Celebration The Modern Tribe ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Like a Williamsburg, Brooklyn street corner come to life With TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek producing, and cameos from Afrobeat collective Antibalas and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner, this Baltimore-based trio struggle to escape the shadow cast by their peers. Drummer David Bergander’s ethnic rhythms (see Antibalas) drive Sean Antanaitis’ atmospheric keyboards (see TV on the Radio), while Katrina Ford coos, wails, and shrieks (see Karen O). The theatrical pastiche is less chaotic than on 2005’s debut but still hits snags: The insistent grooves lack dynamic drama, the instrumentation is overcooked, and Ford’s vocals often feel contrived. WILLIAM GOODMAN

five-part closer that attempts to wrap up the band’s baffling sci-fi conceptual saga. At the very least, No World for Tomorrow should ensure that 21-year-old dudes in women’s jeans will gobble up reissues of 2112 for years to come. ANDREW EARLES

alchemizes angst and self-hatred into triumph and inspiration. It just might be a masterpiece all over again. MICHAEL AZERRAD

 

Clockcleaner Babylon Rules ITUNES MYSPACE The traditional, crushing sound of not giving a good goddamn

This Philly trio prefers to nuke first and apologize never. Their second album is not as kinetic, nor as indebted to Big Black as 2005’s violent debut, Nevermind (the title should give you a hint of their bite-me worldview), but its sludgy, creeping noise still flattens everything in sight. And the occasional well-placed melody makes for an even smarter bomb (“Vomiting Mirrors”). While screamer John Sharkey’s corrosive charisma works best when you don’t know what the hell he’s yelling about, his guitar howls volumes by itself. JOE GROSS

The Coral Roots & Echoes ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Almost breaking up pays off for backward-looking Brits

After an attack of burnout, the seven-piece Coral went on hiatus before regrouping for their fifth album, recorded mostly at the studio of longtime fan Noel Gallagher. The result is seductive and understated, with familiar ’60s touches—warm folky vocals, twangy guitar—and few of their earlier efforts’ eccentric psychedelic undertones. Proving mellow doesn’t equal bland, singer James Skelly offers tender comfort on earnest songs like “Put the Sun Back” and the shimmering “Music at Night,” with haunting strings and oboe creating a sense of after-hours mystery. JON YOUNG

Electric Six I Shall Exterminate Everything Around Me That Restricts Me From Being the Master ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Wacky Detroit rebels lack songs to back up their tirades If Dick Valentine ever tires of rock’n’roll, he could audition for the lead in a Broadway musical. On his band’s fourth opus, which gets its title from savage German visual artist George Grosz, the charismatic loudmouth is an apocalyptic one-caveman stage show, spewing furiously absurdist social commentary. Too bad the music is so mediocre, alternating between meathead hard rock and watery synth pop, while Valentine sneers, “There are corpses with more personality than you.” JON YOUNG

 

Coheed and Cambria No World for Tomorrow ITUNES MYSPACE Soon to be starring in a new reality show, Man Bites Prog

The emo demographic, not known for surprises, pulled a big one a few years back by going bonkers for this upstate New York band’s unapologetic fusion of the aforementioned genre with Rush, Dream Theater, and early Queensrÿche. But on their fourth full-length, Coheed’s emo leanings have faded. Instead, this is crystal-clear, foot-on-the-monitor power metal: acoustic intros, guitar shred, thrash-lite riffing, Claudio Sanchez’s vertigo-inducing falsetto, and a

The Dirty Projectors Rise Above ITUNES MYSPACE Visionary Brooklynites record the year’s weirdest tribute

In a singular act of reinvention (and cojones), main Projector Dave Longstreth rewrites Black Flag’s historic 1981 punk blast Damaged, keeping only the lyrics. With glinting, Afropop-derived guitar, Longstreth’s hyper-elastic crooning, and brainy/dreamy female harmonies that conjure the B- 52’s at a revival meeting, this trailblazing music exposes stunning new dimensions to Greg Ginn’s raging slab. Dense with ambition, all of it realized, Rise Above (coproduced by Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor)

Enon

Grass Geysers…Carbon Clouds ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Synth-punk vets give hyper assault a welcome polish

Maybe Enon get more credit for weirdness than they deserve, or maybe the world has just gotten stranger since the Philly band’s spastic beginnings, but their fourth album of electro-inflected jitter rock sounds surprisingly familiar. Toko Yasuda’s voice is comelier than ever, burbling with new-wave energy on the slashing “Colette” and the almost Garbage-like “Pigeneration.” Meanwhile, mastermind John Schmersal is becoming more comfortable leaning closer to radio-ready—his guitar artfully complements the melodies, instead of screeching to compete with them. JOSH MODELL

“Max Weinberg 7?
I’ll kick all
their asses!”
Abracadabra!
E Street still has undiscovered dark alleys
Bruce
Springsteen
Magic ½
ITUNES MYSPACE

more melancholy effect. “Your
Own Worst Enemy” and “Girls
in Their Summer Clothes”
channel Brian Wilson, layering
sleigh bells and swelling
strings to craft experimental
(by bar-band standards)
chamber pop. “Terry’s Song,”
recorded in August after
the death of Springsteen’s
friend Terry Macgovern, is
a tearjerking acoustic elegy.

FROM LEF T: DAVID ANDRE W SI TEK; DANN Y CLINCH

Celebration:
From left, Yeah,
Yeah, and Yeah

For a minute there, it looked like Bruce Springsteen was acting his age. Last year’s early-Americana romp We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

may have been an exercise in fogyism, but if anything, dithering with a zither revitalized him—the leadoff track here, “Radio Nowhere,” a crackling screed lamenting the Clear Channelization of simple pleasures, is as fired up and direct as anything he’s written. Yet the underlying message is broader: At 58, the Boss is angry, not grumpy.

While 2002’s The Rising employed the E Street Band (after a 20-year hiatus) to transform post-9/11 shellshock into anthemic release, Magic uses them to

At 58, the Boss is
angry, not grumpy.

More classic-sounding rave-ups like “Last to Die” and “Livin’ in the Future”—a perfect hybrid of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” and “Cover Me”—work on their own merits, but we already know what those merits are. The real mystery behind Magic, then, isn’t whether the Boss still has some tricks up his sleeve, but why he doesn’t indulge in them more often. STEVE KANDELL