Anathallo

5/5 stars

“Canopy Glow”

anticon.

Anathallo may just be the best band you’ve never heard of, and the band’s latest release, “Canopy Glow,” absolutely demands that you rectify that situation immediately.

The Chicago-based seven-member group has released its most immediate album ever, even topping 2006’s ambitious “Floating World,” a record replete with lyrics in Japanese and an elaborate four-part story.

“Canopy Glow” is the most impeccable of folky alternative pop — guitarist/pianist Matt Joynt’s earnest vocals mingling with autoharp player Erica Froman’s delicate harmonies lead the charge, subversive song structures keep things interesting and unorthodox percussion methods and choral-inspired background vocals fill out the sound.

Song topics range from a Cool Whip baptismal to an accidental finger amputation, but at heart, the members of Anathallo are just a bunch of band geeks — the backing brass instruments and symphonic sensibilities gave them away a long time ago.

But this is music that’s hardly reserved for your snooty music professor — “Canopy Glow” is one of the best albums of the year.

— Dusty Somers/The Daily

The Fireman, Youth and Paul McCartney

4.5/5 stars

“Electric Arguments”

MPL Communications/ATO Records

There’s no questioning Paul McCartney’s musical genius, but his recent output hasn’t exactly lived up to it. Until now, McCartney has come roaring back with a modest little side project that may just be his best work of the last several decades.

The Fireman is an experimental project McCartney formed with famed producer Youth in the early ‘90s. The duo had released two instrumental electronic albums, but “Electric Arguments” is the first to incorporate vocals, most of which are McCartney’s.

“Electric Arguments” is an unmistakably experimental project, but its diverse forays into blues, rock and techno all work, and McCartney’s forceful, often unpolished vocals sound great. The barn-burning “Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight” and “Highway” are McCartney at his best.

He sounds like he’s having fun, and there’s no wondering why — “Electric Arguments” is a solid hour of brilliant music from Sir Paul.

— Dusty Somers/The Daily

James Brown

Cheese Factor: 2/5 stars

“Funky Christmas”

Phantom Sound & Vision

James Brown’s “Funky Christmas” takes the cake as most obscure Christmas album ever, turning our once humble concept of the holiday into a screaming, hollering, sweat-induced dance-a-thon and packing a little extra tongue into the mistletoe kiss this year.

The album ebbs and flows between funky explosive jams and soulful ballads, then suddenly ends at track 17, leaving the listener alone and slightly violated, shamefully assured that “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business” will not be calling them back. Yeah, he’s good.

I like “Funky Christmas” a lot because it’s actually a combination of Brown’s other Christmas albums from 1966, 1968 and 1970 (“Funky Christmas” was released in 2000). He didn’t release these songs as a washed up musician (cough, Kenny Rogers) in a last ditch effort to remain relevant. Mr. Superbad released “Funky Christmas” in his prime, when everyone wanted to be (or at least dance like) James Brown. Even now, hearing him sing “Please Come Home for Christmas,” temporarily convinced me to travel home to him myself.

The songs are kind of cheesy, but Brown can actually sell it in a way that makes it instantly impressive. In “Santa Claus, Santa Claus” Brown screams, “Santa Claus, please, please, please don’t let me suffer so,” screaming each “please” in painfully successive, unintelligible octaves, as if Santa’s elves maliciously connected jumper cables to parts of his body as punishment for being a bad boy this winter.

But underneath the “peace, love and harmony” Christmas songs, Brown also injects social consciousness into this holiday album, most notably in “Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto.” In this song Brown authoritatively orders Santa Claus to take his presents “straight to the ghetto” this year, in a manner that has you picturing him wincing. He finishes his request with, “If anyone wanna know/tell them James Brown told you so/Santa Claus, go straight to the ghetto.” Pretty intense stuff.

Everybody needs to play this album at their Christmas parties this year. It should go on right after your guests are beginning to nod off during the Nat King Cole performance of “The Christmas Song.” It’ll perk them all up, and maybe even get you lucky.

— Tyler Branson/The Daily