Honus Honus of Man Man, Nick Thorburns of Islands and Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse comprise the force behind Mister Heavenly. It is, to say the least, a damn fine rock record. All of the musicians involved understand the appreciation of a good hook and pop song structure, but they keep the energy level high and meld their individual styles quite well. Hopefully, this isn't a one-off side project ,as I'd be particularly keen to hear more.

Paul D'Amour is the man responsible for the bass lines you likely associate with early Tool recordings. He's also the man that put out an EP as Feersum Ennjin via Silent Uproar Records in 2005. Those five songs, plus seven more are now an official full-length album. I've heard that four of the tracks were intended for a possible Lusk follow-up, but have since been absorbed into this project -- fine with me. Intelligent, layered, non-angst ridden, hard rock is not easy to come by these days, so I'll take all I can get.

Did Jessie Baylin have a recording career before this free EP of cover songs done with Richard Swift? I don't care to know. There's only disappointment at the end of that question and I'm going to willfully embrace my ignorance on it. I have listened to this EP way too many times -- an embarrassing amount. The Sonic Youth cover is perfect and the little Swift backing vocals on the Thin Lizzy song just make my day. I look forward to her forthcoming album, Little Spark, with incredibly high expectations.

You ever wonder why bands still make music videos, if they're just going to be shown on YouTube? Well, it can generate new fans and generate sales. Case in point, I saw the Funny or Die sponsored video for "48 Roses" and immediately pointed my browser to Amazon MP3 to get the whole album. It is, as expected, very much so in the realm of Calexico, DeVotchKa, etc. Fortunately, this isn't a genre I encounter too often, so it's a pleasant desert-tinged listen.

After my disappointment with Saturdays=Youth, I wasn't expecting much from this double LP. Anthony Gonzalez seemed to have moved away from the foreboding and shoegaze soundscapes into total pop territory. Much to my surprise, it seems he was able to blend the two styles for this undertaking. In fact, if you imagine that Saturdays=Youth never existed this seems like a much more intelligent follow-up to Before The Dawn Heals Us.

Something about The Rip Tide feels more contemporary, more up-to-date, than the prior records. The same instrumentation is present throughout (though, occasionally some new surprises pop up), but it seems less forlorn, less evoking of some time gone by. It's tough to tell if this is good or bad at the moment, but it's fairly safe to say that if you enjoyed the previous Beirut albums that this will fit squarely into the same pleasure center for your ears.

It's a pretty gracious compliment to listen to this record and not be immediately reminded of Grizzly Bear. It would have been so easy for Chris Taylor to take some of his rejected or half-formed ideas and just toss them together, but this record definitely has its own identity. There's almost an R&B vibe to the whole thing; thick sounds, sweet vocals with an urgency around them that's hard to pin down. It's dancey, but in that way that reeks of sex. Every time I listen to this I like it more and more.

I am told this is Thee Oh Sees most accessible album; a good sign for me given that I've not really listened to much of them before. I have a good feeling that the higher production values and instrumentation on this one is a bit of a divergence from their prior works, so it may not sit well with the longtime fans, but, assuming one can move beyond that, there's a nice energy throughout and a definite weirdness. Not my favorite thing I heard all year, but glad I heard it.

I'm a sucker for weird and distorted vocals. You put a vocoder on a song, I'm probably going to enjoy it ten times more than I would without it. With that in mind, it's hard not to enjoy this record because the vocal styles are all over the place. There's crazy electro-speak, ambient vocalizations, plenty of oohs and ahhs, smooth crooning, gospel style revelations and even squelching proclamations... all on top of incredibly thick electronic instrumentation. If you liked Mellowdrone, it makes sense for this to be the next evolutionary step.

I do not count myself among the hardcore Wilco fans. I don't scrap up every little thing they put out or go out of my way to see them in concert or busy myself with dissecting the arc of their recorded outputs style. So, I am not one to wax philosophic about where this record stands in their pantheon of releases. However, I can say that Tweedy's voice never gets old to me, and the crazy guitar outbursts from Nels Cline are always welcome. In other words, it's a great record. That is, Another Great Record from Wilco.