Believe The Hype: No Ripcord Recommendations

Welcome to our new Believe The Hype portal. Our intention is to use this as a condensed guide to the very best new music reviewed on No Ripcord in the last 6 months or so. Rather than simply list every 8/10 album, we hope to compile a much more selective group of records. Some of these picks provide a particularly challenging listening experience, while others will appeal to the vast majority on the first listen; nevertheless, we consider them all to be essential examples of great music in 2010. We hope you find this new section useful and look forward to your feedback.

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2 APRIL

DUM DUM GIRLS
"I Will Be"
(Sub Pop)

"Though producer Richard Gottehrer, (ex-Strangeloves — “I WANNNT CANDEEEEE!”), whose production credits include The Go-Gos and Blondie, knew exactly how to present the material herein, Dum Dum Girls do revisit love’s charm without riddling it with innuendo or expletives like so many “love” singers do anymore. Combining 60s girl pop and 70s garage pop with the lo-fi mist that, admittedly, shares common ground with bands like Wavves, Vivian Girls and No Age, Dum Dum Girls come up with a very relevant and heartwarming throwback." 8/10

Click here to read Sean Caldwell's full review...

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1 APRIL

EFTERKLANG
"Magic Chairs"
(4AD)

"Casper Clausen's voice has grown into its own; proud and instantly recognizable. Whereas in the past he was content to keep a lower profile, assigning more duties to backing vocalists, on Magic Chairs his voice stands out strong and at the fore, reaching higher and sounding frankly gorgeous. Take the swaying beauty of forthcoming single I Was Playing Drums: stripped down verses let him take center stage and hold the reins of the song himself, rather than relying on the instrumentation, and then guide it to a trembling emotive climax." 9/10

Click here to read Jody White's full review...

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GORILLAZ
"Plastic Beach"
(EMI)

"The whole thing works beautifully, more with each listen. Unless you're, say, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, or Outkast, very few artists are capable of more than three masterpieces in succession, within a decade. Those that hit that mark are all-time greats, and Gorillaz have achieved the magic number.

This begs the question of whether this fictional band now stands as pop royalty of their time. Aside from their commendable mainstream popularity, even the misguided purists typically suspicious of overt gimmicks seem to concede an impressive quality to the catalog. Myself, I'm fairly gimmick embracing, yet I still feel a bit silly considering an effort with cartoon avatars for such canonization. Yet here we are, and I can't contrive a good argument against it. In fact, considering the stellar album from supergroup The Good, The Bad, and The Queen, and Blur's under-heard, Coxon-less gem Think Tank, I'm seriously considering Damon Albarn as Pop MVP of the last decade or so."

Click here to read George Booker's review in full...

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31 MARCH

TITUS ANDRONICUS
"The Monitor"
(XL)

"Taken at face value, this is nothing more than an exceedingly well made, exciting lo-fi art-punk record. The listening experience, however, is one that far few bands strive for anymore. Titus Andronicus have created an album that will grip the listener, carry them along on a tide of spit and blood and youthful aggression, and leave them dazed and exhausted at the end, with no other option but to start the record all over again.

On its first album, Titus Andronicus promised a masterpiece. The Monitor makes good on the claim." 10/10

Click here to read Nate Adams' review in full...

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28 MARCH

JOANNA NEWSOM
"Have One On Me"
(Drag City)

"Summarising Have One On Me in a word is an impossibility, but the most apt is probably “absorbing”. If you hold the belief that the best albums inhabit their own space and time, and draw their listener into that world for their duration, then Have One On Me is fit to stand alongside the finest examples of the craft. It’s difficult to predict legacies for new albums without sounding like a misguided merchant of hyperbole, but Have One On Me is so enrapturing, so imaginative and so delicate, that it feels safe to say that in five or ten years time, you’ll go back to it and discover brand new things - whether they be the meaning of a song you’d never fathomed before or a simple amuse-bouche of a beautifully constructed oboe phrase." 10/10

Click here to read Joe Rivers' review in full...

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DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
"The Big To-Do"
(ATO)

"How lucky is it that one of alt-country’s last true practitioners should also be one of its best? Drive-By Truckers – with its oft-celebrated Southern Gothic vignettes and backing instrumentation that blasts forth with the force of a sawed-off shotgun – creates a brand of rock n’ roll for folks who grew up listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers but now read Flannery O’Connor and Truman Capote. For those who missed the previous seven full-length albums, including the magnum opus Southern Rock Opera, this could be the record to finally draw you in. For longtime followers, however, The Big To-Do is a smaller slice of the same cornbread, which would be a problem if it weren’t so good." 9/10

Click here to read Ryan Faughnder's review in full...

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25 MARCH

GONJASUFI
"A Sufi and a Killer"
(Warp)

"Gonjasufi jumps effortlessly from genre to genre without ever losing focus. He goes from soul to funk to hip hop to blues to garage rock, all of it held together by crackly, bassy production and his croaking, bluesy voice.

A Sufi and a Killer never, ever repeats itself. Gonjasufi’s beautiful, instantaneously classic voice is the glue that holds it all together. It’s captivating." 9/10

Click here to read Andrew Baer's review in full...

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19 MARCH

LIARS
"Sisterworld"
(Mute)

"In terms of style, there is a consistency in sound between this and the previous records, with a slightly less claustrophobic vibe this time out. Some will describe it as “poppier” but that’s kind of absurd if not downright misleading. More accessible? Mmmmmmmaybe, but let’s not get carried away. What makes this band great is their ability to go where we don’t want them to go and then to linger, until it’s time to leave. I could be wrong, but I see their whole project as a humanist/existentialist experiment in sound. Maybe this is a redundancy, since perhaps rock is the ultimate nihilist expression of our age. You may make soul music for God, but you don’t rock for God. That would be totally ridiculous, and probably an insult to boot. When you make music this primal, you kind of have to assume a primal man, not a mythology that has man mastering agriculture in a single generation. No, this man does not have dominion over the animals, he is one himself. Liars have steadfastly refused to embellish their songs with fancy arrangements or even verse/chorus structures and I think this is because they don’t trust the artifice, which is an appropriate point of view to have while examining Hollywood and its environs." 9/10

Click here to read Alan Shulman's review in full...

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13 MARCH

WASHED OUT
"Life of Leisure"
(Mexican Summer)

"This sonic haze and postmodern ambience is a taxonomist’s nightmare. Of course many have come up with their own tags to describe this music: Dream-pop, chill-wave, post-electro, lo-fi, glo-fi and no-fi; they all are slightly imperfect phrases for describing a style of music that is generally one or all of the following: lackadaisical, hypnotic, cassette-recorded, warped, affable yet not encouraging, pleasantly apathetic, sun-baked, laid-back, slightly out of focus and… Washed Out. Yet as far as labelling goes, perhaps the aforementioned do not do Life of Leisure justice. A solid piece of sonic architecture, the record assembles an array of sounds and textures, adds sporadic splashes of static atmosphere and in the process creates a listening environment that is truly magnificent." 8/10

Click here to read Lukas Clark-Memler's review in full...

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10 MARCH

THE BESNARD LAKES
"The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night"
(Jagjaguwar)

"The Besnard Lakes’ take on psych-pop sounds grand and ambitious, even unpredictably accessible for those who’ve been following their career. It seems like the logical step for a band that is adamant in opposing expectations, bringing a gung- ho attitude to their studious, experimental efforts. In fact, if you strip their sound to its core, like the harmonies and the distortion, you’re left with an invariable rock record. If this isn’t a true representation of what modern rock should be, I don't know what is." 8/10

Click here to read Juan Edgardo Rodriguez's review in full...

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22 FEBRUARY

JAGA JAZZIST
"One Armed Bandit"
(Ninja Tune)

"Although I realize the rather premature nature of this statement, it could very well be that with One Armed Bandit, Norway's Jaga Jazzist have produced the album of the year. While trying to restrain the unavoidable sense of hyperbole, it's hard to conceive that any other releases will contain anywhere near the same level of imaginative, dynamic and joyously enjoyable sounds. Listening to this record is like knocking back a potent distillation of the ever-evolving potential of music; by turns inspiring and bewildering, these snake-like compositions align exotic, hypnotic meters of the like usually found in the darker recesses of Jazz's underbelly with moments of such contrasting darkness and light as to be initially overwhelming." 10/10

Click here to read Jody White's review in full...

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9 FEBRUARY

FIELD MUSIC
"Field Music (Measure)"
(Memphis Industries)

"Measure reevaluates the purpose of the double album, but in doing so, changes the rules about how they should unveil as a final product. Even if a track or two could have been cut off, there’s still a sense of brevity in how immaculately edited the Brewises sequence the material and edit all their instruments, leaving a final production that shines with clarity. Field Music may still be tragically unhip for our synth-crazed times, but that doesn’t demean their value. Now, more than ever, they should distinguish themselves as leaders of the pack." 9/10

Click here to read Juan Edgardo Rodriguez's review in full...

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26 JANUARY

BEACH HOUSE
"Teen Dream"
(Sub Pop)

"If Devotion was more about monogamy, Teen Dream is the equivalent of being free. It almost exclusively deals with sensations, whether it’s longing, confusion, and the desire to reach a personal need. What’s more striking is how Legrand exposes an interpretation of a younger self. Much of the lyricism holds a dear diary approach, as if she were retelling her thoughts with a naïve gullibility that borders on immaturity. Rarely do these testaments on love reach a wider audience with such veracity." 8/10

Click here to read Juan Edgardo Rodriguez's full review...

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24 JANUARY

EELS
"End Times"
(Vagrant)

"Perhaps the saddest thing about this album is the acceptance of loss in his life and the realisation in the futility of all of ours. This album sees a man struggling to come to terms with everything around him but with a resigning acceptance of nothingness. There are snippets of optimism that are equally matched with shards of doubt. Maturity has soaked in and youthfulness and naivety can no longer be a way out, see In My Younger Days. It’s almost as though he’s given up any element of pretence and although he knows what he wants in life." 8/10

Click here to read Daniel Dylan Wray's full review...

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21 JANUARY

SPOON
"Transference"
(Merge)

"On the second listen, Andrew still preferred Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, but every listen revealed more about Transference. The album twisted and turned its already discombobulated songs around and around, never letting anyone get comfortable. It showed a more cerebral Spoon than ever before. Andrew felt smart listening to it. The sonic exploration thrilled him. The breezy arrangement made the album fly by and allowed for consecutive listens of the best Spoon album since 2002’s Kill the Moonlight. It was Spoon’s most intelligent album in a catalog full of intelligent albums.." 9/10

Click here to read Andrew Baer's full review...

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18 JANUARY

AFCGT
"AFCGT (LP)"
(Sub Pop)

"What I find most attractive about this album, other than AFCGT’s reveling in the good ol’ days of indie noise terror and creative post-punk expression, is that there’s a strong likelihood that this album will be dismissed as noise: loud, irritating noise. I like this idea, mostly because I want to believe that rock music can still generate negative responses, or put people off. I like that there’s a potential for rock music to unlearn, again, and also rediscover the absurd, the abstract and the abominable. AFCGT (LP) conjures up a lot of excitement and even declares its own war on the digital era." 9/10

Click here to read Sean Caldwell's full review...

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VAMPIRE WEEKEND
"Contra"
(XL)

"Sure, Contra has its faults—the ill-advised production, the jarring styles, the traces of arena-rock. But you have to admire it nonetheless, and not only for the stellar songwriting: there’s not a single song on Contra that could be mistaken for Vampire Weekend. Vampire Weekend’s willingness to write an album of exciting new material, rearranging the very core of the sound they’ve come to be known for, will be maddening on first listen for those who loved their debut—but those who stick it out will discover that there’s a more mature, innovative band in its place." 8/10

Click here to read Michael Skinnider's review...

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