It’s been a long time since I’ve purchased a brand new album on a whim. As a student, I have little disposable income so you had better believe I expect purchases such as this to pay off.

Well, my friends, I may have hit the proverbial jackpot. In the last two weeks or so, I’ve been carelessly shelling out my rent money for records, yet the return turned out to mean more to me than a roof over my head.

My purchases?

Regina Spektor’s Far. Manchester Orchestra’s Everything to Nothing. Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest.

It wasn’t planned in advance, I didn’t wait in line outside the doors of HMV the day Grizzly Bear’s third album was released, and I actually didn’t even know Regina had been in the studio. As for Manchester Orchestra, it was more peer pressure that led me to buy it. Peer pressure and a steal of a deal at Sonic Boom.

The moral of the story, though, is the pleasant surprise that quickly followed the first few listens of each.

In a bold move, I declare Far my album of 2009. It is everything Regina Spektor has made herself – quirky, mouthy, melodramatic – but with the solemn edge that briefly reared its head on “Begin To Hope”, now fully-formed and reckoned with. “Laughing With” is an interesting choice for a single – a friend of mine has tried to call it her “What If God Was One of Us” – yet the lyrics miss soppy altogether. Its Regina’s artistic accuracy that take her piano pop to a different stratosphere than the Vanessa Carlton’s of the world. Like Ben Folds, this generation’s piano man, Regina has lip and a throat to back it up.

But before this blog turns to an album review, or an all-out love fest for my favourite Soviet songstress, let’s move on.

To the next big thing in scene-rock, a genre from which I had distanced myself after The Format broke up and phrase band names came in vogue. Listening to Manchester Orchestra, though, I was reminded of all the reasons I became a scenester in the first place.

Not only is this record positively drenched with angst, vocalist Andy Hull gets the point across without shredding his vocal chords. His pleading wail gives them an indie tinge, reminiscent of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, probably due in part to producer Brad Fisher who has been in the studio with ambient rockers The Shins and My Morning Jacket.

The album flits between dance-rock and epic ballads, all the time grungy but delicately so. (See “I Can Feel a Hot One”, almost a capella complete with an obo’s mourn drifting behind the sluggish tempo.)

It’s a rounded listen, addictive from front to back with lulls in all the right places.

And there is Grizzly Bear, almost all lull but a captivating kind of quiet. I hadn’t heard of this band until reviews for their latest album speckled every inch of my computer screen and magazines. When it was finally released, I was drawn like a moth to the beautiful flame of the album cover. Of course, I had heard “Two Weeks” and was totally enraptured by the percussive hook, which is incidentally the best example of the band’s penchant for genius rhythm, even if it’s not always danceable.

Now, I can’t say I actually love this album. It has its moments, “Two Weeks” is undoubtedly my song of the summer. And sure, there are other single potentials, but I prefer to listen to it in one sitting, allowing my imagination and attention to wander through its hazy soundscape. It’s the kind of album you would enjoy on a rooftop patio in mid-afternoon, possibly sitting next to a four-hosed hookah pipe and weaving a hemp bracelet. And while I can’t say that opportunity has yet presented itself, I’ve been enjoying Veckatimest all the same.

Obviously these albums are worlds apart from one another, but they share a common thread of roundedness – from front to back they flow, unwavering in each of their respective traits.

Maybe I’m only getting this impression because it’s the summer and I have the time to sit around and appreciate whole albums at a time. But I think even if it were the dead of winter and the very real potential of sleeping in the snowy streets of Ottawa lay before me, I would still have handed over my hard-earned pennies for all three of these albums.

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