Tonight We Dance

Arctic Monkeys’ fifth record is absolutely and unarguably the most incredible album of their career. It might also be the greatest record of the last decade.

Like the rest of the National catalog, Trouble Will Find Me is subtly insinuating; at first it seems almost free of hooks, then six listens later it’s difficult to get it unstuck. It burrows and then resides, first easy to forget then basically impossible.

An album that’s engrossing and just a little hard to break away from--but in a good way, of course.

Marling is never likely to be a fixture of the pop charts. But Once I Was An Eagle is a masterpiece, and, at 23, she’s still only getting started.

What elevates Turn Out The Lights is that it’s sensory as well as earnest, personally destabilising while artfully assured; it oscillates in the spilling synaesthesia of panic attacks, the dizzying clarity of epiphany, the paralysing futility of depressive episodes, the unfathomable locus of being okay.

It’s obvious on the rest of the album that the fear of living isn’t holding Reznor back anymore. This outlook has given a huge boost to NIN’s creativity, and helped the group re-emerge as a relevant, vital, and still weird band.

Eight albums into their career, Jimmy Eat World still know how to generate and craft some brilliant songs, but most importantly, they continue to demonstrate a keen sense for how to connect with any audience.

Saves the Day are as tight and melodically brilliant as ever, but the previous trilogy’s anguish and inner turmoil seem to have been replaced by warm sentimentality, declarations of undying love, and smart discourse on relationships and the human condition, with the occasional killer curveball.

Whatever the contributing factors to “Bubblegum” and “Bulldozer”, it’s clear this is Devine brimming with confidence and energy--and to remarkable effect.

Ultimately, Modern Vampires of the City is more thoughtful than it is dark, balancing its more serious moments with a lighter touch and more confidence than they’ve shown before.