I saw one lousy Sunn O))) gig several years back and decided I would not need to spend time with any of their records. I have missed out: Monoliths & Dimensions is that very hugeness you’ve likely read about in stories on this band and the new avant-doom-metal scene that orbits it, but what no amount of hype can tell you is the rich detailing in Sunn O)))’s massed sound. Way more than just two heavy guitars: violin, spine-rattling choral events, all manner of textures and subtleties in this self-renewing universe of dark-matter music. Just incredible—and more often than not, beautiful in a completely other sort of fashion. This music is ripe for projecting your own bleak fantasies into, and no matter how dark you think they are . . . you’re not this dark. Startlingly lovely packaging, too, even for a CD. Please do not only listen to this record on your earbuds—it’s worth buying a good stereo for. You can thank me in the afterlife, the depths of which, by the by, may be accurately portrayed right here. (M.L. Thrope)

“Ha-ha!” on the title, dudes! But more important: Thank you, Black Moth Super Rainbow, for recording this album. By which I mean, Eating Us is produced, and well, by the famous-for-a-reason Dave Fridmann, which is a first (going into the studio, that is) for this band. The result is a record where the drums thwack with extra-thwackness and the bubblegum psych-pop (a much-used descriptor that nonetheless works) swirls in a way that kind of recalls the evocative soundtracky stuff on the Crippled Dick Hot Wax label as much as Black Moth’s previous work. An alluring haziness permeates Eating Us, all fuzzing guitars and buzzing analog synths and cooing (as opposed to machinelike) vocodered vox, making for an album that very much forecasts the coming summer. And, while supplies last, you can get Eating Me in a limited-edition sexy black-fur package . . . at no extra cost. Sweeeeeet. (M.L. Thrope)

At a time when kids at the Fader dot etc are losing their mud over ahistorical average stuff, Fake Surfers by The Intelligence has to come under immediate consideration as record of the year. Actually, scrap that—this is a contender no matter the criteria. Mainman Lars Finberg is (hm, maybe was?) the drummer in Seattle’s best rock band (that I know of), A Frames, but he is clearly one of those for-real modern polymaths. The cool rock styles and superb songwriting splattered across these 12 songs (in a tight, In the Red-style 32 minutes) reveal a knuckle-cracking grasp of the au courant style of lo-fuss underground-rock recording, but also a deep fondness and irreverent reverence for 60s-era Brit-mod moves, punk art of every stripe, and stuff I am not equipped to describe at the moment. Fake Surfers is the kind of rock record you can lean your entire existence against for a while, is what I’m saying. “Lo-fi” is a marketing term that should have been murdered by the mid-90s—this record sounds great and to these ears, it could not be better. Nine thumbs up! (James)

After garnering a reputation for combining the best elements of John Fahey and Sandy Bull in his beautiful, intricate 12-string-guitar playing, English virtuoso James Blackshaw started branching out with a few short piano tracks on last year’s Litany of Echoes. On The Glass Bead Game, his first album for Young God, the piano is more prominent in his densest music yet, due not only to the presence of the more resonant and wider-ranging instrument but also through more overdubbing. There are even some wordless vocals. Blackshaw’s style is moving closer to minimalism, but in a sort of thickly layered Brian Eno/Charlemagne Palestine hybrid rather than in the process-oriented Steve Reich/Phillip Glass sense. Deeply entrancing but with plenty of timbral variety, the album shows that Blackshaw continues to evolve while staying interesting. (Steve)

It’s hard to reconcile the super-tailored popcraft at work on Moondagger with the fact that Deastro mastermind Randolph Chabot is just 22, even if he is one of those achievement-nutty kids who’s already been making music for a decade. Relentlessly earnest and consistently melodic—to the point that you might enjoy it more by not listening to it straight through—Moondagger bends and blends electronics so neatly that you’d never guess it’s mostly made on a laptop (we think). Deastro’s music doesn’t soar so much as it hits a cruising altitude and stays there, gliding along frictionlessly through one cloud-station after another. For those who still hope, in tune. (M.L. Thrope)

The complaints about the solo artist known as Blank Dogs have been, honestly, on target: too many records, not enough consistent quality. Someone was always talking about a great new out-of-print Blank Dogs single but you’d just bought the kinda lame, in-print one. Well! It is my pleasure to heartily recommend you try this one, Under and Under, Mr. Dogs’s debut for In the Red, to get an accurate ear-take on all those stray whiffs of early Cure and Joy Division that the blogs can’t seem to get past. Yeah, Mr. Dogs obscures his vocals (and his face), so Under and Under might have you doing a little late-night solo-shimmy in your flat to lyrics about mass murder, or the perils of gloveless rose-picking, or who knows what. But there is just something undeniable about Blank Dogs’ crypto-gloomy transistor new-wave weirdness that stays with you, especially on songs called “L Machine,” “Night Night” and “Tin Birds.” (M.L. Thrope)

Besides being good music, this is a heartening story of perseverance finally rewarded. Naomi Shelton has been singing gospel and soul for over four and a half decades, but this is her first album—and hooray for Daptone for giving her the platform she so richly deserves. I’m not saying she’s making anyone’s Top Ten Gospel Singers list, but anyone who likes soul will appreciate her deft fulfillment of all the genre’s expectations. Her husky voice isn’t quite as gravelly as Betty LaVette’s, but if you like her you will like Naomi. And kudos as well to musical director Cliff Driver, whose piano playing—along with Jim Hall’s swirling organ work—drives the music just as surely as Shelton’s deeply soulful singing and the rich backing vocals of The Gospel Queens (including Daptone’s star, Sharon Jones). In a time when most gospel music’s slick production makes it sound like the rest of the crappy pop on the radio, What Have You Done, My Brother? delivers vastly more satisfaction by getting back to basics on six gospel classics and four penned by Daptone major domo Bosco Mann, plus a sprinkling of soul: Mann’s socially conscious “Am I Asking Too Much?” and the concluding Sam Cooke cover, “A Change Is Gonna Come.” (Steve)

Sun City Girls, yada yada, whatever. I enjoy every one of Richard Bishop’s solo albums a lot more than anything he did with SCG. Though still quite eclectic, his discs are more focused and coherent; they never seem like “experiments,” or a series of concepts thrown at the wall to see what sticks. The Freak of Araby is a lesser effort though, a kind of goofy, deliberately cheezy, playful pastiche of Middle Eastern exotica, seemingly a spoof. Bishop goes undercover here as Rasheed Al-Qahira, accompanied by bass guitar and two drummers; the textures are spare and his electric guitar work is strongly highlighted: his twangy tone, unceasing improvisational imagination in the service of melody, and some spiffy displays of dexterity will have guitar buffs drooling with envy. Good fun. (Fans of classic Arabic pop will notice a reading of “Enta Omri,” the landmark piece written by Mohammed Abdel Wahab and made famous by Oum Kalthoum.) (Steve)