by Danny Jumpertz

The Arcade Fire / Neon Bible (Merge) Pitchfork rating: 8.4
Big & bold with a melancholic sense of theatrics, Neon Bible is a glorious dark pop album that will stand the test of time. A great listen from end to end – uplifting.

The Twilight Sad / Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat) PF 8.6
From the insistent single note piano of the first epic, droney track Cold Days From The Birdhouse to the final harmonic ring of title track Fourteen Autumns And Fifteen Winters, The Twilight Sad perfectly balance noise and epic pop anthems. An album to get lost in.

LCD Soundsystem / Sound Of Silver PF 9.2
Maintaining the buzz from their self-titled debut, James Murphy & co deliver something similar sonically – dinky drum machines blend with funky kits & percussion, skanky guitar and disco back up vox - but evolve their lyrical range.

Battles / Mirrored (Warp) PF 9.1
Battles sound like scrawny jazz nerds, who, while overdosing on Red Bull, hijack Han Solo's Millenium Falcon and set up an outer planet mega-studio where they let their hair down and jam in a weightless zone, free of genre.
Articulate and energetic, Mirrored is a powerful and mature artistic statement that pleasingly blends electronica, experimental music, rock and jazz.
Key tracks: Atlas, Tonto

Bachelorette / Isolation Loops (Arch Hill Recordings / Mistletone)
An intimate and ambitious sound world created by clever kiwi composer Annabel Alpers. Although the comparisons to New Buffalo are valid, she is perhaps closer to the retro-futuristic aesthetic of French duo Air than Ms Seltmann.
Key track: Intergalactic Solitude

CocoRosie / The Adventures Of Ghosthorse And Stillborn (Touch & Go) PF 2.3
Endearing and slightly loopy – the sound world imagined by the talented
Casady sisters is a welcoming and rewarding place to visit.
Key track: Rainbowarriors

Menomena / Friend And Foe (Filmguerrero/Barsuk) PF 8.5
From the fertile musical soils of Portland, Oregon emerges Menomena. Like Battles, this band is progressive in the best sense of the word. Not aligned to any particular genre or style (hints of metal/hard rock are sprinkled throughout), their imaginative pieces are beautifully arranged, deep and powerful.
Key track: Muscle'n Flo
Look out for: The amazing hand-illustrated trippy album artwork

To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie / The Patron (Kranky) PF 6.7
Challenging, but very rewarding. The Patron is about the corruption of an idea that is at first welcomed and later destroyed, and this is a killer debut release from the Minneapolis band. Imaginatively recorded and very dark, the band reminds me a little of Birmingham's Broadcast – a wonky retro ambience cloaking a thoroughly modern vision.

Thee More Shallows / Book Of Bad Breaks (Anticon) PF 6
While some may decry US label Anticon's diversification from hip hop to wider musical terrains, I'm lapping it up. The continuing hybridisation of contemporary music is producing some innovative and interesting bands. Like labelmates Why?, Thee More Shallows are producing moving and dynamic pieces that borrow from hip hop, indie rock, electronica and simple classic pop songwriting.
Key lyric: "Young, dumb, and full of come, this will be your anthem for a set of shaking strings tethered to a flag" Track: Eagle Rock.

The National / Boxer (Beggars Banquet) PF 8.6
Measured and occasionally menacing, The National's fourth album Boxer, has (finally) elevated the band to the status of indie darlings. But this band could go a lot further than that. The National play literary rock music – the lyrics and baritone of singer Matt Berninger are the band's knockout punch, not that the underlying music is found wanting. In the same ballpark as fellow New Yorker's Interpol, The National's tunes are concise and dynamic, with enough simmering tension and tight musicianship to bring even rootsy snobs and FM classic rock listeners over to the dark side.

The New Pornographers / Challengers (Matador) PF 6
In North America they are like an indie supergroup – all band members - Carl Newman (AC Newman), Neko Case, Dan Bejar (Destroyer, Swan Lake) & others have thriving side-projects, The New Pornographers enjoy an embarrassment of compositional and vocal riches. Their songs are tuneful and accomplished, with great hooks and often quite simple arrangements.
Key track: Myriad Harbour sees Dan Bejar and Neko Case trading vocal lines, underpinned by great band harmonies.

Robert Wyatt / Comicopera (Domino) PF 7.5
In 1973 an accident left Robert Wyatt confined to a wheelchair. His career up to that point – with UK trippers Soft Machine, Daevid Allen Trio, Wilde Flowers & Matching Mole – was sonically exploratory and very influential on the art rock scene in the 70s (Eno, Bowie etc).
That he is still making music this good (and ambitious) in 2007 is a tribute to his phenomenal staying power and compositional skills. Comicopera is part concept album (it is arranged into three acts: Lost In Noise, The Here and the Now & Away With The Fairies) and informed stylistically by a cornucopia of engaging styles and influences.
Key track: Stay Tuned features the best use of an operatic voice in a 'pop' song since Passenger's Miss Sarajevo.

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