But none of that is meant to take away from Sunset Rubdown’s latest release.  Dragonslayer is Spencer Krug and Co.’s latest report from the front lines of his wildly disjointed fictional world.  It’s an album full of minor epics that are populated by failed royalty, fallen actors, magical forces and mysteries within mysteries.  What he does so well is tie his lyrics and singing into the emotion of the music, which is largely percussive, melodic, and pitch perfect pop rock.  When the album swoons both lyrically and musically simultaneously (I’m thinking how he chants the mantra ‘you’ve got to wait’ towards the end of ‘You Go On Ahead’ as the music literally spirals into ecstasy) it provides an emotional release that’s just basically beyond anything else out there, at least for me.

An album that just grabbed me in the second half of the year is XX, by The XX.  By grabbed, I mean I listened to it in awe, compulsively trying to decode its greatness.  It’s a debut by a band that hardly registered on anyone’s radar pre-2009.  They ride this minimalist wave where every strummed guitar line, every clicky drum sound serves to move the music forward.  It’s this subtle balance: they sound so effortless, but effortlessness can always come off as strained or finicky.  They just nail it.  The production itself, what there is of it, is little more than reverb to sweeten the perfect, minor key melodic pop.  Sensual and resonating, the female/male duets circle each other in a haunted world of post midnight splendor.  In other words, it’s delicious.