Spoon's Transference dropped a week after Vampire Weekend's Contra, beginning the non-stop release of good albums from indie bands, which seemingly continued every Tuesday from January through June. Merge Records labelmates Arcade Fire have clearly hit the big time, but if I had been betting which band would have flooded the mainstream first, I would've put my money on Spoon (especially after they were prominently featured on the soundtrack for Will Ferrell's movie Stranger than Fiction).
The dudes from Austin, TX, have been, according to Metacritic, the most consistent band in America in terms of putting out albums that have won critical acclaim (ahead of Sigur Ros and music critic darlings Animal Collective, among others). They don't overwhelm you; their albums rarely produce that "Dear-God-where's-the-'repeat'-button" track that you might hear on a Sigur Ros album ("Saeglopur") or an Animal Collective record ("Reverend Green"). But Spoon has produced solid indie rock, album after album after album after album.
Transference, however, seems just a little -- just a smidgen-- lesser of an effort than previous releases. Perhaps this can be explained by their stripped down sound on some tracks, or the fact that this is an album that seems somewhat devoid of singles. Don't get me wrong, it's a good album, but I have a hard time choosing a favorite track. I'm not sure what's going on in this video (he looks like an older Charlie Kelly), but this might be my favorite track:
Grade: B-
Blurb: This might be my least favorite record of their entire discography, but it's still a solid effort.
(Author's note: I didn't technically buy this in 2010, but I bought it right before a New Year's Eve road trip, so I'm going to count it.)
, is 11 tracks of goodness (well, 10 tracks; I don't like the finale). A few tracks on Parc have jam-band tendencies, but that's not a bad thing in this case. The track 
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intrigued me here and there, but Veckatimest drew me in (read: is more accessible). Sure, there are a couple of songs that I pretty much skip every time the album plays ("Dory," "Hold Still,"), but there are four or five songs that beg me to hit "repeat" as soon as they start winding down, which is the mark of a good album (in my mind). GB walks the fine line between beautiful sounds and tones that make you cringe a bit, but they almost always 
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for $6)
(that's the PG version). They implement a banjo and a glockenspiel on several songs that pay homage to Sufjan. At first, Whales struck me as a bit too saccharine (as indicated by 
) but there's a cleverness to the lyrics that move them past simple sweetness ("Shut me up with your long tube socks, / They don't scream, 'Hey, let's just be friends.'"). Beyond that, they make several fantastic analogies to being a house, being objects in a house, or being a ghost exploring a house ("Oh, you caught me sleeping in the power sockets, / You caught me mildewing the tiles of your bathroom."). Don't let their sweet sound fool you; there's some deep and dark stuff going on therein. Here's a fan-made video of "Starring," one of my favorite tracks:
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changed their name and didn't miss a beat. If you like melody-driven piano rock, then look no further than Other Lives. The Oklahoma quintet is what Coldplay might have been had they not hopped aboard the crazy train of popularity and radioplay. Viz:
or buy it 