Stellamaris - The City turns everything electric

With a drive to succeed sans a record label, Stellamaris took the initiative to finance and record their first full-length studio effort, "The City Turns Everything Electric," in February of 2005. The band itself views this record as an accurate account of the first nine months of writing and playing together. Strong melodies combined with intriguing lyrics that touch on love, greed, death and God, make this an album that almost anyone can identify with.

In June of 2005 Brian Falco and Ryan Henry joined the band to complete the lineup that is now Stellamaris. Citing artists such as Doves, Pink Floyd, and Wilco, Stellamaris continues to mature while writing new material for their next record. The band has already recorded home demos of many of these songs in preparation for their next release.

This is one of the fewest, well, only myspace band that I have thought has really been quite talented and will probably be a lot bigger in the futureAND I KNOW THIS IS A RUN N sentence but also worthy of a buy and a concert tickey, ooo yah.

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Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds and Waso Live in Perth

Collaborations between rock or pop performers and symphony orchestras usually yield little more than bombast and redundancy, but Ben Folds' Live in Perth is a delightful exception. Recorded in 2005 in an outdoor venue (described by Folds as "a luminous green petri dish") in that Australian city, the 80-minute concert finds the singer-songwriter-pianist in the company of conductor Simon Kenway and the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra--not the world's finest classical ensemble, perhaps, but one that's perfectly matched to his quirky, affecting style. Favoring material from his Rockin' the Suburbs and Whatever and Ever Amen CDs, Folds used local musicians for most of the arrangements, with the result that the orchestra enhances the songs rather than merely augmenting them. Most of all, of course, it's the songs themselves that carry the day. There's a hint of Stephen Foster's parlor ballads in Folds' approach, especially the several songs that are in waltz time; there's also an undeniable poignancy to character-driven tunes like "Fred Jones Part 2," "Steven's Last Night in Town," "Boxing" (about sportscaster Howard Cosell, a curious choice of subjects if ever there was one!), and "Not the Same" that's vividly brought to life by WASO's string and percussion sections in particular. By the time you get to "Narcolepsy," the twelfth of the 14 songs performed here and one that features a co-vocal by operatic tenor Stuart Haycock, you can't help but be won over by this thoroughly charming show. --Sam Graham (Amazon)

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Poor Aim: Love Songs

Have you ever found yourself home alone after a tough time outside in the world that just kinda sucks sometimes just to realize that inside these walls all your dreams HAVE BEEN SHATTERED? God knows I have not, but if you have..ugh.. I duno. Who is blow? It's not drugs sillys. Blow is this mildly smeeki fox named Khaela Maricich, You know shes the one singing the type along because it only probably takes 45 wpm to type out the lyrics because it doesnt seem like it took very much thought into creating the songs but YOU WERE FOOLED these are TOUGH feelings and sometimes the simpliest of words express them the bestest. Anywho it's a very catchy jumpy sing along album that'll make you wanting more. But if there has to be a genre for it..its uh..wait let me look it up... "Resilient electro-pop". There you go. FINISHED

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Unkle - Psyence Fiction

This Unkle album is truly CLASSIC by all means. It has many guest appearences by 'popular' musicians. Thom Yorke in "Rabbit in Your Headlights" also, Joe Satriani ("Unkle Main Title Theme") meet Massive Attack ("Blood Stain", "Unreal"), Craig Armstrong ("Celestial Annihilation") and don't you dare forget the voice of The Verve's Richard Ashcroft in "lonely soul". "Lonely Soul" seems eerly haunting nowadays, probably because it was featured on a commerical for a very popular gamez. LOLZ WHICH GAMES YU SAYS. WELL I WONT says because I forgot. If you havn't listened to this VERY overlooked album already, this is the time to little grasshoppa.. click...enjoy and pewpew with glee.

*coughz*

Dillinger Four - Situationist Comedy

The band blames the weather, or at least their publicist does, and maybe there's something to that. Midwestern bands do seem angrier and louder than their coastal compatriots, perhaps due to all those long, cold winter nights and vast, open vistas that make one holler to be heard. Maybe it's merely lack of exercise; it's hard to skateboard through a cornfield and tougher to snowboard down a prairie or around Minnesota's many lakes. So Dillinger Four aren't your typical sleek hardcore heroes drenched in California sun and breezy melodies, but a quartet of pachyderm punks crashing out of the hinterland and Hopeless Records, who released their first two albums, and into the arms, appropriately enough, of Fat Wreck Chords. OK, really they're only big boned, but their sound is huge, and on Situationist Comedy they thunder and roar, slam and crash, walloping their way across the tracks, the musical equivalent of a demolition derby of two-ton trucks. Heaving into the musical elements of arena rock, old school punk, and speedcore and pouring the molten mass into a melodic mold, Dillinger Four rampages across genre divides and makes a mockery out of the term generic punk. Only one complaint: So large is the sound, that the vocals are pretty much trampled underneath. A crime really, as the group has much of import to impart, but thankfully lyrics are included in the CD booklet. Their most visited theme is nonconformity in the personal, business, and political realms, and the message is clear: stand up, stand strong, and be true to yourself. In the post-9/11 milieu, this is all the more important, which the lyric, "simple arguments now accusations of dissent," nicely sums up. Hypocrisy is flailed, privilege unveiled, and convictions ring true. A heavy-hitting album in every sense of the word

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Descendents - Somery

Somery is an overview of the Descendents' SST records, drawing equally from each album released by that label. Although this means a handful of great songs from their best albums are missing, Somery nevertheless selects the highlights from their occasionally uneven records, making it a useful and comprehensive retrospective.

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Regina Spektor - Begin To Hope

On Begin to Hope, Regina Spektor treads a delicate balance between her anti-folk past and her present home on Sire Records. Though the label re-released Soviet Kitsch in 2004, Begin to Hope is Spektor's first original material for Sire, and it feels more like a major-label debut than Soviet Kitsch ever did. The album's big, glossy production and preponderance of drum machines and keyboards inches Spektor toward territory that isn't exactly mainstream, but is closer to a more conventional adult alternative singer/songwriter sound. Her songwriting mirrors this, too: "Field Below," which finds her wishing for the countryside while living in the city, has a mellow, appealingly rambling vibe that grows from the traditional singer/songwriter roots of Joni and Carole; "Better" takes the breathy, literate, pretty side of Spektor's music and tailors it into a radio-friendly single. "On the Radio" takes it a step further and becomes a smart, funny, and sad meta-single, with lyrics like "We listened to it twice/Because the DJ was asleep" backed by poppy synths and beats. But even though Begin to Hope's first few songs might suggest otherwise, Spektor is much too freewheeling and quirky a talent to stick to the straight and narrow for the entirety. Show tunes, classic soul, the Bible, and the backs of cereal boxes are all inspirations for the album. And whether she quotes the melody from Doris Payne's "Just One Look" and pairs it with lyrics about orca whales on "Hotel Song," or begins the lovely, confessional closing track, "Summer in the City," with the line "summer in the city means cleavage," Spektor uses them in unexpected ways. She also places some truly surreal, heady tracks toward Begin to Hope's end: "Lady" is a torchy number arranged for piano, saxophone, and typewriter, while "20 Years of Snow" is buoyed along by impressionistic keyboards that twinkle and tumble like a just-shaken snow globe. "Apres Moi," one of the album's most impressive tracks, showcases her classical piano training, her Russian heritage, and those biblical influences to ominous, paranoid effect. Leaving the more unique, quintessentially Regina Spektor-esque tracks at the end of Begin to Hope isn't so much a bait-and-switch as is a clever way to lure in and loosen the inhibitions of new fans. The album feels like getting to really know someone: at first, it's polite and a little restrained, but then its real personality, with all of its charming idiosyncrasies, finally reveals itself.

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Avett Brothers - The Gleam Ep

The Avett Brothers are a non-traditional bluegrass band that originated in Concord, North Carolina. The band is made up of two brothers, Seth and Scott Avett, and a third member Bob Crawford. Risen from the ashes of Seth and Scott's former rock band Nemo, The Avett Brothers combine old-time country, bluegrass, punk, pop melodies, folk, rock and roll, honky tonk and ragtime to produce a sound described by the Washington Post as "post civil-war modern rock", or by other reviewers as "grungegrass". The group themselves eschews labels, feeling that "none would do the music the justice. It's simply left up to each person to extract his or her own account from the Avett's music."Their live performances, generally at smaller venues, showcase their use of three-part harmony and southern rock feel, and are admired for being intense, energetic, and soulful.

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Joanna Newsom - Walnut Whales

Walnut Whales is the self-distributed debut EP by Joanna Newsom. It was released on CD-R in 2002. Though the majority of the tracks were re-recorded, with very slightly altered lyrics, for her debut full length album The Milk-Eyed Mender, three of the songs — "Erin", "Flying a Kite", and "The Fray" — are otherwise unreleased. Being a limited edition release it is now unavailable outside of file-sharing networks and second hand exchanges.

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The Anniversary - Designing For a Breakdown

The Anniversary's debut album, Designing a Nervous Breakdown, blends their skill at crafting emotional, punky-yet-melodic songs with a fondness for new-wave synths. Little analog flourishes pop up on songs like "The 'D' in Detroit," which also features pleasant boy-girl vocals and driving guitars. "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" recalls the delicate, intertwined guitars and endearingly awkward vocals of bands like Joan of Arc or Modest Mouse, while "All Things Ordinary" and "Emma Discovery" don't forsake melodic complexity for their charging rhythms. A strong debut, Designing a Nervous Breakdown reaffirms that traditional indie rock can still sound fresh and lively.

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