A solid EP is always a treat as it rarely has time to mess things up. Such is the case with this single from Furr mixed with a bunch of tracks previously only available on CD-R's from the bands show. The majority of tracks are the more quiet, storytelling Blitzen Trapper style but enjoyable from top to bottom. 'Black Rock' has my favorite quiet BT style all over it - recommended just for that. [www.blitzentrapper.net]

I wanted to love this, I really did. I think Lust for Life is one of the finer gems to come out this year.. it's familiar and enjoyable and destined for commercial licensing. However, the rest of the record feels like some slow jams from Elvis Costello - not a bad thing but not what I was expecting. I think I'll come back around to it eventually but, if we're being honest, I wanted 12 tracks that sounded very much like Lust for Life. [www.myspace.com]

While I heavily enjoy the pop styles that Flaming Lips are capable of deploying I do love it when they get a bit weirder. Embryonic is more than just a bit weirder - it's a lot weirder. It's their finest stab at an epic prog rock album in my opinion. A blend of the two would be musical bliss. [www.flaminglips.com]

Obviously the collab track with Panda Bear is the main highlight here but the ambient, languid pop style present on the whole is a welcome addition to my ears. This is pretty much perfect for putting on repeat while you hang out with friends, enjoy a brisk night or slumber off to sleep. I'm creeped out by the cover art but really enjoying the contents within. [www.myspace.com]

Takes the sound of their first record and properly expands upon it. Overall a very laid back, quiet vibe - perfect for winter listenings. There's a sad, dark and somewhat ominous vibe that shows itself every so often that is very appreciated. Previous album was okay, this one will be revisited much I am sure. [www.portobrien.com]

I love Menomena side projects because they inevitably sound like Menomena in some fashion. This is no different, as it sounds like elements of Menomena... similar production style, familiar vocals and instrumentation. If Menomena never existed, I think it is safe to say I would still enjoy this record from top to bottom but the familiarity makes it that much sweeter. [www.myspace.com]

For me, this record can not be appreciated without knowing the back story. As a work independent of context it is an indie pop record inspired by the likes of Tropicalia, Elliott Smith and bedroom pop everywhere. Knowing the backstory of sixteen year old Vinicius Gageiro Marques and his suicide puts the record in a different light; one that adds emphasis to the forlorn bits found throughout. [yonlu.com]

Sort of dancey, sort of dark, sort of slow, sort of constant rising tension. It's a lot of different things and it's sort of hard to pin down. Feels like a record I might not ever think to conciously put on but whenever it comes around it's pleasing, enjoyed and appreciated. [www.myspace.com]

Great Lake Swimmers, along with the likes Band of Horses or Iron & Wine, are successfully reviving a traditional folky sound made popular by Neil Young and a bunch of other bands my Dad used to listen to. It's a softer, more personal sound than the screamo and pop music the kids are hooked on, which means it automatically stands out. It's made for fans of dual male/female vocals on top of well-crafted, earthy instrumentation. [www.greatlakeswimmers.com]

Neil Young has kept his career relevant and fresh for forty years by one simple trick. He maintains his guitar skills at the second year level. The ragged and dirty soloing on the 18 minute "Ordinary People" is as amateurishly exuberant as that on "Down by the River." This is the kind of guitar playing that a kid with a few lessons under the belt can easily emulate. While other guitarists have techniqued themselves out of the ballpark, Young remains at the adolescent level, assuring his continued place of honor among young rockers everywhere, Neither has his songwriting moved beyond the most fundamental of adolescent concerns. He is as politically and romantically naive as he was in the early seventies, and some of the songs on his new album might have just as well been written then as now. The first cut starts off sounding just like "Out on the Weekend," and the metaphor of the bird coming through the lights of heaven's window are as meaninglessly strange as any of his early rhymes. While contemporaries like Bob Dylan are praised for reinventing themselves every decade or so, Young is lauded for his ability to remain the same through the years. The closer his new recordings are to his classic output, the happier are his fans. So Chrome Dreams II, sounding as it does like a cross between Everybody Knows this is Nowhere and Harvest, is making everybody happy. Although, it represents an artist in a state of arrested development and sounds pretty damn good to me as well. [www.neilyoung.com]

They say the hardest thing about singing in a band when you're trying to make it is finding your own voice. Even Scott Weiland, who now seems like he was born to be a rock star, spent much of his early days in Stone Temple Pilots trying a little too hard to sound like Eddie Vedder and the other kings of the alternative rock scene. But over the years, he grew into himself. Maybe in a few albums we'll be able to say the same of Ryder Havdale of The Mohawk Lodge. Havdale spends much of his band's latest album, Wildfires, doing his best impression of Coldplay's Chris Martin. The good news for him is that his voice, and his album, really isn't that bad. The bad news is that a lot his material sounds like it stuff that ended up in the garbage bin of a Coldplay studio session. The Mohawk Lodge clearly has a knack for melody. This album is surprisingly accessible. The somber-but-steady "Wear 'Em Out" has enough pop to lift the album up and keep it moving. But the band would benefit if moved more in its own direction rather than follow those taken by folks -- and by folks, I mean certain British bands with lead singers who are married to Gwyneth Paltrow -- who already are wildly popular. [mohawklodge.ca]

The members of June play melodic rock music that, despite landing them a record deal with Victory, is more akin to the music currently being released by the Fueled By Ramen roster. Like many of those bands, June's mainstream appeal and notoriously ad-happy record label all but guarantees massive popularity. Unfortunately, for my taste, a few of their songs get a little too close to sounding like something The Backstreet Boys might put out. But, if you're a fan of any of the Ramen bands, you'll most definitely relate to Make It Blur. [www.junerock.com]

If nothing else, the fourth release from Philidelphia-based outfit The Asteroid #4 offers enough oceans of static to more than satisfy any fancy for psychedelic pop. It's too bad that this same ocean then overwhelms the album. It eliminates any immediacy in the ballad "Ask Me About Pittsburgh" and fails to enliven the visions of "Outside." For all its pretensions, it's more likely to leave you in an apathetic malaise than gift you with an enigma of wonder. [www.asteroid4.com]

Before the levees broke and Fats Domino was counted among the missing of New Orleans, his career wasn't exclusive to the music of that city. That's changed now, he being among the survivors and his music has been given a historic authenticity. In my view, Fats Domino doesn't need New Orleans any more than Elvis Presley needed Tupelo, Mississippi or Bob Dylan needs Hibbing, Minnesota. Fats belongs alongside Jerry Lee Lewis and Louis Jordan, not Jelly Roll Morton and Professor Longhair. To be sure, his success as a hitmaker sent the flock of A&R buzzards to New Orleans in search of an R&B sound specific to that city, but Little Richard was the only artist they found who was in the same league as Fats. One of the best things about this compilation is that the songs haven't been re-mastered into sterility. Although the 30 tracks, recorded in varying frequencies from 1950-1961, have been tweaked to make the listening experience less jolting, the sound is still rough and raw. [www.fatsdominoonline.com]

If there's one thing The October can do, it's create a mood. Their second album, ...Bye Bye Beautiful is an endeavor as crisp as the month their name invokes. Unlike their seasonal namesake, however, they have yet to create something terribly different or unique. Stuck somewhere between modern indie rock and new wave, ...Beautiful is not a terribly memorable or unique album, but what they lack there they make up for with toe-tapping melodies and a cool, heady mood that permeates the piece through and through. Dustin Burnett's voice pierces song after song with a rich and powerful tone. The musicality of the album, however, has very little left to offer, as nearly every song plods along at the same safe, moderate speed: never slowing and rarely speeding up. [www.theoctober.com]

Dax Riggs isn't kidding with the title of the first record released under his own name. Darkness permeates and Riggs succumbs to the demons on his trail as the former Deadboy and the Elephantmen frontman (Blood or Love was originally intended to be a D+E album) seems to be preparing for an imminent demise. Musically, the record is all over the place, a virtual stylistic retrospective drawing from the goth-blues, punk, industrial and metal of his past. With no songs over three minutes, it's a matter of preference as to which phase of Riggs' career you prefer most, but he's at his strongest and most emotional when illuminating Junior Kimbrough riffs with menacing rhythm and polishing them off with the morbid gore of his metal roots. He may sing of only blood or love, but he plays whatever he wants — as longs as its gloomy. [www.daxriggs.com]

With their latest release, The Flesh proves themselves as a force to be reckoned with, putting a dark, moody spin on glam. From start to finish, Firetower offers a train of steady, stylish music that roars and keeps on track. Songs like "The Truant" and the album's title track sound like songs that could be playing in a smoke-filled noir nightclub in an unknown town. There's a mystery to The Flesh that is hard to describe: like they're building to a sinister twist ending that never shows up. [www.putontheflesh.com]

Perhaps as a testament to their recording with Calexico, the addition of a full roster of musicians to the Iron and Wine fold shouldn't be all that surprising. On their third full-length, Sam Beam and company stick to percussive, groove-based arrangements that don't lose the emotion or spookiness of Beam's earlier lo-fi output. Swirling, jazzy fills are well placed, but the swollen band's growth truly shines during tribal moments like "Wolves (Song of the Shepherd's Dog)," when they lock in as tight as The Wailers. For Beam, Shepherd's Dog is slightly optimistic in tonality, yet the frequent use of biblical symbolism and the fact it was born from his self-described "political confusion" hold together the haunting overtones expected of him. His trademark prose still stands out; it only seems he's added color when there was once black and white. [www.ironandwine.com]

While both of The Honorary Title's full-lengths showcase indie pop songs and heart-on-sleeve lyrics, their newest effort, Scream & Light Up The Sky, is the weaker of the two. Jarrod Gorbel, the band's creator and vocalist, has a very unique voice—one that, when pushed to its limits, could be one of my favorite voices in the scene today. However, the raw emotion that pushed that voice on their debut is often lost and it is sorely missed. [www.thehonorarytitle.com]

The film begins with the opening chords of "Memphis Blues Again." Having heard the soundtrack, I was expecting Cat Power to come yowling in with her intently humorous imitation, and was surprised to hear Bob Dylan in her place. With the exception of the instances in which singing was dubbed for the actors, such as John Doe's execrable version of "Pressin' On" and Mason Jenning's serviceable "Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll," little of the soundtrack material actually is used in the movie. It is mostly Dylan, and it makes sense that Sony did not want to release a soundtrack filled with Dylan originals at this time, as it would conflict with the current 3-disc retrospective. Despite it not really being a soundtrack to the film, I'm Not There is far and away the most interesting collection of Dylan covers currently in release. [www.myspace.com]