LCD Soundsystem
Title TK (May)
A project launched by DFA Records founder James Murphy, and including members of Hot Chip and The Juan Maclean, their second album,
Sound of Silver became the sound of summer in 2007, and stretched right into 2008. It was truly heartfelt dance music, balanced by tracks like the bemoaning "New York, I Love You (but you're bringing me down)." Fitting at any party, on any road trip, it was both a sonorous tribute to NYC's grit and a swan song to the passing of the Strokes era of indie rock, run over by the bus that was NYC gentrification. Post Wall Street collapse, now that all those condo developments in the Lower East Side sit empty, we're predicting that whatever flavors emerge from their unique mix of rock, punk, dance, and disco, they will be the band of summer 2010.
Interpol
Title TK (Summer)
Along with the Strokes, Interpol were the shock troops of the post-punk revival in the early aughts—and like the Strokes they're still with us, fighting to keep their market share in that ever more crowded genre. Luckily for Interpol, though, there isn't much competition for their brand of somber, disturbing indie rock, and their Gothic album
Turn On the Bright Lights is a watershed release for depressed hipsters everywhere. Interpol's subsequent efforts haven't recaptured the group's initial momentum, but the band has said they're returning to their early mold for this album, and we're guessing the recession has given them some good, gloomy material to work with. (Early Interpol captured as well as any band could the spirit of New York in the late '90s; maybe they'll treat us to a song about the city's bedbug problem this time around.)
Sleigh Bells
Treats (May 11)
After seeing Sleigh Bells live this summer, one Brooklyn music critic reported back to me, "Dude, that chick is out of her fucking mind." He was referring to front lady Alexis Krauss' absolutely unrestrained performance of guitarist/producer Derek Miller's singularly brusk and catchy tracks. At times as cajoling and mellifluous as The Beta Band, while at others as piercing and gruff as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this feels like electronic music with a purpose. A punch to the solar plexus, followed by a breath of sweet summer air, if the album is anything like the EP that preceded it,
Treats should live up to its name.
Arcade Fire
Title TK (late Summer)
In 2003, when The Arcade Fire played he Lower East Side's Mercury Lounge, lead singer Wynn Butler introduced the band by saying, "We're the flavor of the month," before playing his guitar until his fingers literally spilled blood. Butler was toying with the unprecedented buzz at the time, both Internet and critical, generated by their incendiary debut,
Funeral. But that album's resonance (the album's single, "Wake Up," was used for the trailer for
Where The Wild Things Are earlier this year) and the credence cemented by its followup,
Neon Bible, quelled any notions of the group's success as ephemeral. Broken Social Scene may have set the trail, but these guys were the game changers, building bridges between indie, critical, and mainstream success. With millions of albums sold, official sanction from the deific Davids (that's Bowie and Byrne—both of whom performed with the group), and an amazing viral video of the band playing "Neon Bilble" in an elevator, it's hardly an exaggeration to say that this is the most anticipated followup of the year.
