(Reprise Records) Celebrating somewhere around a decade of nudge-wink indie, Guster is an inoculation against hipster nonsense, ginning up a cross between Belle & Sebastian and arena rock for lack of a handier label. They’re all over the place, targeting Pink Floyd’s “Us and Them” on “Empire State,” chumming out Beach Boys choruses here and […]

(Interscope Records) Touching down in parental-warning-sticker grillz-land, LA undergrounders Jurassic 5 up their major label ante (or pull a weaseling sell-out, take your pick) with a stop-the-presses drop-in from Dave Matthews, bent on revealing his stereophonic 70s side on “Work It Out,” a hypnotic bit of chill crossover that successfully strives to go beyond its […]

(Nettwerk Records) Period pieces from banjo-player Washburn, assisted ably by the always-underfoot-somewhere Bela Fleck and the well-heeled fiddle of Casey Driessen. If you can’t wait for this week’s episode of Deadwood to end so you can dig on the Stephen Foster-era truthiness during the end credits, this is the thing you want, and Washburn’s voice […]

(Bad Boy Records) Since it’s all about fame nowadays and not substance or longevity, the Diddy/MTV-created Danity Kane sally forth blissfully unaware that nobody really wants to see one single Frankenhottie succeed as a serious artiste, let alone a Fox Force Five of them. Just ask, you know, Charlize Theron about her stock’s performance from […]

(Requinto Records) It may not be overwhelmingly hipster to speak well of a TV actress – especially one whose hottie days peaked during a stint at LA Law – but Michele Greene’s heart is in the right place, donating proceeds from this CD to Amnesty International’s campaign for justice for abducted and murdered women in […]

(Sin Klub Entertainment) Imagine your typical bunch of kids from the rough side of the Bronx or someplace equally unthinkable, bored with lost weekends guzzling rotgut, vicking the occasional escort and taking it for a joyride. Suppose this crew tossing out the first post-Sabbath semi-thrash that popped into their heads and you’d have, well, Agnostic […]

(ECT Records) Art always leads the charge in matters critical to the collective consciousness, so here goes: Halloween’s coming. This year’s festivities couldn’t be watched over with keener intent than by Zombina, a hidden nugget of MySpace cubic zirconium who’s squished all three of her boombox-recorded rat-punk EPs into one place. If the DIY-ness of […]

(Iroc Entertainment) Never mind that this album is nearly a year old and the cover is more hideous than a Queer Eye makeover of Ron Jeremy. After the lousy deal Socialburn was handed at this year’s Locobazooka in Boston they’re due for some silver lining – not only were they the only band marooned at […]

(Metropolis Records) For October, Metropolis dug deep and picked up the rights to this 2005 Sony/BMG import, a tour-de-goth that crams Smashing Pumpkins and Depeche Mode into a Chevette and does a wheelie past all the She Wants Revenges. After an inconsequential intro (why is any band even doing that anymore?) “In This Together” summons […]

(Buddyhead Records) Pot-luck fricassee of Blind Melon, Zep and Radiohead, spanning generational divides as far as that goes, but targeting a somewhat narrow demographic of altie record buyers. “Things Will Change” has an easily digestible Radiohead shuffle-rhythm moving it along as the vocals shoot for a neo-Sixties thing perfect for modeling pencil dresses to, and […]

(Universal Records) Representing the sub-Radiohead school of easy listening grunge (mostly for the benefit of listeners who generally prefer your typical pasteurized bunch of emo Luddites over Radiohead in the first place) is Working Title’s full-length followup to their 2004 EP. It’s emo hooked up to a Sony-alt I.V., say Thursday being invaded by Guster, […]

(Requinto Records) Instantly addictive cross-generational mix drawing together Duran Duran, Filter and a sort of post-Squeeze ska, a description from which you might draw conclusions that it sounds Braid-ish, but it’s too upbeat – this one is seriously worth finding. The production is old-school astounding, with keyboard layers dimmed nice and low for maximum chill-down-your-spine […]

Billy Squier-like nasality over spandex metal. It’s brave and sweet that all hands have closed their minds to the music of the past 20 years, and if their filler didn’t so obviously plagiarize pre-computer-age toxic waste like Whitesnake’s “Still of the Night” (“Take Me Now”) we’d be able to praise the Burgess Meredith character in […]

AAA-league neo-70s guitar rock starring the definitively adequate vocals of the singer songwriter. Leadoff number “Window in the Dark” steals the chilly thunder of BOC’s “Don’t Fear the Reaper” but fails to pay off with a palatable chorus section, which is the running weakness throughout. “Lazy Sunday Afternoon” is Lucy in the Sky sans diamonds, […]

Hickish alt-rock smacking of Old 97s in a Stones mood; as such it’s a mixed bag as far as hooks, whether or not originality is a constant. The bass is positively buried in the mix, which favors (and rightly so, if not to such extremes) Tom Townsend’s Van Morrison/Tom Petty tenor. “This Time” would achieve […]

Desolate goth-doom dirges of the Type O kind. The album begins with a thoughtfully baroque-ish bit of acoustic guitar to tee up “Dead Air,” a heavy ditty remindful of Candlemass, switching to Thursday-emo at the choruses, a demonstration for posterity that they aren’t solely reliant on common graveyard-rock fauna. “A Dream Resigned” mixes Metallica and […]

Connecticut-based Requena’s boardroom-slick Gloria Estefan soprano is well worth the princely studio values that Sony-ize this collection of salsa-pop; it’s dentist-office Enrique Iglesias for men who swoon. Three songs are her own creations, treated like the others to fine arranging by an assortment of clever deck-hands. All the songs save for one are sung in […]

With the relentless advance of Myspace, the whole squeezing-every-ounce-out-of-one’s-laptop thing seems to have a growing appeal to punters with rudimentary grasps of rhythm. Automatically that means it’s not always advisable. Here we have a mostly instrumental effort consisting of breakbeats with soul, breakbeats with rasta riddims, breakbeats with chill, and breakbeats with sausage and anchovies. […]

As Depeche Mode archaeologists go, Backlash prove themselves capable of faithfully maintaining the original aesthetic and retrofitting it with sufficient futurepop advancements to front a viable mainstream assault. A surprising record, this was first made available in 2004 through import scalpers and has just now been forked over to Wtii for wide US release. Would […]

God help us, even the Mothersbaugh spuds have been assimilated. In this Disney-concocted black op, original Devo songs have been McDonaldized into nothing more than music to trash Toys R Us to, sung by sugar-bender clean-kiddies chosen for their docility, Wite-Out teeth and ability to withstand the Joan Crawford “encouragement” of their stage mommies. This […]

SPV forges ahead with its practice of ghouling up the remains of bands you’d thought you’d forgotten, hooking them up to spaghetti messes of IVs and kicking back to watch the schooling. In the past year or two their roster has seen Eric Burdon, Motorhead, Skinny Puppy, and now Brazilian thrash-crackers Sepultura, who were jaws-of-lifed […]

The wide-open-door policy of this office’s mailbox sees the oddest cockle shells come in on the tide, some of which appear to fit in only the most special of specialty coverage. In this case almost nothing is as it seems: perhaps it’s the constant bombardment of yell-core albums dressed in bucolic CD covers that had […]

A busker/dealer of songs that sprout from his clinical interest in (and monk-like reverence for) the New York subway commuters that comprise his audience, Eastwind is a walking theoretical about late-night collaborations between Sting, Jimmy Barnes and Jack Johnson. The confident chill-pop routed through this effort is hugely accessible, revealing a pure talent for neo-70s […]