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New CD Releases

Our top pick for this week’s new releases is
Modest Mouse, We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank. The band’s intelligent, experimental sound gets a kick in the rear thanks to new member Johnny Marr. Marr helped define 80s alt-rock in The Smiths, and his guitar playing adds punch to the new Modest Mouse. We especially like “Invisible“, but the album is just one good rock melody after another.

DFA Records drop LCD Soundsystem’s new Sound Of Silver the same day. It’s an album made to be played & enjoyed at a house party or a dance club. Every track is there to make you strut and move. There’s no surprises here - every song here sounds a bit like earlier LCD Soundystem. But it makes you wanna groove and that’s all you need.

The hipster crowd gets a triple-dose of music to rock their trucker hats. (Yeah, we know those aren’t hip anymore. It fit the joke. Sorta.) The new Kaiser Chiefs album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob shows a little bit of growth but still touches on what made them a hit. Drums And Guns by Low adds shredding guitars to angry harmonies, for one of the meanest rock records we’ve heard this year. New York fixtures Ted Leo & The Pharmacists do what they do best on Living With The Living. Energetic guitars, beats with traces of funk & reggae and clever lyrics make this one of the year’s first must-haves for rock fans.

Another good rock pick is Jesse Malin’s new one, Glitter In The Gutter. We can’t figure out why this guy isn’t famous. Radio-friendly but with touches of streetwise punk attitude, Malin’s like a cross between The Replacements and Bruce Springsteen. In fact, Springsteen help hims out here on a duet called “Broken Radio”.

For hip-hop heads, there’s a double-CD reissue of Ruff Draft by J Dilla. His fluid, soulful beats & production helped change hip-hop, and on this re-release we hear him at his best. He’s gone, but his music lives on and we’re happy to have it.