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So I figured I’d make a post about some recently-released (well, within the last year) albums that I’ve been listening to lately.

First up is Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours, which I hope I can describe without delving into too much fruity album-review speak. This album really impresses me with how it combines the accessibility of catchy dance-pop with interesting layered sounds that give each song the depth to stand up to many repeat listens. Also, it’s very refreshing to hear an album that manages to both be easy to listen to while also being more than just a collection of single songs. Beyond the simple fact that most tracks tend to fade in and out of each other, I’m struck by how appropriate melding all the tracks together is everytime I listen to this album…it really is greater than the sum of its parts. Part of this can be attributed to the appropriate usage of filler tracks, such as We Fight For Diamonds, Voices In Quarts, and Silver Thoughts, to give the listener a brief break from the rowdier sounds of the main tracks. Unlike so many artists, Cut Copy found just the right number and tone to accentuate the main tracks of the album. Secondly, every track seems to find its beat and its groove and get into some techno-style repetition, but then just before you start to get tired of that same sound, they change it up. Gotta love that.

Oh yeah, and one last thing, I think my favorite track is “Strangers In The Wind”. It starts off sounding like a standard that could’ve been released forty years ago, albeit with a refreshing modern twist, and evolves into an intense club floor beat before wrapping up with some new wave sound. Sooo addictive.

Three more albums after the break.

The Features are a rock band from the southeast that have sadly found next to no market in the United States (fortunately for them, they’re supposedly quite popular in Britain). Their 2005 debut, Exhibit A, is an ass-kicking rock album with powerful guitar licks and energetic top-of-the-lungs vocals that I find totally infectious (go find yourself a copy now and crank the volume on “Exorcising Demons”). Their 2008 album, self-released because they have no label right now, follows the course of their 2006 Contrast EP, which introduced a softer-edged and fuller sound, but is by no means soft. The distorted mid-tempo “GMF” sounds paranoid and dark, while “The Temporary Blues” (my favorite track off the album) offers a full-of-hope rock sound with a streak of world-weary bitterness that I feel like labeling neo-Springsteen. Overall, “Some Kind Of Salvation” sounds several years more mature than their previous efforts, but just as energetic and alive. More people should be listening to The Features.

I found out about Okkervil River when they were supporting The Decemberists on a 2004 tour for the sake of promoting their “Black Sheep Boy” album. I was impressed enough to buy a copy of the CD right at the show, despite being a poor high school student at the time, and I haven’t looked back with Okkervil River since. Their ability to combine competent song crafting with excellent lyrical storytelling, begun on Black Sheep Boy and honed on 2007′s The Stage Names, continues on The Stand Ins, but this time with more punch to the backing band. There’s something very special about listening to an Okkervil River album and pulling all of the intertwined metaphors and story elements, so many of which tie in with other songs and even other albums, and piecing them together for yourself. Moreover, both The Stage Names and The Stand Ins, written from the get-go as a complementary pair of albums, stick to a complex and compelling theme that follows the lives of those who have fame, those who are desperate for fame, those who are trampled by fame, and those who are desperate to be loved by the famous. It manages to expose that seedy underbelly of fame in a unique way and I find myself impressed by that literary competence. A winner.

Alright, last one before I type too much (whoops, too late). Fleet Foxes’ debut album (called Fleet Foxes) impresses me more on every listen. To describe the mood that this album puts me in will take too many words and puts me at risk of being monitored by some psychiatric hospital, but here goes: From the beginning to the end, this album makes me feel like I’m sitting in front of a warm cozy fire in a secluded cabin in snow-covered mountains. However, outside it’s sunny and warm and the snow is melting, and when I look out the window and close my eyes I can imagine flying over the hills and woods, taking in the beauty of nature in the midst of a springtime thaw. Ok that’s fruity and all that, but seriously it just puts me in the mood of being out in somewhere beautiful, which is intense. Favorite tracks include “He Doesn’t Know Why” and “Blue Ridge Mountains”, which have such a full sound that it feels like it could fill all of the outdoors, the opening “Sun It Rises”, which delivers exactly what its title promises and is just a stunning album opener.