Crime In Stereo – I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone

On their new album, Crime In Stereo continue to build on 2007′s Is Dead by further departing from the Long Island melodic hardcore template their earlier work was inspired by. If Is Dead defined the band’s sound, I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone embraces that definition, while still challenging it and refining it further. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine any fans of the last album being disappointed by this one, and yet the band is giving us something we haven’t heard before, not content to play it safe and rewrite the same songs over and over. The biggest change from Is Dead is that while still sonically experimental, the songs are more energetic and concise overall, perhaps deliberately more suited for live performance. The resulting sound defies traditional genre definitions, falling somewhere between Polar Bear Club and an infinitely more listenable version of Brand New‘s 2009 album Daisy. Describing it is frustrating, but listening to it is awesome.

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Alkaline Trio – This Addiction

At this point in their career, I’m pretty sure that Alkaline Trio wouldn’t be able to record a bad album if they wanted to. Their seventh proper full-length, This Addiction isn’t their best or their worst to date, but it is a solid album. They largely play to their strengths here, mostly ditching the keyboards and electronic sounds that sounded somewhat out of place on 2005′s Crimson, with the exception of the utterly synthtastic rocked out anthem “Eating Me Alive.” The more commercial pop sensibilities that they embraced so wholeheartedly on 2007′s sugary Agony & Irony are also kept in check here, favoring instead the simultaneously sunny and brooding brand of pop-punk of their earlier work. Matt Skiba’s vocal range is somewhat narrower than it was 10 years ago, the songs aren’t quite as fast or energetic as their back catalogue, and there are occasional missteps (the trumpet solo on “Lead Poisoning” comes to mind), but there are moments of pure magic too. This Addiction is absolutely worth a listen.

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The Felix Culpa – Sever Your Roots

To label The Felix Culpa as “post-hardcore” seems like somewhat of a copout, but “post-post-hardcore” just sounds pretentious. Whatever you want to call them, their sophomore album Sever Your Roots is a masterpiece. It is a sprawling epic with everything I love about rock music thrown in: parts you can scream your lungs out to, moody interludes to steady your heart rate again, off-kilter beats that are mathy without being self-indulgent, huge guitar riffs that you can rock out to, and soaring melodies that stick with you long after the song has ended. There aren’t many albums these days that manage to hold my attention from start to finish, but this one is 66 minutes long and I still have it playing on repeat. It’s sometimes hard to be a prog nerd in a world that can only stomach 3-minute singles, but music like this makes me want to hold my head up high and stand proudly behind the music that I love. Sever Your Roots is essentially unclassifiable, but I would recommend it for fans of Tides of Man, The Mars Volta, and The Sound of Animals Fighting. Or anyone, really. It’s so good.

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The Album Leaf – A Chorus Of Storytellers

The atmospheric textures on A Chorus of Storytellers could easily be the soundtrack to a bleary, gray sky. The Album Leaf is a band who has always written moods more than songs, and this collection of compositions, mixed by Birgir Jon Birgisson of Sigur Ros, is nothing if not moody. But what Jimmy LaValle and company show us here, is that great music can exist without sunshine. Most of the songs have little or no vocals, and many of the instrumental sections would probably be considered too down-tempo to even make it onto a Death Cab For Cutie record, but the arrangements are gorgeous and the music is beautiful, not a single note out of place. Recording here for the first time as a full band, as opposed to project mastermind Jimmy LaValle playing all of the instruments himself, the resulting sound is more cohesive than ever before. Not necessarily recommended for a noisy subway commute, but perfect for a lazy weekend when it’s too cold to go outside.