Hood / Cold House / Aesthetics Hood's gentle but persistent compositions will play a cat-and-mouse game with your senses. They revel in incongruity, injecting glitchy electronic filigree and, though I hate to say it, Kid A-style artificiality into elegant, downbeat orchestral pop songs. The effect should be shocking -- rather like discovering a bright, shiny, state-of-the-art kitchen in the middle of a two hundred year-old house -- but there's something shy, something secretive about Hood's music that keeps it from breaking the surface tension of your attention...more» FEATURED ON THE BOOMBOX!
		John Hudak and Jason Lescalleet / Figure 2 / Intransitive Take one NY-based sound artist (Hudak) and one New England-based composer (Lescalleet). Give them a load of recording equipment, an audience and place the whole shebang inside a Massachusetts chapel in the middle of a snowstorm. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Thankfully, such preparations have resulted in a recording of such incredible beauty that it will make you believe that there are benevolent gods watching over those who explore what constitutes music...more» FEATURED ON THE BOOMBOX!
		The Lofty Pillars / Amsterdam / Truckstop The four men who make up the core of this band are clearly old hands at songwriting -- the kind of group that doesn't need to wear their talents as a badge. Many of the best aspects of these songs exist on the periphery. Wil Hendricks sings half of the tracks with a beautiful, high tenor; Michael Krassner's vocals have a plainspoken, Dylanesque quality that makes each line sound like a confession. Each song is a narrative, each has been carefully honed and each is deserving of "classic" status in its own way...more» FEATURED ON THE BOOMBOX!
		William Parker and Hamid Drake / Piercing the Veil / AUM Fidelity Parker's unmistakable experimentalism with the stand-up bass is marveled at by progressives and summarily snubbed by those not privy to his unconventional ways. And while Parker is clearly a master of musical development and its subsequent deployment, the real mystery continues to be whether Parker has absolute control of his bass, balafone and bombard, or whether this triumvirate of baffling rhythmic instruments is the real master and controller of his musical soul...more» FEATURED ON THE BOOMBOX!
		Badmarsh & Shri / Signs / Outcaste "Life is one big road," begins the Badmarsh & Shri mantra, "with lots of signs and more signs. You got to make up your mind..." And from that soulful, quasi-philosophical beginning, the group's record proceeds to ask a question: do you want to face reality, and hear what's in front of you, or don't you? Facing reality means facing the fact that life is good, that music is good, and that knowing these two things won't prevent music and life from occasionally blowing you away...more»
		Barcelona / Transhuman Revolution / pulCec/Darla Let's get the important bit out of the way now: nothing on Transhuman Revolution will be the next "I Have the Password to Your Shell Account". It's a fun record, to be sure -- Barcelona's usual vibrant mixture of indie rock awkwardness and new wave technophilia -- but the group has clearly realized that surprise hits are a matter of serendipity rather than planning, and they aren't pushing the issue. Even so, there are some marvelously catchy tunes here...more»
		Bayside / See You In October / Pop Culture What really hooks the listener is those lead guitar sections, which are jam-packed with harmonic hooks. Bayside also incorporates guitar solos into most of their work -- something that indie rock, due not only to modesty, but more often to lack of skill, typically leaves out -- without sounding unnatural or wanky. This is first noticed on the second track, where, right before the solo, someone says "guitar" just to let you know what to expect...more»
		The Four Corners / Say You're A Scream / Kindercore Say You’re a Scream is a candy-striped trip back through time. A "retro" outfit in almost every sense of the word, The Four Corners make music the way so many groups did back then: sloppy, punchy and catchy as hell. Just one listen to a song like "Dinosaurs in Brooklyn" and you’ll not only be hooked on the Corners, but will find yourself rummaging through the attic looking for all your old Hollies and Pretty Things 45s...more»
		Future Pilot AKA / Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea / Geographic Recorded in a converted flour mill on the River Clyde (although it may as well have been the Ganges), Tiny Waves, Mighty Sea -- by Glaswegian and ex-Soup Dragons bassist Sushil K. Dade -- has done something very new and very old. What Dade has done is collate traditional Indian styles with surf, folk, and neo-'60s pop, creating a mellifluous quilt of beatific sound. In the process, he has assembled a who's who of the Scottish indie scene...more»
		June Panic / The Silver Sound Sessions / Super Asbestos Every new singer-songwriter with a battered guitar and a raggedy voice is inevitably going to be compared to the venerable Dylan, but Panic's voice really does remind one of the aforementioned music legend, as well as more modern touchstones such as Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum. NMH is actually a decent point of comparison: although Panic's songs are not quite as convoluted and hallucinatory as Mangum's...more»
		The Moto-Litas / For the Greater Good / Daemon The band is simultaneously a musical anachronism -- they wouldn't be out of place in the surf-guitar revolution of the 1960s -- and a torch-bearer of the riot-grrrl movement of the mid-1990s. In the opening track, "Cheated," for example, the band gives hope that the absence of Sleater-Kinney is now being filled. Kowabunga's guttural howl recalls that of S-K's Corin Tucker, while the overall feel of the music recalls the Olympia band at their best...more»
		Prefab Sprout / The Gunman and Other Stories / EMI When he first emerged in the eighties, Paddy McAloon was more verbose than Proust. Now his writing style has evolved, and he strips each song of its excess words. Words are confined to genuine actions, internal and external, that are economically drawn, then set to melodic lines so clean and exact that each rhythm seems to have been pulled out of the air. His best songs, even with the Manhattan Transfer vibe that musicians habitually bring to them, are examples of perfection...more»
		The Real Tuesday Weld / Where Psyche Meets Cupid / Dreamy/Kindercore Where Psyche Meets Cupid is a concept album, in that all the songs are love songs, but not sappy ones; they explore the odder feelings of love, where the soul has to seek out its reasons for loving so that the two (cupid and psyche) can meet. Coates sings every song in a husky whisper that generally seems tinged by amusement, as though he's relating a meaningful joke to a close friend. If his voice quality isn't exactly remarkable, it's definitely memorable...more»
		Various Artists / Seen/Unseen / Absalom Recordings Noteworthy participants here range from Frank Black And The Catholics, The Czars, The Roman Candles, Over The Rhine and the Denver Gentlemen -- certainly enough to encourage picking up a copy. Consider it a huge bonus, then, that this compilation also includes tracks by lesser known, but equally worthy artists. In particular, Shannon Stephens' "If You Want Me" is a beautiful, soft song with a simple melody that encourages listeners to support Stephens by singing a harmony...more»