Instead of doing the traditional seasonal album preview, we at Local have decided to spice things up a bit this Fall by throwing two albums at a time into the figurative ring to compete for various titles. This inaugural edition will determine which Fall 2012 albums will be crowned “Trippiest” and “Best to Share with Your Hip Parents.”

Fall 2012′s Trippiest Album: Flying Lotus’ Until the Quiet Comes vs. Tame Impala’s Lonerism

The case for Until the Quiet Comes:
-The first single, “See Thru to U,” features Erykah Badu, whose hallucinatory album covers and former marriage to hip-hop chameleon Andre 3000 place her in the upper echelons of popular music’s hierarchy of psychedelia.
-Thom Yorke, the man who once sung, “The sky turns green/Where I end and you begin,” is also featured on a track.
-A short preview for UtQC  was unveiled in the form of a video directed by Khalil Joseph, who also directed this perspective-altering Shabazz Palaces video. #trippyswag
-When he performed at last year’s Mystery Concert, FlyLo showed his love for mind-expanding electronic music by wearing the shirt of a group that has released a song entitled “Turquoise Hexagon Sun.”

The case for Lonerism:
-Singer/guitarist Kevin Parker’s voice sounds uncannily like John Lennon, who was easily the trippiest Beatles member.
-The album’s second single features an intergalactic-sounding keyboard solo and lyrics about an elephant with a red trunk.
-Parker frequently sings nonsensical things like “I might suck fizzle/Or I might just float away.”
-Leif Podhajsky, the artist responsible for all of Tame Impala’s artwork, has a website that seems to be comprised of snapshots from an acid trip.

Bottom Line: On one hand, a band that seems intent on taking psychedelic rock back to its roots, on the other, a producer who has made hip hop trippier than it’s ever been. It’s a tough call, but our guess is that FlyLo’s space odyssey will cause more brains to explode than Tame Impala’s terrestrial jams.

Best Album to Share With Your Hip Parents: David Byrne & St. Vincent’s Love This Giant (9/11) vs. Grizzly Bear’s Shields (9/18)

The case for Love This Giant:
-Let’s start with the obvious. There’s a Talking Heads member on this album.
-Annie Clark, A.K.A. St. Vincent, is a guitar virtuoso and can shred any age barrier to bits with her raw talent.
-In 2007, St. Vincent cemented her crossover appeal with her spot-on rendition of the Jackson Browne-penned, Nico-popularized, Royal Tenenbaums-featured “These Days.”
-The aforementioned Talking Heads member is David. Fucking. Byrne

The case for Shields:
-Grizzly Bear has a song that has been in three commercials, three TV shows, and two films, so if your parents have consumed visual media in the past three years, they have most likely heard Grizzly Bear.
-The band’s baroque approach is easily digestible as it involves no breakneck tempos, electronic beats, wobble bass, screaming, rapping or basically anything else that is an aural turn-off for most people over 45.
-Girl Talk remixed one of their songs. This one is for the kids.
-Shields cut “Yet Again” is pretty much the best thing ever.

Bottom Line: While Daniel Rossen and co. will try with all their might to replicate sounds and recording techniques from the past, their alt cred ultimately pales in the presence of David Byrne, High Chancellor of All Things Avant-Garde. The ‘rents will go for what they partied to in college, not what they heard on a Volkswagen commercial.

Stay tuned for part two of the death match. More guitars (and bones) to be broken!

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