E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Imploding The Mirage , as critics and reviewers will quickly inform you, is a title that refers to the famous Las Vegas casino's demolition, which made way for something arguably even snazzier, or more empty. Born in Vegas, that most artificial and symbolic of American places (famous for gambling, glitz, misadventure, criminal origins, and mass murders), The Killers - named after a Hemingway-based film noir, but following in the footsteps of numerous rock acts that have signalled their outlaw claims with similar names ( Jerry Lee Lewis was called The Killer) - are a very American rock band. That their lead singer, Brandon Flowers , is famously a Mormon and allegedly a straight arrow, albeit flamboyant on stage, only adds to the resonant enigma - they are part of the myth of the American Dream, while in classic post-modern mode, nod to the artifice, albeit a non-nihilistic one with a God. Their inoffensive, hummable songs, mainly about broken hearts, yearning, broken lives, and ho...

Bear In Heaven are yet another one of these "Brooklyn Indie Bands" that are essentially synth-rock outfits, all reverb and as Pitchfork notes , digitization.  Well, I love their new album, just out, I Love You, It's Cool . Fresh as new paint from Tom Sawyer's brush, the songs answer the question, what would happen if Animal Collective went back in time and fused with Depeche Mode and Tears for Fears .  You'd get loping, emotive, ultra-cool synth songs with just a bit more dreampop shiver-shimmer, sung in an American key of boyish yearning.  'Sinful Nature' and 'The Reflection of You' are two of the best indie pop songs you'll hear in 2012, or 1982.

Rock may be dead, but indie lives on as a vampire, undead.  There were about a billion good albums released last year in 2010 - with Spotify the problem is the critic and casual geek alike can listen to them all (not) and thereby go overdosed.  Nothing prepared me for Valhalla Dancehall by (ho hum) British Sea Power - a great-monikered band that had the aura of the has-been over them like a fell stink.  Then this, their fourth, arrives in the dead corner of the year with something like kick-ass wow.  Three songs stand out - opener 'Who's In Control', 'Mongk II' and 'Baby'. The middle of these is the coolest song I have heard in about two decades, it thrusts with the strut of raw post-punk moody rawness, feels too true to be of this mere digital age; the texture crackles with what U2 was with Achtung, Baby! and never again.  The third mentioned is female-voiced and all the better for it, with tom-toms torn from the Foxes and tingling David Lynch lounge...