Album Reviews

THE NEW CHRISTS
We Got This!
(Smog Veil)
For some reason, it always warms the cockles of my cockles to hear one of the old farts out-rocking the young Turks. Rob Younger has never quite matched his peak with the great Radio Birdman (one of the most influential rock & roll bands that you've never heard), but his long-running aggregation of Australian ne'er-do-wells the New Christs has continued to kick up clouds of dust for nearly two decades. We Got This! doesn't reach Birdman heights, and it could use some trimming, but it still rocks some serious ass. Michael Toland [buy it]

THE PEARLFISHERS
Sky Meadows
(Marina)
Scotland's Pearlfishers mine the same jazzy, sophisticated pop vein of 80s leading lights like Prefab Sprout and Aztec Camera, with light, McCartney-meets-Bacharach melodies, earnest vocals and a restless intelligence that keeps the songs from floating off into the ether. Leader David Scott doesn't strike any particularly unique poses on the band's fourth album, but there are so few artists working in this style it's hard to really criticize him for it. Besides, anyone unselfconscious enough to write a mash note to Todd Rundgren ("Todd is God") is OK with me. Michael Toland [buy it]

POST STARDOM DEPRESSION
Ordinary Miracles
(The Control Group/White Rabbit/King Bee)
Tacoma, Washington's Post Stardom Depression swaggers through the door with a beer in one hand and a Marshall stack in the other, ready to stomp the stage in romantic frustration. Frontperson Jeff Angell can't seem to hold a relationship together, but his broken heart is the fuel that burns in the band's no-nonsense hard rock engine. Cuts like "Let's Destroy," "Pasadena" and "The Whore I Am" exploit volume and melody in the classic manner. It doesn't hurt that Angell has a grainy, soulful voice made for this stuff, which allows him to get away with lines like "I worship at your shrine/'Cause goddamn you're divine" without embarrassment. Michael Toland [buy it]

UNEARTHLY TRANCE
Season of Séance, Science of Silence
(The Music Cartel)
Pithy phrases may be an unfair way of describing music, but here's one that encapsulates the approach of New York trio Unearthly Trance: catharsis through pain. Over agonizingly slow drum beats and bass throbs, guitarist Rion Lipynsky shrieks and groans his torment, like a terminal patient in his last minutes raging against the dying of the light. Every riff, rhythm and note screams the same thing: it hurts, man! It says something about the oppressive atmosphere of this record that a marginally faster song like "When Anti-Humanity Flourishes"—which ambles forward at a leisurely walk instead of a crawl—comes as a relief. Michael Toland [buy it]

THE WEAKERTHANS
Reconstruction Site
(Epitaph)
Winnipeg's Weakerthans make dynamic, punk-informed melodic pop that makes as much a virtue of leader John Samson's wide-open heart as it does his literary smarts. He can deadpan a line like "Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica" (from "Our Retired Explorer [Dines with Michel Foucault in Paris, 1961]") then sigh a benediction like "I stood there on a chair and watched you pray" ("[Hospital Vespers]"), without an inch of irony either way. I wish Samson's voice was a bit more forceful, as it sometimes sounds like Woody Allen's nebbish as a rock singer, but his way with a catchy hook and a bright melody more than makes up for it. Michael Toland [buy it]