Figurines
When the Deer
Wore Blue
ITUNES MYSPACE

Shimmering retro pop from some really great Danes A Danish band who have clearly put in their time studying American indie rock, Figurines at first sound overly familiar, but before you can Clap Your Tapes Say Midlake, their third album sneaks in enough sunny ’60s pop and astral strangeness to change the game. This is no slavish style bite by Euro pretenders; it’s a delectable refigur-ing. From jaunty and tinkling (“Childhood Verse”) to brooding and pretty (“Good Old Friends”), Figurines don’t do anything new, but they do everything amazingly well. JOSH MODELL

José González In Our Nature ITUNES MYSPACE

While his guitar gently weeps, look at you all…asleep This sophomore set from the Swedish acoustic troubadour is undeniably pretty, but ultimately doesn’t hint at much more. Expanding on the elegantly melancholy voice-and-guitar of his debut album, Veneer (released in the U.S. in 2005), he adds percussive bits and multilayered vocals to “Killing for Love.” But “Time to Send Someone Away” settles for a docile nod to Brazilian pop. And the best song here—building on González’s rep for serene covers of dance-oriented tracks (the Knife’s “Heartbeats,” Kylie Minogue’s “Hand on Your Heart”)—is a gen-

tle rendition of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop.” PETER GASTON

Wall”), and creatively druggy overtones to balance out the epic pummeling. AARON BURGESS

The Good Life
Help Wanted Nights
ITUNES MYSPACE
Stop me if you’ve heard this
one before...

On his fourth album as the Good Life, prolific Cursive frontman Tim Kasher revels in lyrics about booze and heartbreak while delivering a string of teary folk-rock meditations. Sound familiar? For nearly a decade, such has been the focus of this side project, and Kasher does little to modify that formula here. Granted, his lonesome drawl may sound arresting when it’s 3 A.M. and you’re stumbling home from the bar, but maudlin tunes like “You Don’t Feel Like Home to Me” and

“Some Tragedy” need more than quietly strummed minor chords to sell their hard-luck laments. TREVOR KELLEY

Meet the world’s
best-dressed Hacky
Sack circle.
The Go! Team
Proof of Youth ½
ITUNES MYSPACE
A trashy record collection turns
into cinematic ear candy

The Go! Team are unabashed kitsch merchants, trafficking in all manner of retro cheez-pop, but the enthusiasm they bring to their infectious second album simply can’t be faked. Live instruments have replaced the samples that fueled their debut, resulting in a more fluid, if still absurdly amateurish, sound. The influences range from MC Lyte–style old-school hip-hop (“Grip Like a Vice”) and demure PBS theme music (“My World”) to pulsing Starsky & Hutch action sequences (“Titanic Vandalism”) and exuberant, playground jump-rope chants (“Universal Speech”). DAVID PEISNER

HIM

Venus Doom ITUNES MYSPACE

Lavishly wallowing in misery—
it’s the Finnish way!

HIM have superfan Bam Margera to thank for their early exposure, but it’s frontman Ville Valo—a Byronic goth-metal pinup—who makes these Finns potentially iconic. Valo’s steel-melting baritone, dipping so eerily low that you can actually feel it, infuses Venus Doom with melody and drama, and his once-faceless band finally gets a chance to stretch out alongside him. The result (see the 11-min- ute, Sabbath-via-Muse expanse of “Sleepwalking Past Hope”) may be the year’s heaviest, creepiest, and sexiest hard-rock group effort. AARON BURGESS

Pigpen’s Peace Train
Freak-folk kingpin just isn’t freaky enough
Devendra Banhart
Smokey Rolls Down
Thunder Canyon
ITUNES MYSPACE

Much of Devendra Banhart’s appeal since his emergence in 2002 has had to do with the ways in which he’s been able to convince us that he’s not just a standard-issue dirty hippie: Consider the flamenco-flecked folk songs on 2005’s Cripple Crow or the singer’s bizarro gossip-column dalliances with Lindsay Lohan. But on Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, his fifth long-player,

Banhart doesn’t seem terribly interested in demonstrating that there’s more in his head than faded peace signs and pot fumes. With its preponderance of droopy folk-rock meditations, this is Banhart’s least discursive outing yet.

“So Long Old Bean” sound like nobody else—no small feat, considering the army of freak-folk disciples he’s inspired. And Smokey Rolls, which Banhart and his merry men made in Topanga, the woodsy dropout refuge north of Los Angeles, does include a few deviations from the norm: “Shabop Shalom” is a delightfully weird Jewish doo-wop song; “Lover” rides a sunny, Jackson 5–like soul-pop thump; and “Saved” is a juicy gospel-rock rave-up that suggests Banhart’s been cranking the Band lately. But the remainder feels like a reissue of someone else’s surprises. MIKAEL WOOD

Joe Henry C wivilians ITUNES MYSPACE

Introspective Americana laments from Madonna’s bro-in-law Following the tumultuous din of 2003’s Tiny Voices, singer/songwriter (and producer) Joe Henry scales back to a picked-bones simplicity on his contemplative tenth album. A skilled genre-hopper, Henry chooses to nestle in a weary, blues-inflected groove, delivering clear-eyed tales about regret, America, and Willie Mays—sometimes all at once, as on “Our Song.” While his unapologetically Dylan-esque vocals grate on weaker tunes (the rambling “Civil War”), gems like the softly rollicking “Time Is a Lion” allow Henry to step out with a quiet roar. GILBERT CRUZ

Hot Hot Heat
Happiness LTD.
ITUNES MYSPACE

Hyper melody makers get heavy, stay catchy Hot Hot Heat are so good at their game—twitchy, verse-chorus-verse power pop—that even the band’s best bits can seem pro forma. On Happiness LTD., they admirably mess with success, loading up their spastic, skinny-tie ditties with epic heft. Brooding intensity (à la Arcade Fire) powers the title track and “Waiting for Nothing,” while arena-ready riffing lights up “Outta Heart” and “So So Cold.” Frontman Steve Bays’ friendly, rubber-soul warble means solemn melodrama is out of reach, but that’s excellent news: The idea of a neo-new-wave Coldplay is too much to comprehend. SHANNON ZIMMERMAN

This is Banhart’s least
discursive and most
predictable outing yet.

As a result, it’s also his most predictable. To be sure, Banhart has developed a distinctively wacky strum-and-warble thing that’s all his own: Hushed, delicate ballads like “Cristobal” and

High on Fire
Death Is This
Communion
ITUNES MYSPACE
Stoner metal with just a
hint of acid seasoning

High on Fire’s early albums were bowel-loosening slabs of post–Black Sabbath metal, but with 2005’s Blessed Black Wings, the trio embraced their inner Motörhead, upping the velocity to match their volume. And here, the Bay Area band increase their stylistic range, with flashes of psychedelia (“Cyclopian Scape”), droning Eastern folk (“Khanrad’s

Iron and Wine The Shepherd’s Dog ITUNES MYSPACE

Florida folk rocker’s
songs, beard grow fuller

If, as he sings on “Lovesong of the Buzzard,” “No one is the savior they would like to be,” then Sam Beam has found peace in his trespasses. The singer/songwriter is still fascinated with biblical characters and life’s contradictions on his third album, a gorgeous mélange of world percussion, electric strings, and airy harmonies that continues the expansion of his sound that

LAUREN DUKOFF