Marnie Stern
This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That
(Kill Rock Stars)
Like that title, Marnie Stern's songs just don't quit. Best known for her formidable guitar chops, Stern crafts tunes that meld Sleater-Kinney and Van Halen into art-punk. Her dizzying compositions are built around intricate guitar, pounding polyrhythms and catchy vocal chants. At her best, she manages to sound both complex and pop, a technicolor explosion of beats and melody. However, This Is It maintains a non-stop frenetic pace that will wind even speed-metal fans. The album would be dramatically improved by letting listeners catch their breath, but Stern probably figures she can slow down when she's older. —Jeff Jackson
Various Artists
The Imagined Village
(Real World)
Since the industrial age dawned, ethnomusicologists have bemoaned the disappearance of traditional villages and the "authentic" culture that went with them, more romantic than real. Could one reimagine village music in ways relevant to contemporary society? That's the challenge taken up by English artists who cut their teeth on traditional music—such as Billy Bragg, Martin Carthy, The Copper Family, and The Watersons—and those who dabble in contemporary idioms such as Transglobal Underground, Afro Celt Sound System, and Sheila Chandra. Why not a hip-hop version of "Tamlyn" or a Bollywood "Cold Haily Rainy Night"? This is the most original thing to come out of the folk music community in years. —Rob Weir
El Guincho
Alegranza!
(XL)
The pulsing polyglot music of El Guincho would be equally at home at a carnival celebration in Rio, a rowdy street party in Kinshasa, a dance club in Barcelona or a hipster hangout in Brooklyn. Musical pastiche usually carries with it the association of disjointedness, with jutting elbows and whiplash transitions, but El Guincho's boisterous percussion-heavy chant-alongs have an organic and natural feel. You'll definitely be seeing this one on best-of-the-year lists in a few weeks. This is festive Dionysiac music, the kind that you could see yourself moving maniacally to, half-naked, sweaty, ape-shit crazy, blowing on a whistle, spilling booze on yourself on some smoky strobe-lit dancefloor. Or maybe that's just me. —John Adamian
Secret Agent 23
Skidoo Easy
(Underground Playground)
Conventional wisdom long held that music for kids had to be saccharine and/or intensely annoying. That's clearly changing, but North Carolina's Secret Agent 23 Skidoo (aka Cactus from Granola Funk Express) moves well beyond kid convention with Easy. (It came out early this year, but it's so good it still deserves mention.) This is "kid-hop," but it's also especially good hip-hop, sort of a cross of Jurassic 5 melodicism and fairy tale subject matter. "Sleepover" even throws a bit of Jamaican dub into the mix, with strange hits of reverb and a tumbling, rapid-fire delivery. It's probably even better if you listen with a kid, but Easy is a pleasure, start to finish. —James Heflin
