Fridge The Sun ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Analog/digital musos create dazzling instrumental tableau Perhaps 2007 will be the year of the post-rock revival, with Explosions in the Sky’s exquisite roar, Battles’ brawny, whippet-fueled prog, and this reunion album by British power trio Fridge. During their six-year hiatus, drummer Sam Jeffers enrolled at Harvard, bassist Adem Ilhan made twinkling pop under his first name, and guitarist Kieran Hebden perfected robot jazz as Four Tet. Hewing to the last’s output, The Sun takes time as its theme (see “Clocks” or “Lost Time”), and focuses on Rolex-precise riffs to offset a battery of beats, rattles, and ringing bells. ANDY BETA

The Holloways So This Is Great Britain? ½ ITUNES MYSPACE London quartet reflects on beer, birds, and Beckhams

The title track to the Holloways’ debut is a stinging, if jaunty, rebuke of Britain’s shallow booze-, sex-, and celebrity-fueled culture (“A sinking ship

that’s full of shit and someone nicked the oars”). But rather than forsaking the sleaze, they dive in headfirst, searching for a meaningful pulse. On the charging, anthemic “ Dance-floor,” co-frontman Alfie Jackson dissects a night out clubbing in withering emotional detail. The exuberant ska-pop shuffle “Nothing for the Kids” casts fucking and fighting as just a way to keep the boredom at bay. Harmonicas, fiddles, and shambling grooves hint at surprising musical touchstones (Dexy’s Midnight Runners, calypso) that complement the more expected (the Libertines, Arctic Monkeys). But even when the tunes feel derivative, they remain infectious. DAVID PEISNER

Joan as Police Woman Real Life ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Indie-rock virtuoso steps out on lovely, loungey tunes With her classical training and background performing with the Boston University Symphony Orchestra, violinist Joan Wasser has a tight grip on the harmonies, rhythms, and ecstatic repetitions that conservatory types love. On her group’s

debut album (featuring guests Joseph Arthur and Antony Hegarty), the singer/songwriter composes chamber-pop tunes that burrow, sweep, and swing. Also playing piano and guitar, she rocks out (“Christobel”), detours into eccentric gospel (“Eternal Flame”), and offers soulful ballads about love and identity with a mix of skill and passion. JAMES HUNTER

DJ Khaled We the Best ITUNES MYSPACE A portrait of the artist as a well-connected event planner

On his second album, Miami radio personality DJ Khaled doesn’t do much. He never raps or sings, and he only produces two tracks. Mostly, he just urges on rappers or spouts his irritating catchphrase, “We the beeeeest.” But his real gift is for wrangling talent and landing exuberant posse cuts. “We Takin Over” is a Danja-produced hit featuring T.I., Lil Wayne, Akon, Birdman, and Rick Ross. “Brown Paper Bag” is even better, with Young Jeezy, Juelz Santana, Fat Joe, and Wayne and Ross again, plus a Bee Gees sample. Great work if you can get it. THOMAS GOLIANOPOULOS

The Long Blondes Someone to Drive You Home ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Cheeky new-wave romantics sound as cool as they look The Long Blondes’ Kate Jackson sings like she has amazing taste in lipstick, delivering smart, sex-as-a-weapon lyrics with a swaggering smirk that conveys both glam-charged confidence and femme-specific vulnerability. Fans of X-Ray Spex but haters of Nirvana, the Sheffield-based band weds cattiness and punk-inspired spunk to studied pop-culture references (did she just say, “I feel like C.C. Baxter in Billy Wilder’s Apartment”?) like Elastica gone pop or No Doubt gone indie. Either way, it’s ridiculously entertaining. JOSH MODELL

Marilyn Manson Eat Me, Drink Me ITUNES MYSPACE Sorry, Lolita. Satan is a hard mistress to shake. Hey, 38-year-old androgynous vampire extraterrestrials get their hearts broken, too! Marilyn Manson’s sixth album scales back the Weimar guignol of 2003’s The Golden Age of Grotesque in favor of classic

industrial and glam—martial drum machines, boogie bass, and guitar riffs you usually hear in movies set in the not-too-distant-future. More surprisingly, Eat Me displays the beating heart behind the stage blood with Dashboard Confessional– style lyrics like “I kill myself in small amounts” and “Just another funeral and just another girl left in tears.” Still, when he sings, “You and me and the devil makes three,” it suggests why our man hasn’t been lucky in love: Manson’s embraced his persona for so long that he can’t get his arms around anyone else. ANDREW BEAUJON

Miracle Fortress Five Roses ITUNES MYSPACE Montreal’s latest revelation is a pure pop pick-me-up

The antidepressant industry would be in serious trouble if troubled souls could just absorb the melodic elation of this stunning debut. Under the leadership of multi-instrumentalist Graham Van Pelt, Miracle Fortress’ jubilant indie pop effortlessly integrates cuddly mammalian coos, cottony guitar fuzz, and gentle falsetto choruses. More earthbound

Brit Wit
Eddie Argos writes a love letter to his two muses
The touring
company of
High Fidelity
Art Brut
It’s a Bit Complicated
ITUNES MYSPACE

Art Brut’s second album is a bit misleading: In keeping with the band’s knack for clever thievery from artists past, it might be better titled More Songs About Girls and Songs. Those are the only two things on singer/shouter Eddie Argos’ mind, and he’s banking—smartly, as it turns out—on their inexhaustibility as lyrical subjects.

In the Brit-rock group’s brightest moments, Argos combines his passions, backed by elemental, major-chord punk guitars and simple, propulsive rhythms. “Sound of Summer” examines that embarrassing intersection of music and romance, the mix tape. And on “Nag Nag Nag Nag,” he escapes love’s travails by way of headphones. Argos

is a man obsessed and enthralled, and that devotion, coupled with exuberantly sharp rhymes, comes off as ingratiating, funny, and touching—often all at once.

Complicated shows a real grasp
of musical history—strange for a
band whose songs sound an awful
lot alike: Track names, and these
He’s a man obsessed
and enthralled, and that
devotion is touching.

aren’t covers, include “Jealous Guy” and “I Will Survive,” and Argos even references an obscure Thee Headcoats seven-inch while trying to shape regular-joe joys and frustrations into his own pop-star mythology. But Art Brut succeed nearly all the time by injecting every minute with crackling life and by never, ever getting more than just the slightest bit complicated. JOSH MODELL

DAN MONICK