FLOOD

Despite its punk inception, Wire has done a good deal of trade in thought-provoking, future-pop for nearly four decades.

The boys were even thoughtful enough to bring along the tunes, should you care to wiggle whilst Blighty burns amidst political squabbles and clashing egos.

Conor O’Brien—better known as Villagers—is the latest within a long line of strikingly melodic Irish singer-songwriters that invite listeners to daydream about the lush and green motherland.

A Libertines reunion, of course, is right ’round the bend. Perhaps he’s saving the real stormers for then?

A discourse on music, technology and the state of the kingdom

Through the album these renegade Franco-Cuban sisters scrupulously skirt the minefield of trippy-dippy spirit-mother clichés.

If rock and roll teeters on cultural irrelevance in this young century, it is surely due to being stripped of an elemental fear. Whether the genre is recoverable is debatable, but A Place to Bury Strangers refuses to abandon the expedition.

After Björk had literally (and awesomely, intellectually) deconstructed the sound of the universe on “Biophilia” in 2011, it is a surprising, stinging disappointment to discover that this, her ninth record is…a breakup album? But, of course, Björk would never do anything so insipid as whine about a broken heart.

Corgan promises (or threatens) here, “I will bang this drum ’til my dying day.” Surely, there’s got to be still more buried greatness to actually come?

2014 finds holiday depressives in less surprising company, as Mr. Misery Guts himself, Mark Kozelek, has a go at some of our wintry faves.

Marr seems happy just frolicking through the basic landscape of rock and roll, rather more Keith Richards than Jimmy Page.

Apparently the three-year creative journey that was the creation of Sparks began with striking a match.

With her (ostensibly calculatedly) cloying moniker, one might easily wonder if “the artist” FKA twigs is already plotting to someday transmogrify into an unpronounceable symbol.

Hardly surprising, then, even the gloriously bombastic title of his latest, World Peace Is None of Your Business, seems to be straining for that very same lapsed monumentality.