Album Of The Week: Frankie Rose Interstellar

First things first: The real best album to come out today is Sleigh Bells' Reign Of Terror, a sophomore album that does everything sophomore albums are supposed to do. It deepens and widens the ferocious assault that Sleigh Bells first introduced on Treats, losing some of that album's madcap intensity but adding new tricks and sounds and ideas, prettifying that head-rush noise while still pouring on the furious energy. But we ran our Premature Evaluation on Reign Of Terror last week, and you probably don't need to read two separate Stereogum pieces about why that's a good album. And so it falls to us to anoint another album with this column's distinction, and fortunately there's a close runner-up waiting in the wings. Frankie Rose's Interstellar is another sophomore album, and it doesn't actually do what sophomore albums are supposed to do. Instead, it does something riskier and more difficult: It sounds like the work of a completely new artist.