Child services,
anyone?

Minus the Bear Planet of Ice ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Indie-rock musos finally craft songs worthy of their chops Despite a flair for alternately quirky and languid prog pop on their first three albums, Seattle’s Minus the Bear have always undercut themselves with awkward moments of juvenilia, like branding their shifty ditties with shudder-worthy, Fall Out Boy–style titles such as “I Lost All My Money at the Cock Fights.” But the band’s latest is sublimely elegant and more maturely conceived. It comes to a head when glitchy synths skip into playful free-form guitar on “Knights,” then eases into the delicate ebb and flow of “When We Escape,” a mid-tempo ode to newfound lust. PETER GASTON

Beetle,” suggesting a soundtrack to one of Tim Burton’s creepier films. When Mirah celebrates “secretions quiet and dependable” and sighs, “I vanquish you with kisses…but in truth, it is a poison,” prepare to shudder— and giggle. JON YOUNG

with voices buried in the mix like distant cries for help. If Dean Spunt and Randy Randall lack the patience to develop these jagged fragments into complete songs, that’s part of their charm: Between the alluring nightmare symphony “Loosen This Job” and the banging aggression of “Boy Void,” the duo spew a career’s worth of ideas. JON YOUNG

Mook Menopause

Family values just ain’t what they used to be

Korn (no title) ITUNES MYSPACE

During “Kiss,” a fairly lifeless ballad on the latest Korn album, singer Jonathan Davis proclaims grandly: “The last thing I would like to do before I go away is cry there next to you / Cry and talk about the good old days and where they’ve gone.” Though he’s referring to an ex-flame— perhaps a young lady he met at one of the strip clubs that still blast Korn’s radio hits on a nightly basis—he might as well be alluding to the current state of his band.

These are very disheartening times for an aging nü-metal act. The world’s angst-ridden teens are listening to Fall Out Boy, while many of the genre’s pioneers have either gone back to work at the local AutoZone or adjusted their sound, as fellow rap-rock survivors Linkin Park did

earlier this year.

Davis and crew are attempting to follow suit, hiring Nine Inch Nails programmer/producer Atticus Ross to download an entire hard drive’s worth of industrial-rock flourishes. But even with precisely triggered drums and sensuously distorted bass lines, the band seems stuck in place. Davis’ vocals sound

These are very
disheartening
times for an aging
nü-metal act.

The Mendoza Line 30 Year Low ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Longtime couple put their heartbreak on aching display

These Brooklyn-based twang rockers aren’t just breaking up, they’re breaking up. Core members Shannon McArdle and Tim Bracy are dissolving their marriage, and with it, their band, so this eight-song coda— including a second disc of odds and sods—is indie rock’s Shoot Out the Lights, with two pithy wiseasses trading below-the-belt jabs. But it’s not just D-I-V-O-R-C-E that lends the short-but-sour album its dread—Bracy and McArdle are also freaked by the prospect of aging, on the woozy title track, the double-time “ 31 Candles,” and the barbed “Aspect of an Old Maid.” For a band named after a benchmark of mediocrity, it’s fitting that they bow out consumed by matters so ordinary. STEVE KANDELL

New Model Army High ITUNES MYSPACE Anger’s still an energy for never-say-die Brit punks

Sounding more like pissed young men than a principled band in its third decade, England’s New Model Army still makes fervid, dramatic punk rock that stops just short of overzealous hectoring. The powerhouse drumming and forceful vocals on their tenth album have a cranked-up sophistication, guided by a strong sense of melody. And while the title track adds strings to balance Justin Sullivan’s urgent declamations (“Pay no heed to the unfaithful messengers”), the more ferocious “Wired” and “All Consuming Fire” make their point with sheer muscle. IRA ROBBINS

Nina Nastasia & Jim White You Follow Me ITUNES MYSPACE Haunting, minimal singer given a boost by drummer partner Renowned for his swashbuckling swing with the Dirty Three, Aussie percussionist Jim White also plays behind White Magic, Nick Cave, and PJ Harvey, and now shares top billing with neo-gothic New York chanteuse Nina Nastasia (whom he also backed on her last three albums). Call it a duet, with White encouraging the dour singer to turn back toward the light. He solidly grounds her plaints, but the beat of his traps propels her higher on “Odd Said the Doe”; and with the album-closing “I Come After You,” he nudges her drowsy mewl into a growl. ANDY BETA

Northern State Can I Keep This Pen? ITUNES MYSPACE Post-major label, New York rap gals sing for their supper

By immediately bragging about their superlative mic skills and overall fly-ness on this third album, the ladies of Northern State prepare us for a hip-hop record similar to their first: goofy, Beastie Boys–style bravado with an erudite twist. Instead, MCs Hesta Prynn, Spero, and Sprout morph into an electro-rock trio on the jump-along “Better Already”— and they can’t, won’t, and don’t stop. Some halfhearted rhymes linger, but contagiously energetic political jams such as “Cold War” make it easy to forget that it’s been three years since anyone heard from Le Tigre. PHOEBE REILLY

worn down, as he screams gratingly about global warming and bad breakups, et al., while the infectious hooks that turned “Freak on a Leash” and “Got the Life” into aggro skate anthems are in short supply. Korn can still deliver thundering riffs, but after a decade of mining this territory, you understand why so many of their peers have moved on. TREVOR KELLEY

Mirah and Spectratone International Share This Place ITUNES MYSPACE Lo-fi whimsy that’s too freaky for the Discovery Channel This unsettling album about the lives of insects catapults Oregon-based Mirah Yom Tov Zeitlyn into the pantheon of loony female singers, alongside Joanna New-som and Björk. Woozy cello and accordion add faded European elegance to gently deranged folk tunes such as “Love Song of the Fly” and “Gestation of the Sacred

No Age Weirdo Rippers ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Combustible L.A. twosome turn out a glorious racket

Shimmering shoegaze pop and glowering punk collide and burst into flames on this delightfully rude debut. Surging waves of frayed yet beautiful electronica give way to urgent rants,

Odd Nosdam Level Live Wires ITUNES MYSPACE Atmospheric art-rap producer emerges from his spooky lair

Odd Nosdam’s David Madson— also known as beatsmith for the avant hip-hop threesome cLOUDDEAD—finally gives his dark, dense instrumentals room to breathe on his fifth album. Some of the layers remain, but tracks such as the pulsating “Kill Tone” and the spacey, spacious “Fat Hooks” invoke DJ Shadow’s most shadowy, soundtrack-like moments more than the doom-laden steamrollers of previous Nosdam discs. Still, it’s far from most definitions of pop, even when Madson enlists TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe for a guest vocal on “The Kill Tone Two.” JOSH MODELL

Okkervil River The Stage Names ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Austin poet turns obsessions into irresistible eclectic rock

Singer/songwriter Will Sheff gives overkill a good name on Okkervil River’s fourth album.

CHAPMAN BAEHLER