Tonight We Dance

It’s more polished than most S-K albums, but it’s still a flurry of frenetic chords, caustic drum beats and yelps and hisses from Carrie Brownstein and Corin Tucker. Clark gave The Center Won’t Hold a very modern filter and sheen, but Sleater-Kinney still set the tone.

While it sounds different from anything Van Etten has ever done, it also never sounds like anyone but her: Her big, sweeping choruses and singer-songwritery melodies adapt surprisingly well to their new context, with heavy, synthetic basslines and sparkling electronic embellishments accenting her echo-laden, multi-tracked vocals.

It succeeds in bringing a 90s aesthetic kicking and screaming in to the 21st century, shedding the nostalgia in favour of contemporary pop pomp, all delivered with Jim Adkins’ trademark optimism and heart-on-sleeve lyricism.

The beauty of The Raconteurs is in the timeless joy of hearing two world-class songwriters, cut from two very different sides of a similar cloth, come together to make something if not greater, then at least as good as the sum of their considerable parts. And in that sense, Help Us Stranger succeeds, and then some.

Despite the lower volume, Bruce Springsteen sounds positively invigorated on Western Stars. With a new sonic palette and renewed focus on the LP as a means of writing short stories.

III is a masterpiece of modern indie folk. Bad Books have in every way lived up to the potential of a so-called “supergroup”, combining the best aspects of Andy Hull’s and Kevin Devine’s artistry, with help in no small part from Robert McDowell’s atmospheric guitar wizardry. The songs themselves are rich, lush, and flourishing – yet totally simplistic.

There’s no doubt Bird is the complete package: Deft songwriting, outstanding vocals that glide effortlessly between honey and hessian, plus oodles of attitude to boot.

The final result on display in On the Line--from the somber waltz of “Do Si Do” to the swell of strings at the climax of “Taffy”--is a new high watermark for a musician who’s never been willing to let a little rain get the best of her.

An album that could soundtrack an afternoon picnic or be used as fodder for a doctorate thesis on songwriting. It’s a beautifully realized cipher in an age of unsatisfying answers.

Recorded last summer in Los Angeles, their debut 10-track album effortlessly showcases both Oberst’s and Bridgers’s strengths as songwriters who are unafraid of literate vulnerability as they explore subjects like loneliness, privilege and estranged family.