If you haven’t been to an independent record store lately, this is as good a week as any to make your return. Loads of new albums are hitting the shelves today, many of them quite good. Here’s a rundown of some of the most prominent:
Weezer’s eighth album, Hurley, plays like a bid to win back some of the fans the band alienated with the last couple, eschewing River Cuomo’s recent dalliances with commercial pop for fiercer (yet still non-threatening) pop-punk. This is probably the closest Weezer has come in at least half a decade to how the bulk of their fans want them to sound, but it’s by no means a great return to form. The songs lack Pinkerton’s confessional bite, leaving Cuomo to fall back on jokey lyrics that continually fall flat.
The Walkmen return with another set of restrained, smartly crafted rock ’n’ roll on Lisbon, one of their finest records. The usual new Walkmen album caveat remains, though: If you’re looking for another barnstormer like “The Rat,” you won’t find it here. Lisbon simmers, but never boils over.
After years of self-recorded, self-produced albums, Of Montreal teamed with studio guru Jon Brion on their latest, False Priest, for a fuller sound with a booming low end closer to that of the funk and R&B records Kevin Barnes increasingly lionizes. False Priest does indeed bring the funk, though Barnes’ manic, over-sexed and generally overbearing persona will be a deal breaker for many.
False Priest isn’t the only indie album released this week to feature moonlighting R&B singer Solange Knowles; she also guests on “When the Night Falls,” a standout track on Chromeo’s new Business Casual. As always, the ’80s-aping electro-funk duo flirts with kitsch, but their love for this music is genuine.
Like Dinosaur Jr., who returned to the studio after a long hiatus without showing any rust, indie-rockers Superchunk sound ageless on their first LP in nine years, Rosemarie from Majesty Shredding, one of the year’s most rousing, consistently winning power-pop albums.
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Les Savy Fav tame themselves ever so slightly on their new Root For Ruin, for a sweeter, poppier set of songs about between-friends relationships. It’s a modest but infectious rock album, with heart to spare.
Included among the various blues and folk traditionals on Robert Planet’s latest album, Band of Joy, are two unlikely but remarkably astute Low covers, which Plant treats like lost standards. They’re as earthy and broken in as most every track on this strong collection.
Megafaun follow up last year’s great Gather, Form & Fly with Heretofore, a generous and varied EP of their shifty, psychedelic folk.
The ever-evolving Blonde Redhead continue their flirtation with electronic music and minimalist trip-hop on their latest, Penny Sparkle, which they recorded with Fever Ray producers Van Rivers and the Subliminal Kid. The results are pretty, if at times languid. In its second half in particular, the record slows to a crawl.
The reunited Vaselines pick up where they left off twenty years ago on their new Sex With An X, singing coy, silly little tunes.
The reunited Saddle Creek dream-pop duo Azure Ray releases their first album in seven years, Drawing Down the Moon, sounding as wistful as ever.
Indie-pop buzz band The Drums update 1950s Buddy Holly harmonies with ’80s keyboards and guitars on their self-titled debut. If you for some reason needed another song about surfing, here you go.
R&B singer Trey Songz follows up his 2009 breakthrough Ready with a new album cut very much from the same cloth, Passion, Pain and Pleasure.
Bilal puts a much weirder, non-commercial spin on R&B with his great new Airtight’s Revenge, one of the best soul albums of the year.
Nick Cave returns with another Grinderman album, Grinderman 2.
Brandon Flowers from The Killers drops a solo album called Flamingo.
And with less fanfare than might be expected from one of the top-selling bands of their time, maturing rap-rockers Linkin Park issue their latest album, A Thousand Suns.
