Fuck it. Round 2.
Wand's Perfume EP was on that really impressed me. I've never been a huge fan and just put it on as background music while I cleaned the house one day. I was a little bit stoned at the time and had to stop doing what I was doing when it got to the second part of the first track just to make sure it was actually as good as I thought I was hearing. The track smokes and still gives me a rush every time I play it. I could listen to the outro jam on a 30 minute loop and probably not get sick of it. The rest of the album is great too. Really great mix of sounds and moods for such a short album. Goes from beautiful to scary and all over the place. For whatever reason, I can't find any of the studio songs on youtube and this is the only live version of the song I mentioned above. It doesn't do it justice, but what the hell.
I really dug Exit Groups "Adverse Habitat" album too. Kinda weird post-punky stuff. I love the guitar playing on this one.
The new Sauna Youth album is solid. I think I still prefer their first album to this year's, but it still gets plenty of plays from me.
Almost the same story with the new Idles album. It's getting tons of attention on a lot of year end lists, but I liked their last one more. I feel like the new one was a lot more stripped down and the instrumentation took a pretty big hit. Joy just doesn't seems to go as hard as Brutalism. However, I really loved the effect the stripped down approach had on the lyrics. I don't pay much attention to lyrics, but these were so raw that it was impossible for them to go unnoticed. I put off a second listen for a really long time because Joe's song about losing his unborn daughter put me right on the edge of tears the first time I heard it. It's a very emotional album for a punk album. Anyway, I think this song rips and the second part is great. "I'm like Stone Cold Steve Austin. I put homophones in coffins" has got to be one of the best lyrics of the year.
Sextile's "3" ep was really great too. Dark 80's style synth wavy stuff.