though there’s hardly anything he can’t twist into polymorphous eroticism (check the übercreepy duet with ’60s icon Marianne Faithfull). The songs are about love and sex, but a hint of nihilism still lingers in Wolf’s melodramatic vibrato. BRET GLADSTONE

xbxrx Wars ITUNES MYSPACE Hyperactive hard rock for the next Mensa convention

Careening and frenetic, Oakland’s xbxrx don’t just make math rock—they make advanced placement math rock. Tightly constructed tracks like “Suffocation” and “Minds” practically ooze coefficients, while the shredding on “Center Where Sight” and “In Veins” features a Trapper Keeper’s worth of million-miles-a-minute notes. Make no mistake, Wars is more than an acquired taste, and casual listening isn’t really an option. But as a soundtrack for programming your TI- 89 for tomorrow’s exam, it’s almost

eerily appropriate. SHANNON ZIMMERMAN

Young Galaxy
Young Galaxy ½

ITUNES MYSPACE More crafty lump-in-your-throat delicacies from Canada Singer/guitarist Stephen Ramsay (who has toured with Montreal indie rockers Stars) and singer/keyboardist Catherine McCandless work diligently to give their vivacious pop an otherworldly aura. And here, along with guests that include the Dears and Besnard Lakes, they succeed hugely, evoking a more intimate and handmade version of Blur in 1999, when the English band unveiled their exquisite gospel-rock jam “Tender.” “The Sun’s Coming Up and My Plane’s Going Down” roots spacey gravitas in gorgeous chords, while “Swing Your Heartache” starts as a harmlessly dreamy, keyboard-droning meditation, until Ramsay starts incanting about how our institutions are enslaving us. JAMES HUNTER

You Say Party!
We Say Die!
Lose All Time

ITUNES MYSPACE

These exclamation points
harbor no dark secrets

Don’t be confused by this British Columbian band’s strange name and liberal use of punctuation: They are neither abstruse art rockers nor death-obsessed metalloids. The third choice? Chipper, effusive dance punkers who refuse to be limited by any genre. Singer Becky Ninkovic channels Karen O one minute and chimes sweet melodies the next, and the band (led by keyboardist Krista Loewen and bassist Stephen O’Shea) knows precisely when to charge and when to retreat. The mood is mostly eager and bracing, but the unexpectedly quiet moments— particularly the piano ballad “You’re Almost There”—work wonders, hanging like lace curtains above a neon sofa. JOSH MODELL

Smith could
have a playful
sense of humor.
Lost Innocence
Early recordings show a glimmer of hope

Elliott Smith New Moon ITUNES MYSPACE

FROM LEF T: SHANNON CORR/COUR TES Y FOUR PAWS MEDIA; WENDY LYNCH/RE TNA

If there is comfort in being sad, Elliott Smith knew it once. The late singer/ songwriter’s early four-track recordings were about the good kind of loneliness: wandering through the city just before morning, waiting for a train to come or a drug to kick in, hoping that something might happen.

But the tension between being and nothingness was never easy for this former punk as he battled depression and addiction. On 1997’s “Miss Misery,” he wondered if he’d ultimately choose to “vanish into oblivion” or “fake it through the day.” When he died from two stab wounds to the chest, in 2003, his legend was cast as an answer to that question.

This double-disc collection might help change that. The strongest demos and rarities from his 1994–1997 period, such as the Beatles-influenced “Angel in the Snow” and a bright but stripped-down cover of Big Star’s “Thirteen,” get to Smith’s best impulse: a willingness to find the

Drugs are metaphors
for love, not the
other way around.

innocence in life. Even the tracks about getting high (“New Monkey,” “First Timer”) celebrate naïveté. Drugs are metaphors for love, not the other way around. And in these stark, tender songs, that’s optimism: the promise of “things that haven’t happened yet.” That’s also what makes New Moon so tragic. It marks the end of an era when simply waiting for what’s next was enough. MELISSA MAERZ

xbxrx: “Whee! We finally paid off the mortgage on our dream house!”