Kristoffer Ragnstam, ldquo;Sweet Bills rdquo; (Bluhammock Records)
Admirers of Spoon and Sufjan alike may find common ground in this collection of alt-rock-ified sketches of violent genre collisions tabled by an artist with a suspicious amount of consonants in his name. The melting pot is so vast but quirkily accessible here that the easiest comparison that comes to mind is Electric Light Orchestra, doubly so being that Ragnstam rsquo;s voice possesses all the chromosomes of Jeff Lynne rsquo;s, case in point being the twinkly but punkish ldquo;Breakfast By the Mattress rdquo; although there isn rsquo;t anything here that radio would have kicked out of bed in the 70s. The riffs are only as ambitious as OK Go rsquo;s, but the layering is far denser, allowing for danceability as well as out-of-body drivetime experiences.

The title track rsquo;s got an annoyingly kludgy appearance from an overenthusiastic chick singer, making it the blackest hole of the record, elsewise there rsquo;s plenty to like. With all this, conventional wisdom would assume it rsquo;s a one-man operation, but turns out Ragnstam enlisted help from members of Division Of Laura Lee and International Noise Conspiracy among others.

Better Left Unsaid, ldquo;Robbers Cowards rdquo; (self-released)
Blunt nu-metal/screamo weaponry powered by guitar antics that aim for the rafters, held together by a production ethic that calls for an ironic sparseness despite the lofty harmonies, generic caterwauling and seemingly limitless Dimebag riffology.

ldquo;Never Again, rdquo; the transparent attempt at a single, begins the album with boy-band calls and responses, a bit of nudge-wink false advertising crafted to lure in unwary hicks who somehow haven rsquo;t had Black Dahlia Murder and the like shoved down their gullets, because that rsquo;s what you get for the balance forward, guitarists Jason Jones and Rob Fernandez toying with some Iron Maiden and Yngwie Malmsteen ideas in between long runs of healthily hormonal histrionics. Bands like this (now numbering in the millions of billions) seriously need a collective vacation from Hit Parader and some zen-time spent with ndash; oh jeez, anything, Turkish folk, Ethiopian tribal rhythms, anything to separate them from the pack. Punchline here is that the lack of overproduction that makes this a fairly collectable EP is guaranteed to be gone twelve seconds after they rsquo;re signed, and it rsquo;ll just be a better-engineered loaf of Wonder.

That rsquo;s not to be too cynical, though, kiddies; you rsquo;re of course forever free to pray for a polka dotted sky and 10-cent gallons of non-polluting gasoline.

Sophe Lux, ldquo;Waking the Mystics rdquo; (Zarathustra Records)
I need to learn to stop myself from trusting albums that have bunnies on their covers. Sophe Lux is one of those leisure-class bands, obviously, a bunch of rich kids playing dress-up for the insert, fiddling while art burns, contributing zilch to Generation iPod.

Like a Hollywood Squares of MTV, no half-hearted effort to delve into irregular, extinct styles goes wanting. Oh look, there rsquo;s Natalie Merchant ( ldquo;President rdquo;). And Jewel ripping off ldquo;Building a Mystery rdquo; ( ldquo;Lou Salome rdquo;).

Keeping in mind that when the prefix ldquo;post rdquo; is used to describe a sound it means ldquo;leagues cruddier than, rdquo; ldquo;Little Soldier of Time rdquo; is a super-post-riot-grrrl non-anthem, but there rsquo;s even more (as in ldquo;even less rdquo;), with the 70s off-Broadway Supertramp ripoff ldquo;God Doesn rsquo;t Take American Express. rdquo; One look at the broad range of instruments listed as used by this 5-piece is a clue-in too ndash; does anyone buy the fact that gongs, lap steels, glockenspiels and ldquo;loops rdquo; all belong on the same album? Anybody?

Craig Buhler, ldquo;Capistrano Sessions rdquo; (Discernment Music)
Billed as music for any occasion, Buhler rsquo;s jazz quintet is best suited for ballroom or chill. Richard Stekol rsquo;s impeccable production wraps these versions of sax player Buhler rsquo;s originals in soft focus but with enough detail to point to an overall leitmotif of the artist as casual espresso-gulper and determined melody-addict ndash; were Buhler a guitar god he rsquo;d be more representative of the David Gilmour school of purposefulness, his sax stressing vocal-ready lines and deliberately squandering all the room that rsquo;s available for soloing (now there rsquo;s a nice break). As a reflection on the players, the songs convey sunny dispositions all around, as stated with little in the way of bumblebee workouts to be found, although bassist Joel Hamilton does put on a clinic during roll-out track ldquo;Lookear.

rdquo;

Coldworker, ldquo;Contaminated Void rdquo; (Relapse Records)
Rousing hamster-wheel metal from one of the genre rsquo;s more respected labels. Very few deviations from what Mastodon would sound like if they dropped all lit-snob pretense ndash; okay, not in the Anthrax-ish way they did in the confines of Blood Mountain ndash; and went straight for 4/4 glory. The carefully engineered guitars here gratefully trend away from sounding budget-studio cheap, fitting into every corner of the mix, while the vocals are interchangeable with those heard on Leviathan.

The songs are sweaty and busy, lyrics absolutely unintelligible, drums set to puree. It rsquo;s a backward step, then, but with the direction the math geeks of the world were taking things it rsquo;s a breath of fresh air.



Tack, ldquo;Porn rdquo; (Tarpit Music)
What do the soundtrackers of such films as Road to Perdition and Saw want to be when they grow up?

Apparently Iggy Pop. Tack is one of those generally dreaded project bands, bringing together Colin Edwards (an accomplished bagpiper and the Founder of LA rsquo;s Bay of Pigs), soundtrack dudes Rick Cox and Academy Award winner Chas Smith, and Gary Ferguson, whose strange-bedfellow list of performing credits include stand-in stints with Etta James, Billy Bob Thornton and ndash; you sitting? ndash; Liberace.

Grimy, fuzzy guitars run a Stooges gauntlet here, concentrating their energies mostly on what might come from Zodiac Mindwarp circa Rock Savage luring Iggy into a grimy, fuzzy studio. Little surprise that the songwriting rsquo;s bang-on for the most part, if a little too familiar now and then, vocoder static adding Gravity Kills-like depth to a woozy vibe that rsquo;s predominantly like a copy of Hustler magazine come to musical life.

Harlem Shakes, ldquo;Burning Birthdays (self-released)
Between the Pretenders guitars, Hammond organ and Lexy Benaim rsquo;s vocals rsquo; unpredictable switch-hitting, the mix gets very busy here, calling out Squeeze one minute and a high-on-life Shins the next, most of the songs ending in blurs of shoegaze.

Put more parochially, it rsquo;s very New York indie of the here and now, which is only one of the things that earned these guys a tour partnership with Deerhoof beginning in February. Unlike most of their hit-and-run-and-disappear contemporaries who tend to put out records fifteen seconds after luring their first coed onto the dance floor, Harlem Shakes pulled a mini Dave Chappelle, bugging off for a couple of years to get their personal and professional act together, resulting in a great service done to the ears of the scenester swine masses whether they appreciate it or not (actually they will, in all fairness; the blogs couldn rsquo;t shut up about this band). Every melody seems to have a point, a rare enough thing nowadays, but the styles boogie all over the indie map without ever getting their legs tangled.

Dan i el A g u st, ldquo;Swallowed a Star (One Little Indian US)
If this was what was seething in A g u st rsquo;s psyche during his singing tenure with GusGus it rsquo;s a wonder how the poor thing ever tolerated making listenable music. Hearing this flow of dreary goop it rsquo;s as though the Icelandic trip-hop monolith never existed, like Massive Attack replaced by Low armed with sequencers stuck in first gear. One thing that explains all this is his recent day gig composing soundtracks for documentaries (unflinching expos e on the plight of homeless Icelandic meth addicts, anyone?

) ndash; actually, strike that; it rsquo;s the only explanation one could cull from this. It rsquo;s all draggy, mouth-breathing sad-pop, the jazz parts stolen from Spike Lee rsquo;s Katrina thing, the rest from super-bummer PBS examinations of innocent sea turtles dying from the effects of badly steered oil tankers. Whatever the point of this is (fifty quatloos says A g u st is trying to instill within us knuckle-draggers a little, like, deep culture), the arrangements are clever enough, but Rachmaninoff won rsquo;t be clawing his way out of the grave to get some.

Clara Hill, ldquo;All I Can Provide (Sonar Kollektiv Records)
The electro-soul underground has a near-unstoppable new player in the person of Berlin, Germany rsquo;s Clara Hill, backed up on her second album with some of the more prominent producers in the genre. Her biggest strength is an ability to find silver lining in melancholy, which ends up leaving every song on board colored in chick-flick pastels, much like Macy Gray fronting a less-glum Portishead in a final-draft demo for a soap opera scene where people engage in polite soft-focus hanky-panky after picking out engagement rings. On the whole it rsquo;s idyllic without being syrupy, never more so than when King Britt shows up with a stubbornly agreeable house polyrhythm for ldquo;Did I Do Wrong, rdquo; evoking the after-barbecue ambiance of Miguel Migs remixing someone like G-Pal.

Hill rsquo;s own ldquo;Wake Up rdquo; comprises unplugged guitar and dazed, fluffy da-da-das. Her well-controlled but breathy voice may not jolt the world into instant renaissance, but with the depth of the house and chill-pop styles underneath it she rsquo;s put herself into a whole different producer-demand bracket.

Markus Enochson, ldquo;Night Games (Sonar Kollektiv Records)
With his debut original effort, Swedish DJ/remixer Enochson has made off with a hybrid genre that Jamie Lidell had in the palms of his hands, namely house-washed R B/soul.

The recipe is simple, really, requiring only rudimentary house sequences and people willing to sing like James Ingram over it, such as, well, James Ingram, who guests on ldquo;Day and Night, rdquo; a ditty boasting all the technical bells and whistles of Cabaret Voltaire. Hip-hopper Masayah summons up a nice Four Tops impression over ldquo;Keep On Getting By, rdquo; Enochson rsquo;s electro-chintz aiming higher but still sounding like a loop thrown to the wind by Hall and Oates circa ldquo;Maneater, rdquo; just when it was getting safe to forget those days. Quite often the retro cheapness threatens to do this record in, despite the yeoman effort of the innumerable cameo singers, leading one to conclude that Enochson was squeamish about alienating the dance-club fabulosi who represent his bread and butter.

He easily could have damned the dance-chart torpedoes and gone for the Grammy straight up, but the night rsquo;s still young.


Outraged ranting, indie label release news and spaghetti sauce recipes are always welcome. Email ericsaeger@mindspring.

com