The Earlies
These Were The Earlies (Secretly Canadian, www.secretlycanadian.com)
There's something oddly refreshing about the familiar. On many occasion I've had to defend my love of the Psychedelic Furs, one of many tapes I pillaged from my parents' collection and took with me through my own musical journey. Its frenetergetic dance punk energy got me moving, but the perfect pop structures were what stuck, served well with a stripped down (if carefully produced) arrangement. In other news, The Earlies bring their solid debut These Were The Earlies from the ashes of the United Kingdom's post-Oasis shitpile, and lithely sidestep the grime shadow. Feelings of familiarity and nostalgia are conjured, but via a wholly different route than my connection to the PF. Warming piano melodies share the stage with quietly strange Wilcoesque production, bound together loosely by drifting lyrics. Snap arguments may be made about music in search of a song, but these swelling arrangements hint at moods and visions rather than structure and story. Rather than a showy declaration of ego, the band uses its debut to encapsulate the ebb of its own emotional connection to its sounds. - SEBASTIAN VON CLAPTRAP
File Next To: Let It Die, Oui, and other things I will always throw on while putting away my laundry

The Hoa Hoa's
Flower Flowers (Yummy Records, www.yummyrecordings.ca)
The album name is a direct translation of the band name! Who would have guessed'¦. '˜Hoa' (pronounced '˜whaa') is the Vietnamese word for '˜flower', according to the Yummy Records website. Brothers, The Hoa Hoa's are just trying to spread love and friendship through their music. Sirs? The 1960's are over and America is angry and jaded once again! This record advocates a boring kind of love; a drawn out and tedious kind that never seems to get anywhere even after 10 martinis. In fact, the band doesn't have a lot to say at all, or make their lyrics a prominent feature on this work. It's nice that '˜you've got a yellow jacket/ but you've got no place to wear it'. Sadly there's more going on in the world than within our own ignorant consumer bubbles, and The Hoa's Hoa's don't address that or leave that realm for one minute of this record. They sound British, which could be sexy in any other context, but the scene accents originate from T.O. and the Niagara Region. They sing '˜buh' a lot, and advertise themselves as the new rock revolution. Experimental sound was cool with Sonic Youth, but to experiment you actually have to DO SOMETHING NEW. The Hoa Hoa's barely break 4/4 time and if it wasn't for the professional backing, this couldn't be more than a high school battle-of-the-bands garage fling. - GENA MELDAZY
File Next To: A flower? That might be appropriate. A dying flower, in honor of our fallen musical comrades.

Jonathan Kane
February (Table of the Elements, www.tableoftheelements.com)
A founding member of Swans and percussionist for Rhys Chatham, La Monte Young, Gary Lucas and Elliott Sharp (to name a few), Jonathan Kane has a litany of sources from which to draw inspiration on his debut solo album. He offers up three originals, a re-arranged traditional and his own version of a Rhys Chatham work on this perfectly symmetrical album. (Length = 12+, 6+, 9+, 6+, 12+ minutes.) All these songs follow a basic formula: start with a basic blues-influenced riff, layer in extra textures bit by bit, and build to a hypnotic cacophony by the end. The production on this album is clean and separated to the point of sterility, which unfortunately distills some of the grittier elements of the music. Although each track does gather momentum and intensity to a point of climax, I can't help but feel that each song would be even more thrilling if it started from a more exciting point from the outset. The middle track 'œSis'? adds the most extreme shifts and changes, and is the strongest one as a result. Otherwise, I find the album to be pleasant, at times rewarding, but ultimately forgettable. '“ PADDY O'DONNELL
File Next To: Pell Mell, straight-ahead instrumental rock masquerading as post-minimalist epics.

Kate Rogers
St. Eustacia (Grand Central, www.katerogers.net)
Mixing overplayed, mid-90s electrobeats with adult contemporary singing and instrumentation is never a good thing. In my research to find out what this record was about, I got hints of 'œavant-folk'?, 'œmesmerizing textures'?, and 'œbeautiful sadness'?. There's something to be said for all of these things, mainly that I love them. I can't say that I love this. Ms. Rogers' sounds like Dido (which is in and of itself a backhanded compliment: a lot of people love that Dido!); in fact, the whole thing sounds a bit too much like Dido. A little bit too much. But really, this record has the appeal of a future Jann Arden, or maybe a k.d. lang: something that is loved by mothers driving minivans, as terribly elitist as that sounds. '“ ANTHONY GERACE
File Next To: Your mom's beat to shit Sony boombox.

Madagascar
Forced March (Western Vinyl, www.westernvinyl.com)
Accordion radiates from this album like nobody's business. Sometimes it's in bizarre dirges, sometimes it approaches Klezmer. Sometimes it sounds like straight up pop. However it's sliced, it usually ends up sounding pretty good. 'œI'm So Tired of Violets'? mines a groove and keeps on chugging, 'œBrief Stroll'? sounds like pop if Lawrence Welk were a sixties pop superstar (instead of a sixties cornball superstar); the whole album plays on the accordion like nobody's business. What really grabs me about this record, though, is how experimental it is while it retains its accessibility. This is the kind of record for a pop fan who thinks that NNCK are kind of cool, or the avant head who thinks that Zorn is just a bit too extreme. '“ ANTHONY GERACE
File Next To: Accordions, NNCK, Zorn, Parallel Universe Lawrence Welk

Miles from Land
Cry Happiness (Independent, www.milesfromland.com)
I this CD was a book, it'd be put out by the people who do "The Babysitters Club" and it would be written by Rivers Cuomo in 1993 and it would be a Choose Your Own Adventure. I have decided this because when I first opened the CD I saw song titles like "Tunnels" (SECRET TUNNELS WITH SKELETONS?!?!), "Glidder" (A GIANT SUGAR-GLIDDER EVADING SKELETONS AS YOU RIDE THE SADDLE ON ITS ADORABLE BACK?!?!) and "The Nickel Empire" (SKELETONS LOVE 5 CENTS AND RULING KINGDOMS!!!!). But alas, this was not the case. What followed was a fairly good CD that kinda of reminded me of Weezer's Pinkerton but a little more sad (cheer up big guy, skeletons aren't even real, let's spoon with dry eyes) and then for the last couple songs someone told them that synthesizers existed and they got mind fucked and made sure that everybody knew that they knew they existed. In conclusion, if you ever make a movie where a kid gets beat up by his dad and then runs and gets on his bike and just rides cuz the wind feels so good, play this song in the background. '“ SPENCER BUTT
File Next To: Christopher Pike

Mon Electric Bijou
Bullets in the Penguins (Roast, www.monelectricbijou.com)
The name originally turned me off of this band. Thankfully, in this wonderful internet age, names aren't that important (Test Icicles, anyone?) and it turns out that this record is the jam. Sometimes sloppy and atonal, sometimes trying to rock harmonizing sunshine pop riffs along with post-punk skronkiness, and sometimes rolling heavy on a groove, Bullets in the Penguins takes disparate elements and manages to almost unify them, to almost make them their own. On the instrumental 'œParis at Night'?, they bring in large riffs with chiming melodic counterparts. They could've kept the whole thing instrumental, as bandleader Martin Saz has the kind of voice that would make Roger Daltry snicker. Still, I can't fault a guy for his voice, and the musicianship on the album is so stellar and heartfelt that the vocals don't even bear consideration. '“ ANTHONY GERACE
File Next To: Chigga-chigga-chigga, whammy bar.

Rick White
The Rick White Album (Bluefog)
This album first caught my attention as I spied the stunning 12'? artwork drying at Future Primitive's since-disappeared screenprinting facility. The cover looks a little less breathtaking scaled down to CD size, but the recording makes up for this by brimming with richness. Skittering folk rhythms meet dark psychedelic underpinnings, with Rick White's soft, half-sung half-spoken vocals providing the heart of each song. The pacing shifts from propulsive and urgent to contemplative and dream-like and back again throughout the album. The not-so-secret key to the content and idea of this album may be in these lines from the liner notes: 'œSing the songs of manifestation, self reflection and reverse premonition. Dreamt through seven lovely quilts. Suzanne, Gloria, Viola, Shelly, Julie, Tara, and Kim.'? So it is, then. Love Tara, Suzanne, Gloria, Viola, Shelly, Julie and Kim. '“ PADDY O'DONNELL
File Next To: Love/Arthur Lee, the other Rick White albums: Eric's Trip, Elevator, The Unintended, etc.

The Shanks
Here Come the Shanks (Independent, www.herecometheshanks.com)
The Shanks make barely passable pop-punk that would play well to kids living in dorms or, maybe, highschoolers with a love of Bruce Springsteen and The Strokes. This isn't to say that it's bad, necessarily, just that I hate it. The artwork is fairly juvenile (in that juvenilia-trying-for-artistic way that tries too hard), and I just don't have anything left to say. '“ ANTHONY GERACE
File Next To: The Shanks are not going to be pleased with this. Seriously.