John Grant – “Black Belt”

The former Czars frontman John Grant is a world traveler who’s made a ton of music in a bunch of different genres. His last solo album, 2010′s Queen Of Denmark, was meditative folk-rock, recorded with Midlake as his backing band. But now Grant is living in Iceland, and he’s about to release a chilly disco-house album called Pale Green Ghosts, recorded with Biggi Veira of Gus Gus — and as it turns out, the style fits his voice perfectly. As dance albums go, this one is about as emotionally intense as you can imagine, with Grant singing about being HIV-positive.