"Golden Delicious" by Mike Doughty (ATO records) - Out now
Put a guy on stage with an acoustic guitar and the results can be just plain painful. Some are whiny, some are lady-baiters (hello, John Mayer) and some are just plain lame.

It’s pretty tough not to fall into any of these categories, but former [...]

Don’t expect anything new from Bob Mould at this point.Mould was originally from Husker Du, which influenced Green Day, Nirvana, Pixies, Superchunk, and Soul Asylum. He later formed Sugar and is now just Bob Mould.
 On "District Line", Bob Mould is pleasingly angry and remorseful throughout. It’s too bad that a few of these songs sound [...]

"Heretic Pride" by Mountain Goats (4AD) - Out now
Singing through his nose, John Darnielle - the voice behind The Mountain Goats - sounds like an extra from "Revenge of the Nerds." Not that it’s necessarily a bad thing.

Sometimes talking, sometimes singing, Darnielle has carved out a niche much the same as another sing-talker, the [...]

"Robotique Majestique" by Ghostland Observatory (Trashy Moped Recordings) - Out now
 
All too frequently, electronic music mooches melancholicly around the dance floor, breathily bemoaning its broken heart and wallowing in self-pity and starlight. Ghostland Observatory, while acknowledging the trials and tribulations love can bring, struts cockily up the street to solid [...]

"Lovers Prayers" by Ida (Polyvinyl) - Out now
New York folk-rockers Ida have been honing this mellow thing for a while. The one-time duo has rounded out into a quintet over time, but they’ve preserved and cultivated the methodical calm that they started out with.

To give you a better idea of the sound, the original [...]

"Real Emotional Trash" by Stephen Malkmus and The Jicks (Matador Records) - Out now
The new cd by Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, currently out on Matador Records, proves that indie music doesn’t always mean three-minute blasts of sound by young rockers. Malkmus’ band fills neither criteria.
  
Malkmus is in the “dad” stage of life [...]

"Venus on Earth" by Dengue Fever (M80/Ioda)-Out now
“Dengue fever: Fun to say; not so fun to have.” That was my friend Annie in an e-mail about the febrile “bonecrusher disease” she got from a mosquito in Thailand in 2003, about the same time as Los Angeles band Dengue Fever came out with their [...]

Soundtrack to "There Will Be Blood" composed by Johnny Greenwood (Nonesuch) - Out now
The opening shots of Paul Thomas Anderson’s much-acclaimed film “There Will Be Blood” are of a sprawling Texas landscape.
The shots are visually stunning, but it’s the accompanying music that sets the mood.
As the film fades in, a wall of [...]