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Color Radio: Architects

  Tobias Fischer

The easiest way to say it is that this should have been on a lot of best-of-2011 lists, including my own.

Believe it or not, even given the massive volume of music that's being put out (surely you personally know at least three people who have albums out?), not a lot of it is great to listen to, but that's been changing over the past year or so, thanks to the wave of quirky, infectious neo-pop that drowned out all the Brooklyn-hipster clothes-less emperors around 2009, in the wake of fascinating albums from Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective. Of course, the next phase of all this is we're going to take great music for granted, but it definitely beats the alternative, and that brings us to this Chicago band, who take Radiohead angst, stuff it with Pavement vocals, and then beat their hooks into the ground the way M83 does.

Owing to just a little -- repeat, little -- engineering inexperience, the Lilys-esque shoegaze guitars aren't quite where they should be in relation to the dorky vocals, but man is it close, and regardless of that it's just an epic pisser of a record, as if indie-rock had evolved without a hitch.

By Eric Saeger

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