively strummed guitars, and quivering vocals, making a very wholesome performance out of a song that most would consider disastrously empty without the accompaniment of bass and horns. 

Buckley is his best on You and I’s most balladic moments. His cover of Jevetta Steele’s “Calling You” is bone-shavingly harrowing. When considered alongside his supremely confident performance of “Everyday People,” the Jevetta Steele cover legitimizes Buckley’s ease in navigating the soul/R&B genre from its most euphoric peaks to its most lonesome plateaus. He demonstrates that same variability across genres as well, expanding his range with blues standard covers of “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Cryin’” and “Poor Boy Long Way from Home.” 

You and I challenges both Grace and Sketches for My Sweetheart the Drunk as Buckley’s most intimate studio release. His elaboration upon the dream which inspired the album’s title track adds a conversational quality to a deeply personal connection with listeners built throughout the album. The hold that Buckley’s performances takes on listeners is so compelling that we mourn the album’s close in almost the same way we mourn his death; we find it immensely difficult to let go of him. His acoustic rendition of The Smith’s “I Know It’s Over” ominously sings of life coming to a close; his air is angelic as he sings “I can feel the soil falling over my head.” The greatest credit that can be afforded to him for this performance is how he congests the emptiness left around Morrissey’s original vocals. The song carries much more fluidly than the original without sacrificing Morrissey’s desperate tone; rather, enhancing the lyrics’ desperation with heightened emotion and rawness. 

Those who cherish Jeff Buckley’s work tend to elevate his legacy to a mythological stature, to the point where the organic qualities of his artistry seem to evaporate. No other Jeff Buckley album takes on a greater mythological ambience, yet You and I features some of his most unembellished and candid work. You and I presents the fragile sounds of an impassioned artist prior to fame and the mythos which followed. It is a cuttingly reductive experience, unpretentious, emotionally stirring, and powerfully evocative. 

Kendrick Lamar’s 'untitled unmastered.' Masters the Art of Compilation

After a major label debut that was heralded as one of the greatest by any artist in music history, the question of how Kendrick Lamar would follow 2012’s good kid, m.A.A.d city lingered for three years until the release of To Pimp a Butterfly. Two ambitiously conceptual albums later, Kendrick Lamar has validated his status as “greatest rapper alive,” achieving both street credibility as the liquid-tongued antagonist on his infamous “Control” verse and institutional distinction as the second most-Grammy-nominated artist in a single year (behind Michael Jackson). But recent success found K. Dot occupying a familiar place beneath the pressure of elevated expectation for his future work. untitled unmastered. seems to add levity to his predicament. 

A compilation album seems to be the perfect response to the insurmountable opus of To Pimp a Butterfly. A collection of unreleased Kendrick Lamar material recorded prior to his sophomore release, untitled unmastered allows us to see how To Pimp a Butterfly took shape, documenting the uncertainty and reservation of Lamar’s foray into an overwhelmingly jazz soundscape while furthering appreciation for what TPaB came to be. What is arguably untitled unmastered.’s greatest attribute is how malleably it fits into the Kendrick Lamar catalogue: it is simultaneously an appetizer and palate cleanser for To Pimp a Butterfly with production that could be traced as far back as 2011’s Section.80 (released independently through Top Dawg Entertainment). It is fitting that these new songs can only be referenced by number and date, because collectively they adopt a seamless identity that blends into the patchwork of Lamar’s total output. 

untitled unmastered. explores themes that we expect to be dissected in a Kendrick Lamar album: institutional injustice, the formation of identity in the ghetto, Lamar’s status as a hip-hop icon, religious conviction, and self-awareness. Intellectually, the album does not contribute anything that hasn’t already been dealt with on either of Lamar’s major releases. What makes the album interesting is how Lamar tests his lyrical and vocal abilities on jazz platforms. “untitled 02” and “untitled 06” offer Kendrick Lamar at his most vocally eclectic. Like the other songs on the album, they present themselves as the sources of confidence through which songs like “For Free?” and “u” were realized. 

While most of the album sounds like a progression towards TPaB, the production of several songs from untitled unmastered. are glaringly retrospective. The ominous synth loop of “untitled 01” is reminiscent of Section.80’s most menacing instrumentals, while the trap instrumentals of “untitled 02” and “untitled 07” reflect the emerging popularity of trap music in the early decade and the chop-and-screwed aesthetic of the 2000s. Undoubtedly the highlight of the album, “untitled 05” builds upon a funky bass line with rich horns, piano accents, and lyrical contributions from Ab-Soul and Jay Rock. Kendrick delivers his first verse with a fiery presence, later mellowing to the introspectively analytic tone of his Top Dawg counterparts. The TDE presence is surprisingly the least impressive of the guest features included on the album. The tracklist is scattered with high-profile contributions from jazz and R&B music. Robert Glasper and Thundercat both provide instrumental work, while Bilal and Cee-Lo Green, who bewilderingly merges the inflection of Nina Simone with the melodic play of Chaka Khan on “untitled 06,” lend their voices. 

As a compilation album, untitled unmastered. should be received as such, and a very fine one in fact. At a time when B-side collections have either altogether disappeared or been dismissed because of their stigmatic classification as “filler,” Kendrick Lamar has managed to hold the attention of those who crave riveting instrumental performances, complex lyrical structures, and socio-politically conscious contemplations.

Witness Låpsley's Impassioned Debut 'Long Way Home'

Debuts in music can be daunting and altogether treacherous endeavors. Artist development requires a deft touch – some artists succeed and capitalize fully on their first foray (see - Courtney Barnett), others simply burn out (see - JEFF the Brotherhood), or even worse, sometimes extensive anticipation can remove a promising artist from the public consciousness altogether (see – Sampha). Nevertheless, the point of the matter in debuting an artist consists of concerted effort and at times, unadulterated luck; all that to be said, of the handful of hotly anticipated debutants (Shura, Kehlani, Conrad Sewell) in 2016, few have summited the mountain of hype coinciding with their respective debuts as gracefully as XL gem, Låpsley.

At 19, Holly Lapsley Fletcher emanates a wizened perspective in her music that feels most akin to being the secret love child of Adele and James Blake. Since 2013, under the name Låpsley, she has been putting out dreamy minimalist electro pop – Monday EP independently and Understudy EP through XL – that connects with the listener in a visceral manner that’s its almost bewildering to consider the creator’s age. Her breakout track in 2014 (and third track on her debut), “Falling Short” is an austere song filled with tasteful production and self-aware lyrics – “Its been a long time coming, but I’m falling short” – that imbues a feeling of Låpsley’s jilted perspective in regard to a relationship long gone, or considering her age, maybe recent.

Låpsley’s debut album, Long Way Home, extends the mature tones present in her EPs to fully introduce a rare occurrence amongst debuting artist – full faith that she will not fall short of expectation. Opening track “Heartless” is one of the record’s fuller tracks – the slightest of departures from the minimal approach of prior Låpsley efforts – but it only enhances Låpsley’s prospects. Rather than stick to creating analogues of tracks that garnered her early notoriety, she expands her sonic spectrum with a single track on her debut.

A former single, “Hurt Me,” follows “Heartless,” and it once again showcases Låpsley’s versatility within her musical realm. The track is effectively the album’s outright anthem – coming to grips with a relationship gone awry – with Låpsley’s voice effortlessly shifting from soft murmurs into lung filled crescendos. All the while, the production is bigger, more vibrant than the tasteful minimalism of a “Falling Short,” but all the while feels unique to Låpsley.

Two more pre-release singles follow “Hurt Me;” “Falling Short” and “Cliff.” Of the first half of the album, “Cliff” is by far and away the strongest track. It runs the gauntlet of Låpsley’s sonic spectrum – echoing backing vocals, observational lyricism, minimalist production that explodes in a Jamie xx-esque club beat. The accompanying video for “Cliff” even fits the uniform mold of Låpsley minimalism; with Låpsley standing in the snow and simple camera zooms in and out on her face.

Where “Cliff” is the all around best track on Long Way Home, subsequent “Operator (He Doesn’t Call Me)” is the most empowered. With a sample at the onset, and a disco heavy beat to follow, the track also exhibits some of Låpsley’s strongest vocal work, with bellowing “My baby doesn’t call me / So tell me shit I needed to,” that give water to the occasional Adele comparisons.

The next four offerings on Long Way Home – “Painter,” “Tell Me The Truth,” “Station,” “Love Is Blind” – are more lyrically driven tracks that explore more of Låpsley’s perspectives of love, attraction, and relationships. Granted, some tracks are centered on less than fresh concepts – “love is blind with the lights out” – but others (“Station”) reveal seasoned perspectives of a skillful written voice – “Two for the taking, you can have it all at once if it makes you sane” – that’s unafraid to speak from personal experience.

The closing fourth of Long Way Home is comprised of “Silverlake,” an all-knowing narrative journey of a jaded perspective of a relationship somehow associated with the Los Angeles neighborhood of the same name – “Beautiful now, but soon you’ll be gone / By Silverlake I left a stake in the sun.” Closer, “Seven Months,” seems to be the most offertory – “Seven months I gave myself / Every night I’d say how I had my doubt” – and rounds out as one of the most finessed tracks on the record, blending Låpsley’s familiar minimalist sound with a meandering melody. Arguably the most amorphic of tracks on Long Way Home, it offers a glimpse into the future bevy of avenues Låpsley could choose to take on LP #2.

Long Way Home is altogether a triumphant introduction to an artist whose potential exceeds that of most acts in similar points of their careers. She approaches her production with a deft touch that seamlessly engages the listener with each facet of the music. Her lyricism is strong, but at times can leave more to be desired, but that’s almost certainly because of her age. As far as debuts are concerned, Låpsley’s is arguably the best this year to date, and is undoubtedly the first of many exceptional future records to come.  

Now We Are Alone: Majical Cloudz Is Disbanding

Sadly, it seems like the majic is ending.

Only a month after former tour-mates Youth Lagoon did the same, Majical Cloudz has announced through social media today that they are breaking up. Including their most recent release, the Wait & See extended play, and last year's phenomenal full length Are You Alone? (which was Transverso's #2 album of 2015), the dreamy duo graced us with two LPs, two EPs, and a handful of one-off singles in the short four years since their first performance in March, 2012. Their final show is in Montreal this Thursday, March 10.

Devon Welsh and Matthew Otto combined to create some of the most sharply evocative music of our generation. A visceral series of confessions shrouded in the most soothing of soundscapes, it cut deep to the simple core and personified it in plain sight: a synthesizer, a microphone, a white shirt, an unwavering gaze.

I remember listening to Impersonator at my mother's house when it first came out. "Are you depressed or something?" she asked, and I laughed. Despite the undoubtedly melancholy outward appearance of Majical Cloudz, it was never an inherently negative emotional experience; even at their darkest points their songs are paradoxically uplifting upon the same waves of the flood that drowns you down, as ethereal melodies lift you over brooding, coursing vocals. It's a uniquely comforting closure. It's one we need now more than ever.

All along Welsh seemed to prepare us for the end. "If you won't be seen again / I hope you know you were my friend / And in my head the world will never hurt you," he offers in Are You Alone?'s aptly titled opener, "Disappeared." It's truly not easy news to swallow, but if we've learned anything from Majical Cloudz it's how to properly eulogize:

"He was obsessed, and it was okay."

Spend Some Time on Dear Blanca's 'I Don't Mean to Dwell'

Hailing from Columbia, South Carolina, Dear Blanca is of a much different yolk than Post-Echo labelmates Gláss and Art Contest; on their new EP I Don’t Mean To Dwell, the trio swings through barreling passages that are at once steady and coherent bursts of energy very reminiscent of Springsteen yet still in its own way.  

Dylan Dickerson's raspy and emotive vocals are both sardonic and somber in character, which makes for a good dichotomy considering the range of dynamics on the album.  Songs like “Joint Effort” have lines as funny as “Look at me I’m demanding your attention,” but at the same time there is a sense of deep sadness and existential crisis. On “Temporary Solution,” the vocals take on a slightly less jagged quality, but still resound with a deep sense of longing.

Dear Blanca's sound is deeply tied to classic rock, but does so much on its own terms. I Don't Mean to Dwell brings a fervent energy to this somewhat overwrought style as they manage to make it their own with what seems to be surprising ease and finesse, putting forward yet another solid release of their own blissfully potent brand of rock.  

Dear Blanca I Don't Mean to Dwell (03/04/2016) http://Post-Echo.com http://DearBlanca.com Available to purchase via: iTunes - http://apple.co/1QvCaaG Bandcamp - http://bit.ly/1nfZFsD Post-Echo Music Store - http://bit.ly/1ZJvM06 Find Dear Blanca on Facebook - on.fb.me/1Pgyb1n Spotify - http://bit.ly/21btwj7

Yeasayer Drops New Single "Silly Me," Announces Tour

Following music videos for "I Am Chemistry" and "Prophecy Gun" Yeasayer have continued their Amen & Goodbye rollout with new single "Silly Me" and a bevy of tour dates.

With the first two tastes being "long and linear," the new offering is "something from a different spectrum," according to the band's Twitter. Opening with choppy acoustic stabs the track sharply transforms into a full blown dance lament with sparkling synth and an instantly infectious refrain of “Silly me / Where’s my head / I can’t believe now it’s over / She would be here if it wasn’t for silly me / Silly me.”

With glittering lines like "With crystal ball I now can see / That I'm a man of low degree," it's surely one of the most cheerfully upbeat confessions of guilt you'll ever have the pleasure of hearing.

Amen & Goodbye is due out 4/1 via Mute, and can be preordered here. Check out the song and schedule below.

'Silly Me' taken from the upcoming Yeasayer album 'Amen & Goodbye' which will be released April Fools' Day, 2016.

Mount Moriah Pays Homage to Home on 'How to Dance'

Mount Moriah has all the trappings of a band that should be more popular than it is – an unapologetic front woman with lyrical chops that would make Bob Dylan blush, and a combination jazz/country/soul that’s remarkably smooth – but somehow, the North Carolina trio has yet to receive proper recognition. Despite such career hurdles, the band has remained indomitable, tirelessly touring in support of their critically acclaimed second record, Miracle Temple for the better part of a three year span.

Even with the rave reviews that coincided with the promotion of Miracle Temple, Front woman Heather McEntire struggled with the depressive sophomore slump that seems to inevitably strike artists as their careers begin to take form. Career existentialism has been known to derail promising young act like Mount Moriah before ever reaching the zeitgeist, but the Merge signees remained ever vigilant, eventually reconvening to start LP 3.

Mount Moriah’s perseverance grew a head of steam, building momentum that swelled into a sumptuous collection of alt-country rock tracks worthy of the utmost praise. Where Mount Moriah’s prior discography tended to meander every which way sonically, their third record, How to Dance, has an invigorated sense that felt unwittingly absent in their previous efforts.

How to Dance opens smoothly with “Calvander,” a narrative ballad of sweet Southern wanderlust, presumably set in the eponymous town – Jenks’ boogie guitar sounds ambling along as McEntire waveringly asserts her feminine independence, “I swear to God, tonight those Jackson boys ain’t gonna find sweet company.” Follow-up track, “Precita,” continues McEntire’s narrative rambles, as the album begins to take a more autobiographical form - apocryphal or not. The track chugs along, as McEntire builds a lush lyrical landscape with her voice serving as a vocal analog to Dolly Parton or Stevie Nicks.

Sonically, How to Dance serves as Mount Moriah’s most precise album to date, with unfettered Southern twang help the album maintain its purposefully aimless wandering, illuminating key North Carolina motifs that Mount Moriah have grown so proud to champion. “Baby Blue,” feels particularly keen on uplifting the band’s civic pride (for those who aren’t familiar, the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill’s primary color is baby blue), creating a wonderfully idiomatic love ballad thanks in large part to McEntire’s lyrics – “Bright eyes at sunrise/It’s a haunting privilege”– and soft loping percussion.

One of the defining features of How to Dance is the record’s earnest devotion to true country, all the while expressing the collective genre appreciation in the most modern way possible without going full “throwback” (think Margo Price, Nikki Lane). Granted, that’s not a knock against Price or Lane, but How to Dance feels like an album you could play to anybody with Antebellum sensibilities and not complain about direct imitation or “watering down” of the country genre. It’s a clever angle on a genre whose most innovative successes of the past decade have come in the form of iconoclasts (once more, not a knock; Chris Stapleton and Sturgill Simpson are true deserving of their praise). Some tracks deviate ever so slightly from the genre– take “Fox in the City,” is a new-age country ballad that celebrates the same ethereal mysticism of the South, but feels more like a blues-y The Verve track, with McEntire’s vocals layered on top of each other while strings occupy the bridge.

The album as a whole acts as an innocuously unapologetic anthology of Mount Moriah’s allegorical association with their native North Carolina and the South in general. It asserts a sort of indignance that assures the listener that having some less than flattering things in one’s past don’t necessarily mean a connection should be totally eliminated. Instead, the album is a confirmation that associating with a place is more than just atoning for a checkered past, rather focusing on the personal connection within oneself.

The Top 15 Films of 2015: Transverso's 2016 Oscars Best Picture Picks

With the Oscars finally arriving tonight, it’s time to take a look back at the incredible year of film that was 2015. For every superhero sequel there were plenty of indie smashes, and it was easy to find art at the multiplex as easily as it was in your local arthouse cinema. So let’s look back at the movies that will shape the film world for the next few years.

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15. Phoenix

A riveting psychological thriller set in the ruins of postwar Germany, Phoenix is a hypnotic slow-burn that builds its tension deliberately and devastatingly. Nelly is a Holocaust survivor who had her face disfigured in a concentration camp and when she returns to her hometown to find her lost love, she finds he may nothing may ever be the same. It takes cues from Rainer Fassbinder and Alfred Hitchcock, but manages to morph into its own cerebral mystery that results in an absolutely stunning final scene that’s among the year’s best.

14. Bridge of Spies

Steven Spielberg may be the closest thing our generation has to Frank Capra, a filmmaker who tries to unearth what it really means to be an American while not shying away from the darker underbelly of our culture. So while it might be interpreted at first as simplistic or unsubtle, Bridge of Spies is an intricate deconstruction of the peril that Cold War attitudes placed our world into. Given a biting wit by writers Joel and Ethan Coen, Spielberg uses America’s sweetheart Tom Hanks to craft a beautiful slice of Americana, bolstered by his confident direction and an excellent and understated Mark Rylance performance.

13. Sicario

Timely, nail-biting and cerebral, Sicario is yet another masterpiece of unbridled, heart-stopping tension from director Denis Villeneuve (Prisoners, Enemy). An unflinching look into the heart of darkness at the center of the Mexican drug war, Sicario keeps the audience in the dark just long enough until its razor wire tension explodes in a third-act confrontation that will leave your jaw on the floor. The Oscars should be ashamed for not nominating Brolin or Blunt but especially Benicio del Toro in one of the highlights of his career.

12. The Big Short

Propelled by one of this year’s sharpest and most inventive screenplays, The Big Short proves director Adam McKay’s talents lie beyond just Will Ferrell vehicles like Anchorman. The financial collapse of 2008 is a subject of fascination for McKay (touched upon in his underrated The Other Guys) and takes full advantage of the big budget and star-studded cast of The Big Short to tell this story in its entire tragic fullness. While some of the explanation may feel like condescension, the directorial flair that McKay presents his story with keeps things fresh and funny but with the dramatic weight the subject deserves.

11. Tangerine

As much as Tangerine could’ve just been “the movie shot on an iPhone,” it manages to transcend and become so much more. It’s an epic exploration of the Los Angeles underbelly on Christmas Eve, told through the eyes of two lovably rambunctious transgender prostitutes. The iPhone cinematography gives it a wonderful kineticism of life and verve, but its two leads give it a warm heart at the center. It’s hilariously madcap with just a hint of melancholy about finding your place in this world, but Tangerine is a sweet portrait of an unusual friendship told with some awesome filmmaking technique.

10. Love & Mercy

One of the best biopics in recent memory, Love & Mercy is a stunning recreation of the dizzying highs of creating one of pop music’s greatest records ever in Pet Sounds and the soul-crushing lows of Brian Wilson’s subsequent mental dissolution. By intertwining the two award-caliber performances of Paul Dano and John Cusack as two eras of Wilson, Love & Mercy crafts a heartbreaking arc of redemption through the power of love and music. recording sequences alone are worth the price of admission (supplanted by a great electronic Atticus Ross score) and it’s a career high for every actor involved, especially Dano and Cusack.

9. Crimson Peak

All of director Guillermo del Toro’s finest films are about the relationship of innocence vs. brutality, and Crimson Peak is indeed another visual masterpiece from one of the few living visionaries left in genre filmmaking. Moreso a Victorian melodrama than a straightforward horror film, Crimson Peak is a testament to Del Toro’s intricate craft, building another terrifying world within Allerdale Hall, full of shadows and ghosts. It's an old school kind of horror told with unapologetic camp and nobody is better at crafting atmosphere or creatures than Del Toro. Hail to the king, baby.

8. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

While it may have been impossible to top the heights of the Burj Khalifa from Ghost Protocol, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation is a roundly satisfying addition to one of the greatest modern action franchises. Mission Impossible is a series that understands scale more than any other and once again crafts some of the year’s most awe-inspiring action setpieces that simply suck the breath right out of you. Tom Cruise once again throws himself in the jaws of death for our amusement and Rogue Nation takes the best elements from all four of its previous installments to form a supremely entertaining summer blockbuster and one of the year’s best action films.

7. Inside Out

Just when it seemed PIXAR might be in a creative lull, a film as fresh, funny and inventive as Inside Out comes along. The concept of one’s emotions personified as little people inside your head is already quite a clever idea, but Inside Out’s screenplay grows this concept into one of PIXAR’s funniest and most moving films ever. It never offers easy answers to some of life’s toughest problems but is still a valuable portrait of how to deal with the combating emotions within ourselves. And with a cast this perfect, it’s no wonder it brings you to tears of both laughter and sadness.

6. Star Wars: The Force Awakens

It is a small miracle that The Force Awakens manages to feel so organic, natural and so thoroughly a part of the Star Wars canon so instantly. Yes it’s great to see more practical effects, location shooting and overall more competent direction, but the characters are what make us truly love Star Wars and The Force Awakens creates them with marvelous aplomb. It’s the most solid foundation fans could’ve hoped for and a cast and crew of marvelous talent did what most thought was impossible: make the entire world love Star Wars again.

5. The Hateful Eight

After a few false starts and script leaks, it seemed unlikely that Quentin Tarantino was ever going to get around to making his next Western, but somehow it arrived and was bigger and badder than anything we could’ve hoped for. Shot “In GLORIOUS 70mm” as the posters loved to proclaim, The Hateful Eight was incredibly heartening to see so many turn out for the roadshow 70mm film screenings, a cinematic event unlike anything seen in America for the last 40 years. Not to mention that the film itself is one of the director’s finest, assembling some familiar faces from the Tarantino oeuvre and shoving them in a snowbound cabin as their wits slowly whittle into blasts of blood-soaked brutality. Beautifully shot by Robert Richardson and given the year’s best score by the maestro Ennio Morricone, the elegance is contrasted by one of Tarantino’s screenplay, one of his most black-hearted treatises on the nature of humans. Three hours simply whizz by and we’re left with a landmark for Westerns, Tarantino and the medium of film itself.

4. The Look of Silence

Documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer’s follow-up to 2012’s groundbreaking The Act of Killing, The Look of Silence somehow manages to eclipse and become an even more important piece of cinema than its predecessor. The Act of Killing was a sickening snapshot of how people who committed some unforgivable atrocities manage to live with themselves, but The Look of Silence manages to make that pain even more immediate and disturbing by having a survivor of the massacre face his persecutors in front of the cameras. The interviews are pulse-pounding, cringe-inducing, absolutely revelatory bits of cinema and once again Oppenheimer has crafted a gorgeous, gut-wrenching document that is both important and artful. If you only watch one documentary from last year, make it this one.

3. Carol

Few movies are ever as gorgeously photographed as Carol but even fewer manage to pack such a devastating emotional punch. The forbideen romance between Therese (Rooney Mara) and Carol (Cate Blanchett) sounds like the stuff of pure melodrama, but becomes the most purely affecting relationship depicted onscreen this year. The breathtakingly composed shots are given the dreamlike qualities of memory, as if groggily recalling the nostalgic minutia of romance: the lingering gaze of a lover, the offhand smile, the squeeze of a shoulder. Not since Her has a film managed to capture the thrill of falling in love but also the heartbreak of separation. It's a gorgeously orchestrated piece of filmmaking, one that plants a tender ache in the heart that doesn't fade quickly.

2. Ex Machina

With all of the recent success of sci-fi on the blockbuster scale, Ex Machina is a refreshing reminder that the best science fiction stories are based in exploring big ideas and not necessarily on visual spectacle. First time director Alex Garland, screenwriter of such recent sci-fi classics as Sunshine, Dredd, and 28 Days Later, is certainly no slouch in the visual department, but Ex Machina is more interested in exploring the dynamics between its three main characters. It’s an absolute delight to watch its intricate plot unfold, throwing twist after turn up to one of the year’s most shocking endings. It’s heady science fiction at its finest and it rewards rewatch after rewatch. Drop everything and watch it as soon as possible.

1. Mad Max: Fury Road

Mad Max: Fury Road is a once in a generation event. A movie so pure in its unbridled creativity and filmmaking boldness deserves every amount of praise one can muster. At its core just a chase film with a feminist bent, it manages to transcend and become so much more. Director George Miller takes his incredible apocalyptic fairy tale begun over thirty years ago and creates even more dazzling mythmaking out of the nuclear wasteland. Visual storytelling is rarely this simple and coherent in a modern action film, but it’s also hardly ever this fun. No film was as viscerally exciting, visually bold and unabashedly badass as Mad Max: Fury Road.  It set the film world on fire and will probably dominate the conversation on action cinema for decades to come. Perfectly paced, perfectly shot, perfectly edited and bathed in sound and fury, Mad Max: Fury Road is one of this decade’s absolute finest.

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Honorable Mentions:

Steve Jobs

The Martian

Spotlight

Amy

The Wolfpack

Bone Tomahawk

Krampus

The Assassin

World of Tomorrow

The End of the Tour

The Magnetic North Release Dreamy 'Prospect of Skelmersdale' Single "A Death in the Woods"

“A Death in the Woods” is the lead single from British rock symphony outfit The Magnetic North’s forthcoming album Prospect of Skelmersdale, the second full-length installment from the Erland Cooper led trio - featuring Simon Tong (The Verve, Blur, Gorillaz, The Good, the Bad & the Queen) and orchestral arranger Hannah Peel. Prospect of Skelmersdale continues the band’s series of musical vignettes drawing from its eponymous village.

A mecca of the Transcendental Meditation movement, Skelmersdale, Lancashire was a haven for families to settle and continue their lives enlightenment and mediation. Included amongst these families was The Magnetic North’s own Tong, whose experience undoubtedly provided a wellspring of inspiration as the band worked to inhabit the spirit of Skelmersdale.

“A Death in the Woods” acts as the introduction to the overall motif for both the album and Skelmersdale. The video opens with bright flutes and twinkling guitar bouncing along as we’re introduced to a collection of Super 8 clips of what can be assumed as the titular town itself.

The lyrics feel like a sort of archival account of the initial pitch used to bring people to Skelmersdale way back in the 1960s, as Erland Cooper maintains a soothing timbre over the dream-like melodies. Ambient guitars drift and meander as Erland croons “The New World’s round the corner / They found a new world order,” and the track continues to slowly build sonically with each subsequent verse. The video exudes a sort of utopian uneasiness that comes to a head as the footage shifts its focus on the children from the Skelmersdale community, and suddenly breaks into the mellowest of electronic rampages until the song and video come to a close.

Prospect of Skelmersdale is out 3/18 via Full Time Hobby

Future Islands Side-Project The Snails Makes Playfulness Cool Again on 'Songs From the Shoebox'

Though formed as early as 2008, Future Islands side project The Snails had graced us with little more than 2013’s killer Worth The Wait EP before their full-length debut dropped ahead of schedule this week. (Even if you had never heard of them until recently, you may be familiar with the mollusk motif from the adorable smiling snails adorning the envelopes from past ticket giveaways.) Initially tracked back in 2013, Songs from the Shoebox was slowly overdubbed and mixed over the years in between their main band’s tours since.

This slimy supergroup brings members of Future Islands, Lower Dens, Wume, Small Sur, Wing Dam, Nuclear Power Pants, and Showbiz all together within one shell, and is led largely by the FI duo as Snailliam (William Cashion)’s signature rumbling bass grooves lend pulse and platform to Sammy Snail (Samuel Herring)’s delightfully raucous howls as per usual.

For the most, Herring tends to leave his dripping, guttural growls behind for a full showcase of his upper registers with uplifting roars of positivity on “The Tight Side of Life” and beyond, and his ability to shift between brooding poignance to unabashed fun deftly displays the emotional and modal versatility of a man who also doubles as an occasional rapper.

Opening with the sound of a balloon blowing up, Songs from the Shoebox has all the playfulness of the class projects we built in those same containers as we first learned to appreciate the fun of art all those years ago. The energetic collaboration brings the best side projects have to offer with that added bit of flair such freedom allows, as the Baltimore post-punk rockers swap their sultry synth for sweet, sweet sax.

Appropriately decreeing “We’re gonna take it slow / Real slow / Real slow” in the first track, they then transition into the whimsical "Barnacle on a Surfboard (Barnacle Boogie)" that ends with impressively committed snail sound effects, before "Shoebox" opens up cheerfully with the curious “It's a brand new day / Bring me my socks / I want to show you how I play.”

It’s the sign of a truly great musician when each and every song they put forth is of undeniable quality, no matter how obscure it may be (give Future Islands’s loose collection of non-album deep cuts a visit sometime if you haven’t already, and you’ll discover lesser known tunes that pack more punch than many indie staples’ peak singles), and even at their most casual they prove to make no exception, never skimping on earnest heart and movability no matter how silly the vessel for that drive may be.

Ending with the previously-released highlight "Snails Christmas (I Want a New Shell)" we find ourselves with an offering infinitely better than the half-assed holiday repeat covers we’re normally subjected to each winter, however strange it may sound in mid February. It’s also, notably, the first time the words “caviar” and “Roomba” have ever been sung in the same sentence, at least to my knowledge.

For a man usually known for physically beating himself as he figuratively (and through miming, literally) tears his heart out onstage, it’s especially nice that Herring of all people can remind us to sometimes take a step back and just enjoy the music.

Check out where The Snails will be leaving trails during their tour:

• 3/4 - Philadelphia, PA @ Kungfu Necktie
• 3/5 - Burlington, VA @ Signal Kitchen
• 3/6 - Portland, ME @ Space
• 3/8 - Providence, RI @ AS220
• 3/9 - Brooklyn, NY @ Baby's All Right
• 3/10 - New York, NY @ Mercury Lounge
• 3/11 - Washington, DC @ Comet Pizza and Ping Pong
• 3/12 - Richmond, VA @ Strange Matter
• 3/13 - Asheville, NC @ The Mothlight
• 3/15 - Athens, GA @ Caledonia Lounge
• 3/16 - Charleston, SC @ Tin Roof
• 3/17 - Wilmington, NC @ Reggie's 42nd Street Tavern
• 3/18 - Raleigh, NC @ Kings
• 3/19 - Baltimore, MD @ The Ottobar