If It's Too Loud...

Artist : The Sheila Divine Album : The Middle Ages Quick Thoughts : If you know Boston music at all over the last 30 years, you know Aaron Perrino and The Sheila Divine. No musician in the area has persevered quite like Perrino, and I will say that The Middle Ages is my favorite Sheila Divine record and possibly the best thing Perrino's done since the 2003/4 Dear Leader records. That the band never really got its due nationally always felt like a crime, and while one could hope that this is the long-awaited breakthrough, Boston's best-kept secret might have put out the best album of the year. Songs of Note : "Gods of War," "Middle Ages," "No Favors," "Hurry Up," "Celebrate the End," "We Once Burned" Artist : Boards of Canada Album : Inferno Quick Thoughts : Boards of Canada is like a techno locust: they go into hibernation for a few years and then pop up and basically consume your life for a bit. The gro...

There's not a lot I can say about my #4 album of the year, Boards of Canada's Tomorrow's Harvest , that I didn't already say a few weeks ago . It's not as if the type of music they do is conducive to individual songs, and the album (along with their sound in general) almost defies description. So I'm not even really going to try. This is the best electronic album I've heard in years, rivals some of the best music they've put out period, and although I know that this isn't everyone's cup of tea, it's quite the surprise that it's exactly the album I've been seeking out for quite some time. Oddly enough, this is the only album in my top 10 that isn't either a female singer-songwriter or a group with female lead singers. It's one of those years, I guess, and it's made my ears very happy, but it's an odd little statistic. As for Boards of Canada, you can stream Tomorrow's Harvest below:

I've mentioned here and there about my mid-to-late 1990s electronica/techno addiction I went through. I enjoyed groups like Orbital quite a bit, but it was ultimately the more difficult/interesting artists like Aphex Twin that stuck with me as I transitioned to more of an indie rock listening trajectory. I always kept some of the electronic love in my back pocket (Of Montreal's electro phase was a solid time for me), but it's only fairly recently that I've come back into the fold a little more significantly. I was never much into trance or big beat type stuff. I enjoyed a good deal of house music, and today's house-influenced pop is really great, but the dubstep/brostep thing leaves me cold. Meanwhile, a band I knew of but never ever listened to, Boards of Canada, released their first album in eight years this year with Tomorrow's Harvest . I was interested in listening to it, but since I'm more or less an exclusive Spotify listener and basically none...