The best song this week is "Demiurge" by Meshuggah

Oh, djent. Djent djent djent. It’s such a stupid word, but it’s also kind of funny that metal dudes just went ahead and named a whole genre after the sound a detuned 8-string guitar will make. Meshuggah are the inventors and undeniable kings of the whole damn thing. They aren’t just clearly the best “djent” band out there, they’re one of the best metal bands in the world, period. And they have been since they first starting mathing out those ridiculous kick drum patterns under those ridiculous riffs.

One thing they haven’t really been, though, is straight up catchy. Enter “Demiurge”, off the new (and arguably best) Meshuggah record “Koloss.” Its main riff is as simple as Meshuggah’s ever been -- classic and catchy. Of course, their guitars don’t sound like anything else and Tomas Haake’s pocket is unmistakably perfect; this simplicity isn’t something any old band could pull off.

About two and a half minutes in, a classic elastic Meshuggah riff kicks in -- just a little reminder of who they are and what they do -- but it’s even bouncier and catchy than they’ve ever been before. Of course, when I say “catchy”, I don’t mean you’re going to find it on pop playlists anywhere. It’s heavy and brutal and screamy and all the things that make brutality brutally brutal -- but you can bob your head to it, instead of just banging. This is nice when you’re like me and have neck issues from too much headbanging with a heavy ol’ Fender Jaguar strapped around your neck.

The best song this week is “Demiurge” by Meshuggah, and here’s a pretty sweet guitar cover version played on a badass multiscale guitar.

The best song this week is "World of Lies" by At the Gates

I haven't slept very well the past couple of days. And last week I just didn't have anything to write about -- I've been listening to sports on the radio in the car and the "best song this week" can't very well be a baseball game. Humber's perfect game might be the best thing that happened this past week, but that's neither here nor there.

The riff here is the kind of thing that when you write it, you just keep on playing it for hours on end just to make sure you don't forget it. Then you show it to the drummer and he writes this badass rolling triplet figure to balls it out and you all just sit there headbanging until the beer runs out and you're like "damn, we are some brutal effing Swedes." So what if this record spawned a million terrible metalcore bands? This is melodic death metal at its best, heavy as lead-coated sin but head-bobbingly catchy at the same time.

The best song this week is World of Lies by At the Gates and I'm going to bed.

The best song this week is "Fever" by Maps & Atlases

This one's a no-brainer. It'll probably be the best song next week too.

Most bands are lucky to get one song this good in their entire existences, and here's Maps & Atlases' turn. Songs like this, it's like the band didn't even write them. Sure, they're one of the best around, but this is perfection! Surely it was bequeathed unto them by some Illuminati maestro.

Confident, patient, otherworldly, driving, instantly catchy, tons going on but never sounding busy -- it's a perfect pop song. I've listened to it 30+ times in the past four days and while I've gotten through the whole record about 5 or 6 times, mostly I've just been going back to "Fever". When I try to get away from the record altogether, I come back to "Fever". When I hit the links, I had "Fever" running through my head. And I played well.

The production is timeless and yet so perfectly 80s in the drum sound. The distant keyboards and delayed guitars provide an epic sweep, and the hi-hat/bass groove is dreamy and locked in, a beautiful machine with a heart. At this point I'm too tired to write anything more. Maybe I'll expound more on it later. For now, just stream the whole album over at Paste Magazine, and buy it when it comes out.

The best song this week is "Tower of Silence" by Antarctica

I’ve been on a four-on-the-floor kick ever since I needed to block the world out and read in airports and on airplanes on a recent trip to Florida to kickstart the golf season. That meant a lot of The Field, which then made me go “ooooh, Antarctica.” And so despite the weather being warm and sunny and Antarctica being rather aptly named and perfect for frigid weather, I put on 81:03 on the flight from Norfolk to Jacksonville and the screaming baby three rows up was silenced -- good sound-isolating earbuds are key to successfully relaxing air travel -- and it made for perfect background music that occasionally pushed its way through the printed word and called for focus.

There’s something about the icy drum machines (or are those vdrums? or both?) with the icy guitars with that icy reverbs and the icy synths burbling in the background that makes everything...invitingly icy, in a sort of “winter is gorgeous” way. They’ve listened to plenty of The Cure, sure, but they axed some cheese and added some motorik rhythms under the distant, yearny vocals that might be annoying if they weren’t draped in reverb and drowned in the mix.

“Tower of Silence” combines all the best parts of these with an instantly hooky guitar/synth war in the intro and a beautiful guitar/synth peace in the coda. Listen now before the sun really heats up and makes this kind of music just not make sense at all until November rolls around.

The best song this week is "Disasters in the Sun" by Weakling

If I hadn’t known before listening to "Dead as Dreams" that Weakling was from California, I’d never have guessed it. Sounding like it was birthed in vats of bile deep in a Norwegian forest, this is black metal at its harrowing best -- rewarding to listen to up close but just fine to put on in the background while you’re reading or performing an exorcism or something. It’s like a disgusting, chaotic Tortoise in that respect. I put it on while finishing up The Hunger Games (it was decent, essentially a North American re-telling of Battle Royale with a lot of clunky writing and deus ex machina but enough suspense to keep the pages turning), and it seemed wildly appropriate.

The vocals are both awful and amazing -- wordless shrieks and howls of despair and desperation; they avoid the comical demonic trappings of most Norwegian black metal (which I love, absurdity and all) and hit way deeper in the gut. The recording is a spot-on blend of layered clarity and old-school lo-fi blackness, with traditionally treble-y guitars that chunk when they need to chunk and soar when they need to soar. When they’re not tremolo-picking out atmospheric vistas, they’re hammering out brutal, chugging riffs. The drums are perfect -- the lack of triggers and ProTools suits the atmosphere beautifully. There's a person back there, banging his heart out on the poor skins.

Any of the songs on this record could be the best song this week, but the reason I picked “Disasters in the Sun” is the guitar solo that hits at 1:34 of the part 2 video here. It’s the sound of a wounded wookiee bellowing his final bellow, atonal and moaning, transcending “guitar tone” and just being a sound that exists in a perfect and horrible state. This ain't for everyone, but for those who will listen it's stunning.

The best song this week is "Black Flowers" by Yo La Tengo

Yo La Tengo are legends. You should know this. Plus they got their name from a great baseball story, so that elevates them even higher in the canon. But after 1997's masterpiece, “I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One,” they seemed to be resting on their laurels. “And Then Nothing Turned Itself Out” came out three years later and just seemed sleepy. It’s aged remarkably well, but at the time I was massively disappointed. The only song I really liked was the vocal rhythmic exercise “You Can Have It All” (which is especially entertaining live with choreographed dancing from James McNew and Ira Kaplan). Three years later, “Summer Sun” came out and seemed to be a statement that they were just pretty much done. The title and overall mood suggested sunset, and my mind immediately made the jump to “twilight of their careers.” I only listened to it once or twice and nothing grabbed me. People have told me since that it’s worth revisiting, but I’ve never felt compelled to, because...

In 2006, word came that they were coming back with a new full-length, ingeniously and unexpectedly titled “I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass” -- especially amusing coming from the soft-spoken trio. Sure, they have moments of guitar violence and freakouts, but even these seem somehow restrained and proper compared to, say, Sonic Youth or Trail of Dead. So off I went to the record store, and suffice to say, I was floored. It’s my favorite record of theirs start-to-finish, showing off their incredible range even more than “Heart” and displaying a mastery of elegant walls of noise as much as pop concision. And it has a whole lot of horns. A whole lot of horns can be a scary proposition, but not in the hands of these pros.

I’ve been on a “listen the whole record” kick lately (we have to let shuffle go for a while so we can begin to appreciate shuffle when we let it back in) so after I got through “Odd Blood” by Yeasayer, I scrolled down and saw good ol’ YLT sitting there, neglected and aching for a listen. I don’t think I’d ever listened to it on headphones, either, so the time seemed nigh. I love every song on there, but this time “Black Flowers” really stood out. I’d never noticed the chimerical vibraphone (or keyboard?) hovering in the background behind the delicate, R.E.M.-y piano chords, but they grabbed my attention this time and I felt like I was listening to the song in a bright white tunnel. It’s a James McNew tune, pretty and poppy, and the horns absolutely make it. There's even a tuba playing a part that's downright peppy; it’ll glue itself to your brain and you won’t mind at all. I whistled and smiled all the way through doing the dishes with the tuba melody popping through the ol’ mindgrapes, and I hate doing the dishes.

I could go on about the effortless vocal melody resolving to an instantly memorable "laaa-la-la la-la", about the harmonies that soar in on the bridge, about the celebratory horn blasts that come in just as the song's fading out, but at this point I'd rather just listen to it again. Mild-mannered Yo La Tengo, blowing minds since '84. The best song this week is “Black Flowers”, off "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass" (I just wanted to type that again). It’s been way too long since I’ve seen them play.

The best song this week is "Day Eleven" by The Life and Times

“No One Loves You Like I Do” is the dark and awesome and creepy new record from The Life and Times. It tells a story of sorts, of obsession and possession and obsession with possession, and love that’s not always the healthiest two-way love. It digs below the surface of sweet-sounding phrases like “I love you--forever” to the subtext of “whether you like it or not.” And it has a great cover.

I’d heard ahead of time from Wags: “Day Eleven -- you have been warned.” And oh boy, it delivers on that promise. Chris Metcalf puts in perhaps his finest drum performance in an already highly accomplished discography, a funky, bouncing kick drum pattern that gives me shin splints just listening to it. The robotic right foot pounding and the way he keeps the hats going through the technical but flowing fills display his virtuosity and his ability to play dead nuts in the pocket, leaving jaws slack but booties shaking. Keyboards plink and guitars pluck through the ascending theme that runs through a number of songs on the record, a musical reminder of the off-kilter declaration of love from two songs ago that ties together the loosely woven narrative.

Then the vocals start in, multi-tracked and haunting. Harmonies and melodies and countermelodies accumulate and build, floating in from all directions into a whirlwind by the end. The delay that comes in on the word “call” at 2:13 is so good it makes me uncomfortable. Then all of a sudden everything drops out except for some lone keyboard chords, and I’m almost expecting a segue into Underworld’s “Born Slippy.” But of course that doesn’t happen, Metcalf brings the groove back as vocals kaleidoscope and you’re like “yeah, this is sweet.” And then the layers fade, they put the drums in another room for a couple of measures, then cut them off completely and the song comes to a nice end.

Except for that the hi-hats say “wait, we’re not done yet!” and a cascading fill introduces the best moment on the record when at 4:09 THE FUZZ enters -- holy amazing tones, Batman. The riff is a descending exercise in heaviness with speaker-searingly fat, fuzzed-out tones. It’s huge. You’ll hear it plenty this summer wafting from my back porch over the Avondale neighborhood, and your ears will smile.

The best song this week is “Day Eleven” and if The Life and Times are coming to your town, which they probably are, you should go and see them play it live. And you should probably not go to the men's room just before they're about to play it or you'll miss the first minute or two of it. But who would be stupid enough to do that? Not this guy, that's for sure.

The best song this week is "Partners in Crime" by CSS

Never cared much for CSS’ aesthetic. Their singer goes by Lovefoxxx and she dresses in skintight psychedelic bodysuits? OK, I get that she’s Brazilian and things are different down there, but it’s still not something I’m going to seek out. And despite R.E.M. being awesome, band names that are just letters/numbers and such are generally a hurdle to be jumped rather than a harbinger of good music.

But then there was that cover of “Knife” on Grizzly Bear’s Friend EP, and man -- that was good. Better than the original? I think so. It was certainly more fun. And there’s a yearning in her voice that you don’t hear in a lot of electro pop. Those keyboard tones were right on, too.

So when “La Liberacion” hit the internet, I went ahead and put it on my iPod. The only CSS song I’d heard prior was the aforementioned Grizzly Bear cover -- somehow their earlier efforts had managed to avoid my ears, and I’d never felt the need to seek them out. I read some lukewarm reviews of “Liberacion”, got a bunch of other stuff at the same time, and continued to fail to seek it out even though it was right there in my pocket.

And then, of course, shuffle happened. Walking back to my car after work as some droney black metal fades out (I think it was Alcest), and this song catches my attention. It’s instantly hooky and fun, then at 1:36 the bridge kicks it up from fun into downright good -- the guitar/bass interplay amplifies the vocal hook, and all the while it sounds like Steven Drozd is vamping some latin-flavored piano twinkles; I'm digging it. The fact that the singer has a goofy was of saying "the" lets her get away with clunky lines like "I fall for it, oh boy, like butter on the mild heat!” It was CSS, and the song was “Partners in Crime.”

It’s a classic budding romance excitement song, complete with cheesy “ahhhh!”s and a total I-want-to-be-Kim-Gordon delivery of “You know what? Let’s do this!” The drums are bouncy, the guitar strums are nicely staccato and that piano rolls over it with an otherworldly quality that elevates everything else that’s going on. The coda is replete with classical flourishes and the whole thing shows a maturity that I really wasn’t expecting from CSS, and that you don’t find much elsewhere on the record. Not that it’s a bad record -- it’s got some cheeseball moments but it’s mostly pretty fun and effortless sounding; it’ll stay on the iPod and definitely see some spins in the summer months. But “Partners in Crime” will find its way onto playlists and road trip cds, and it’s the best song this week.

The best song this week is "Alter Ego" by Tame Impala

The shuffle function is the source of ~90% of my song obsessions. With a 160 gig iPod 98% filled, there are a lot of songs to choose from, and most of the time I just let the iPod play DJ. It did a great job on the way down to Champaign on Friday. We started off listening to Brian Posehn’s “Nerd Rage” but by the time we got out of Chicago, it was iPod song shuffle, full-steam ahead. The highlight was Tame Impala followed by !!! right around Kankakee/Momence (we’ll never forget....our Kankakee Momence).

I’d gotten that Tame Impala record (“Innerspeaker”) on a recommendation from Shiraz, but it hadn’t really ever gotten me. I gave it one headphone listen while wandering around the city, but nothing grabbed my attention. It just sort of hazed over me and my mind wouldn’t focus on the tunes. I think it’s time to revisit it, because “Alter Ego” is a true banger. Maybe it’s just too big for a headphones listen because it works so much better blasting from car speakers.

When the distorted drums kick in with a beat that reminds me of an amped up Dismemberment Plan, and the woozy keyboards swirl over bouncy basslines straight outta 1960s Detroit, my ears perk up and my head starts bobbing. There’s so much going on, it’s hard to tell what’s a heavily effected guitar, what’s a keyboard, what’s random soundwaves bouncing through reverb tanks. Then the vocal hook falls into place around 1:53, shooting out of the gauzy haze with an unexpected ‘60s British invasion vibe -- he’s got a bit of Monkees in his vocal chords, and I’m OK with that.

But it’s the drums that caught my attention -- the overdriven roomy sound is a perfect push under all the echo floating around. “Alright, cool, we’re walking barefoot in a stream, this is nice, let’s play some bass and make some keyboard squiggles and how about some drums, bud? Yeahhh, that’s the stuff. Smooth.” These Aussies got soul, man. The best song this week is “Alter Ego” by Tame Impala.