Manu gets his
merit badge in
awesome.
Thurston Moore
Trees Outside the
Academy
ITUNES MYSPACE

Sonic elder gets (relatively) mellow without Youth On the singer/guitarist’s second, song-oriented solo album, he doesn’t stray far from his main band’s template—the chord shapes are familiar (albeit acoustic), Lee Ranaldo’s wonky leads are filled in by a violin (however mellow), and Trees Outside the Academy slots in beautifully with Sonic Youth’s strikingly consistent 21st-century work. Moore’s first solo record, 1995’s Psychic Hearts, was reissued last year and has aged beautifully. This one will probably sound just as forward-thinking a decade from now, even the final track, a portrait of the musician as a 13-year-old performance artist. JOE GROSS

longtime drummer Tom Zinser (by the Black Heart Procession’s Mario Rubalcaba and No Knife’s Chris Prescott) results in too many perfectly good songs that never quite approach greatness. J. NIIMI

Qui
Love’s Miracle
ITUNES MYSPACE

Noise-rock god returns to earth older, no wiser, a better singer

Fifteen years ago, the Jesus Lizard were the most explosive live band in underground rock, and David Yow was their manic, often inebriated, and frequently naked frontman. So hearing him come out of retirement with Qui, a noise-prog duo that’s been kicking around L.A. since 2000, is a bit like watching Michael Jordan play horse. Qui’s huffing skree just doesn’t have the immediacy of the Lizard’s Zep thud. But Yow’s ragged bellow has aged nicely into a wheezing croon, and on the shuddering “Freeze,” he artfully essays an ancient dirty joke about a penguin and a mechanic. JOE GROSS

the Bats. This is no accident, as Pinks leader Chris Harte grew up immersed in the influential jangle of his homeland, where there were hooks to burn. It also appears that Harte wore out an import copy of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything (see “Blonde Haired Girl”). Revivalist? Sure, but this refreshing, smarter side of the late ’80s has yet to be co-opted into a hipster fashion show. ANDREW EARLES

International Player

Post-punk protest singer blasts his global boom box

Manu Chao La Radiolina ITUNES MYSPACE

Paris-born, Barcelona-based Manu Chao has always been a traveler, roaming the U.K. to pick up punk, heading to Central America to immerse himself in salsa. The premise of 2001’s Próxima Estación: Esperanza—Chao moving casually between styles and languages as radio static smoothed the transitions— was apt. On his third studio album, he’s still a nomad, but now he sounds as if he’s on the run.

La Radiolina is all foreground action. The restless intensity that takes root in the frantic guitar picking on opener “ 13 Dias” rarely lets up throughout. If the driving beats’ suggestion of a chase scene weren’t enough, the first single, “Rainin in Paradize,” introduces police sirens and an anxious, stinging guitar line, both of which reemerge every few tracks.

Who’s Chao running from? Likely the world’s warmongers. “Rainin in Paradize” rages at the battle-ravaged state of several countries, while on “Politik Kills,” he recycles a verse assailing government corruption that he contributed to Amadou & Mariam’s “Politic Amagni.” That Chao can preach against violence, mash his straightforward rock riffs into mariachi horns, and still create something danceable

Oakley Hall
I’ll Follow You
ITUNES MYSPACE
Asphalt hillbillies tamper with
their inner Carter Family

The close boy-girl harmonies and vintage instruments (banjo, steel, fiddle) shout alt-country purism, but Brooklyn’s Oakley Hall don’t care about following the party line. Amid elegant tales of “simple sadness,” Patrick Sullivan and company hint at broader possibilities on their fourth album, verging on a nasty ZZ Top–like boogie in “No Dreams” and tiptoeing into funk on the crunchy rocker “Alive Among Thieves.” Best of all, the light-headed “All the Way Down” recalls the any-thing-goes spirit of the Byrds, decorating an old-timey lament with buzzing space-age guitars. JON YOUNG

He’s still a nomad,
but now he sounds
as if he’s on the run.

makes him universally accessible and patently indefinable. And though his global messages aren’t particularly deep, his skilled, spirited execution sets him apart from other peacenik troubadours. The way to a politically pissed-off fan’s heart isn’t always through an appeal to bruised national pride— sometimes, it’s through her hips. LINDSEY THOMAS

Pinback
Autumn of the
Seraphs
ITUNES MYSPACE

Carefully honed songcraft could stand to be a little less honed

Rob Crow and Zach Smith are perfectionists, and each Pinback album results from years of obsessive labor in their San Diego home studio. Their previous three albums were marvels of sublime prog pop, and there’s more of the same here, with the stately piano and rarified vocal harmonies of “How We Breathe.” But for a band defined by its hermetic, hypnotic rhythms, the replacement of

Rogue Wave
Asleep at Heaven’s
Gate
ITUNES MYSPACE
Deadlier than Death Cab, more
bruised than the Shins

After crafting two gorgeously understated Sub Pop albums that languished, this Oakland quartet teams with Yo La Tengo producer Roger Moutenot to create a make-or-break manifesto (on Jack Johnson’s label!) that often trumps indie rock’s big-leaguers. Intensifying the light and shade of his tunes with finely detailed psychedelia, leader Zach Rogue picks up the alternative pop gauntlet R.E.M. threw away. And when he trades previously indistinct sadness for rage against the biz, he grabs its gold ring even as he’s cursing the merry-go-round he’s on. BARRY WALTERS

Shout Out Louds
Our Ill Wills

ITUNES MYSPACE

Swedish pop rockers publish a lyrical tour de force “I do remember waking up with a headache in your parents’ living room.” The soundtrack of your life? Join the club. In addition to being the best line Conor Oberst never wrote, this is one of at least a dozen tossed-off, three-dimensional details that catapult Shout Out Louds’ latest from agreeably derivative to just about perfect. Frontman Adam Olenius lobs his bons mots over tunes that borrow from Beck (“South America”), the Velvet Underground (“Suit Yourself”), Bright Eyes (“Your Parents’ Living Room”), and the Cure (just about everything here). But when Olenius waxes romantic and serves up yet another ace (“Your neck smells just like hers did”), it’s hard to complain. SHANNON ZIMMERMAN

 

Shocking Pinks Shocking Pinks ITUNES MYSPACE If late-’80s indie-pop fans started a fantasy league

The Shocking Pinks’ self-titled debut could be the result of a supergroup featuring members of bands on the fabled New Zealand label Flying Nun—the Clean, the Chills, the Verlaines,

Simian Mobile Disco Attack Decay Sustain Release ½ ITUNES MYSPACE

If nothing else, they may have the song title of the year Some years back, James Ford and Jas Shaw made two albums of dreamy Britpop in the group Simian. And despite their second act as a dance-oriented production unit, a twee undercurrent still runs through this debut album. Former Simian singer Simon Lord offers an operatic slice of electro-house balladry on “I Believe,” and the Go! Team’s Ninja adds giddy vocals to the Technotronic-in-fluenced “It’s the Beat.” Simian Mobile Disco could be hokey, if they didn’t swerve so smoothly from the Detroit-style techno of “Wooden” and the block-rockin’ breaks of “Tits and Acid.” The duo’s effortless ability to plunder electronic genres without losing their own identity

JASON GARDNER