Best Local Albums

After 18 years between albums, the Rock*A*Teens, longstanding purveyors of the Cabbagetown sound, return with a career-defining masterpiece. Sixth House embraces glowing production that transcends the spectral guitar noise that usually shrouds Chris Lopez’s tales of woe and deceit in the haunted South. Lopez’s songs are populated by desperate characters living amid a bucolic landscape, but complications forever simmer just beneath the surface. Songs such as Turn and Smile, Go Tell Everyone, and Closest To Heaven turn shattering pain into catharsis layered with reflection and emotional depth - the culmination of a lifetime spent navigating Atlanta?s mean streets. www.mergerecords.com/the-rockateens. less...

It’s true. MASTODON was relegated to CL’s Best of Atlanta Trophy Case in 2016. What else could the pride of Atlanta metal do to impress us after already receiving so many awards? In March, the arrival of the group’s seventh proper album, Emperor of Sand, achieved what many thought couldn’t be done: The album reinvented the group’s sound by expanding upon an already established snarl. Drummer Brann Dailor stepped up his role as vocalist fleshing out sharp and vivid new dimensions in Mastodon’s sound, and the rest of the band adjusted its tangled metallic dirge to suit a recalibrated sound palette. The album’s lead single, “Show Yourself,” served as an easy access point for what shaped up to be an impressive return. Singer/guitarists Brent Hinds and Bill Kelliher and bass player Troy Sanders exude a focused, fully charged presence in songs such as “Sultan’s Curse,” “Andromeda,” “Steambreather” and more. BONUS: While the album was making waves around the world, here on the home front, the group unveiled Ember City Rehearsal Studios, a new Westside practice facility for a town that sorely needs practice spaces. It was a stellar year for the band that just keeps giving. www.mastodonrocks.com. less...

Lyonnais presents the perfect mystery. The group’s members are scattered throughout Los Angeles, Atlanta, and London. Sometimes they go for more than a year without playing a show. It would be completely reasonable to believe that TJ Blake, Farbod Kokabi, Farzad Moghaddam, and Lee Tesche had gone their separate ways. Yet the arrival of their second album, ANATOMY OF THE IMAGE, proves that distance equals beautiful music. Anatomy of the Image exists outside of time and out of place. Songs such as “Vienna Circles,” “Pan Am Sun Isles,” and “Hyperblues” teem with the kind of darkness, old-school post-punk, and industrial textures that could’ve landed the group on stages with Joy Division and the Durutti Column in the late ’70s. Each song reaps the rewards of four years spent in production, and it’s a reminder that greatness cannot be rushed. www.geographicnorth.bandcamp.com/album/anatomy-of-the-image-3. less...

No album better embodies young Atlanta’s passion for drawing out the undeniable beauty tucked away in the city’s forgotten corners than FAUN AND A PAN FLUTE’s self-titled LP (Mission Trips). The album is a masterpiece of experimental composition, an impenetrable enigma that takes serious risks in the name of furthering a regional musical accent. Elements of jazz, modern classical composition, rock, and improvisation meld into a singular sound that challenges listeners to reconsider the possibilities of each genre. As a metaphor, Faun and a Pan Flute mirrors the city’s tangled structural maze of logic while chipping away at Atlanta’s perpetual identity crisis. When it comes to shared chemistry, song composition, pure musical ability, and personality Faun and a Pan Flute tops anything else Atlanta has seen in 2014. It’s an absolute pleasure on the ears. www.faunandapanflute.bandcamp.com. less...