Aural Fixations

DESTROYER
Your Blues
(Merge)
For his fifth album under the Destroyer sobriquet, Canadian songwriter Dan Bejar takes a different path than the opulent roadways he's traversed in the past. While before he's used a full band to fill in the details of his intricate, often extravagant glam/psych compositions, for Your Blues he's stripped his sound down to a more intimate level of presentation. (more)

GEORGE HARRISON
Thirty Three & 1/3
George Harrison
Somewhere in England
Gone Troppo
Cloud Nine
Live in Japan
(Dark Horse/Capitol)
Apres la morte, le deluge. Sarcasm aside, it's only natural that Capitol would bring the late George Harrison's lost albums back into print following his death; it's a tragedy that so much of the underrated ex-Beatle's work had slipped into obscurity in the first place. (Especially in the case of the blockbuster-selling Cloud Nine, which boasted a #1 hit.) These six albums, originally issued on Harrison's own Dark Horse imprint, have been given the usual remastering/bonus track treatment; most have song-by-song notes excerpted from Harrison's autobiography I Me Mine. How well does this music hold up after 25 years? Let's find out. (more)

ANNE MCCUE
Roll
(Messenger)
Anne McCue has quite a résumé, including a handful of bands in her native Australia that ranged from pop to punk to metal, plus a year spent in Vietnam as a solo act. Now based in Los Angeles, McCue's plugged herself into the city's thriving underground roots rock scene and launched her second album Roll. (more)

DOUG POWELL
Day For Night
(Parasol)
Nashville's Doug Powell has existed on the periphery of the pop world for almost a decade, beloved by hardcore power pop cognoscenti, but known to the rest of the universe, if at all, as part of the short-lived supergroup Swag. While it's a shame his music hasn't gotten the mainstream acclaim it deserves, it also means he's been able to develop his talents as he sees fit, without outside pressure. He's made some excellent records in the past and continued to develop his own take on power pop, borrowing bits of Todd Rundgren, XTC, Cheap Trick and ELO and using them as nuts and bolts in his own distinctive construction. His last album The Lost Chord (which also folded a few ounces of—gasp!—progressive rock into his batter) indicated he was about ready for a breakthrough; lo and behold, here it is. (more)