SOUND BITES

About four years removed from their promising second record, FIDLAR's third starts off in head-scratching fashion. Get Off My Rock features slide guitar, a thumping beat and chest-beating rap verses alongside samples that call to mind Beastie Boys and Beck. It's amusing, but also a defiantly performed deflection of expectations; put simply, for a band on the rise to use something so strange as their album opener takes serious balls. Thankfully, the rest of Almost Free isn't so confrontational and stubbornly strange. Can't You See finds FIDLAR opting for groove and coming up with perhaps their most enduring single to date. Elsewhere, there are allusions to the maturity that time has offered the band through recounting of their darkest days. Throughout, there are references to past addictions and the struggles to overcome them, all filtered through the filter of high energy music that buries the sadness and anxiety under upbeat, good time music. There's also a...

Surprising turns from established heavy bands. New heights for critical darlings. Up and coming artists making strong first impressions. The back half of summer saw all of this and more, as even the dog days saw some worthwhile releases that begged our attention. The fourth collection of Song of the Year nominees are:

  As brash, playful and thrilling as their debut single  Cheap Beer  was, I personally found FIDLAR's first record to be a bit of a chore to get through; once the shtick started wearing thin and the songs kept exploring the same territory ad nauseum, the album became less humourous and more annoying. Naturally, with a couple of years to grow as a band and hone their chops, their second record is a vast improvement; this much is apparent from lead track (and first single)  40 Oz. On Repeat , which refines their young and reckless sound and uncovers one of the year's most infectious songs while maintaining much of the brashness that made some of the previous record so endearing. There's more muscle on display too, perhaps most notably on  Punks . A cynic would degrade it for tinkering with the same bluesy hard rock style that other current bands like Royal Blood have conquered the world with, but damn if  Punks  isn't one of the most fun and furious take...

FIDLAR Cheap Beer From: FIDLAR Released: January 22 Brash, loud, raw, fun; if these four words don't tell you all you need to know about FIDLAR, I challenge you to come up with better descriptors. Maybe they'll grow into an important band as they mature, but right now FIDLAR are the embodiment of living fast. Their debut full-length is stoned, drunk and lazy, but it's also a nice change from the super-serious majority of bands coming up in the current generation.

Stream FIDLAR's debut album here , courtesy Pitchfork. Playing like the coked-up soundtrack to a B-movie, the debut album from scuzzed out party rockers FIDLAR (or Fuck It Dog Life's A Risk) has pretty much one gear, and that gear is high. Over 14 tracks of ragged garage punk and demonic surf rock, FIDLAR rarely deviates from its prime directive; make no mistake, this is not an album of hidden meanings, grand statements, or emotion of any kind. Excess abounds, from the opening bargain brew jam Cheap Beer to self explanatory album closer Cocaine . Channeling the raw power of (among others) The Hives, L7 and Bon Scott-era AC/DC, FIDLAR throws it all into a blender and chugs it down without hesitation. The album gets a little old a little quickly, but it never fails to deliver as advertised. It's disposable but fun, unrefined but pleasing; like Andrew WK if he really meant partying when he sang about partying, FIDLAR's debut is loud, raw and dangerously appealing....

Usually, this is the time of year when the reflections on the twelve months that were are complete and this place becomes a ghost town for at least a couple weeks because there's nothing interesting being released until April. In fact, if you noticed during my chronologically ordered nominees rollout, you'll find that only 7/50 came out in the first quarter of the year (with five of those being in March, and none in January). Maybe the labels are panicking to get their properties out there before no one cares about albums anymore, maybe my music addiction's spiraled too far out of control. Whatever the case, the first three months of 2013 are logjammed with potentially and guaranteed awesome albums alike. So, we took a look back, and will remember 2012 fondly; now let's dive into 2013 and start devouring more tasty riffs! After the jump are my 15 most anticipated releases coming in the early part of 2013: