These Brooklyn clowns call themselves Goes Cube and they have a new EP available at InSound: Beckon the Dagger God. You should get it post haste.

But be warned! I can tell you from first-hand rocksperience that there’s legitimate rocking involved. So proceed only with the ability and desire to raise the devil horns. I’m going to take the easy way out and say if you like your Fugazi/Drive Like Jehu/At the Drive-In/Hum flavored with a spritz of Nirvana, these guys will be your favorite new band of the ever. Even Dethklok themselves might call it “brutal.”

You can read more about em here, here, and here. They’re also touring coast to coast soon. If they come to your town, drop in to witness the unstoppable shreddery, and ask Matt to regale you with his version of the Doobie’s “What a Fool Believes.”

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Primarily known for his late ‘50s and early ‘60s doo-wop hits, both solo and with the Belmonts (“I Wonder Why,” “Love Came to Me,” “Runaround Sue,” “The Wanderer”), Dion has always been a far more versatile and gifted artist than history has recognized. One of the best rock singers of all time, Dion was also rock’s first true chameleon, recording a body of work that includes doo-wop, folk, a “Wall-of-Sound” masterpiece of an album (Born to Be With You with Phil Spector), gospel, and finally, with his fantastic new release, Bronx in Blue, the blues.

According to Dion, the blues was his first true musical love, and he rips through 12 covers and 2 originals on Bronx in Blue like a master. The production is beautifully sparse – think Johnny Cash’s Rick Rubin produced albums – featuring only Dion on surprisingly skillful acoustic guitar, minimal drums, and the singer’s greatest instrument: his voice, which thankfully, is right up-front in the mix. Not having faded like Brian Wilson’s or Neil Diamond’s, Dion’s voice can still make words soar, and he uses it to great effect here, giving every track an emotional urgency, be it playful, angry, or melancholy. From the album’s stomping opener, “Walkin’ Blues,” to quieter songs like “I Let My Baby Do That,” Dion’s obvious love and enthusiasm for the material is infectious, and it helps turn each song into a minor gem. The result is an album that stands among his best work; Bronx in Blue reestablishes Dion as a musical force to be reckoned with, and when placed alongside his previous albums, adds a brilliant layer to an already rich catalog of music.

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Yeah, you know what this is — it’s another list, bitches! The second in my highly self-indulgent look back at some of the cultural crap that diverted my brain during the surprisingly epic year of 2005. The first installment laid down the law on the very bestest graphic novels and comics and whatnot, the third will cover movies.

Best Music of 2005

1. Edan - Beauty & the Beat
From out of nowhere, this crazy dude unleashed the nuttiest, most weirdly playful and ferocious musical missive of the year. Old school beatery and psychedelia meet in a ’60s garage and something new is born. Has to be heard to be believed.

2. Animal Collective - Feels
A wonderfully puzzling and beautiful drifting haze of a record that grooves where you don’t expect. It takes some patience, but is more often than not quite stunning. Sounds like nothing else ever and begs to be listened to over and over. Genuinely dreamy!

3. Black Mountain - Black Mountain
I love the sound of this. It’s like some ’70s stoner rock group added more instruments, some ladies, and decided to soak up Appalachia. Deft, surprisng, and elaborate heavy sonic sludge folk. Or something.

4. MIA - Arular
Take the Missy/Tim template, add some dub, some spare/funky beats, an earful of hooks, and you get this fantastic dose of brand new pop.

5. New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Guitar pop so ridiculously calculated and baroque that it should collapse under its own self-conciousness — except these guys have more magnificent, unbelievably huge hooks and harmonies PER SONG than some bands are able to muster in their whole career. Their best, most consistent record to date.

Kudos also to:
-Lightning Bolt - Hypermagic Mountain: The aural embodiment of shred. You will be rocked…into FUCKING DUST.
-Blood On the Wall - Awesomer: Gloriously unassuming and unpretentious rock that mashes together Pavement, Sonic Youth, and the Pixies into one glorious whole.
-Kanye West - Late Registration: Yeah, yeah, it’s pretty wonderful. Overlong and uneven, but contains a generous amount of undeniably incredible, soaring “how the hell did he do that?!?” moments.
-Sleater-Kinney - The Woods: “The Fox” makes my head want to explode with awesomely huge guitar delight.
-Beck - Guero: Ok, there are some serious deadspots here, but overall Guero is remarkably close to great. “Girl,” “Rental Car,” and “Earthquake Weather” are particularly glorious in their gloriousness.

Fie!

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In the years following John Lennon’s murder, a strange thing happened. It seemed that because he met a tragically violent end, critics hesitated in truly evaluating Lennon’s solo work. In addition, Paul McCartney routinely became the recipient of pot-shots from reviewers, and a generation has been raised thinking that McCartney’s solo output is nothing but mediocre ballads and pop fluff, while Lennon continued breaking ground up until his death. Neither is true, but neither is completely false, either; McCartney has made several masterpieces (McCartney, Ram, Band on the Run, Flaming Pie, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard) and some awful albums (Driving Rain, Off the Ground, Press to Play, Pipes of Peace). Lennon made some horrid records (Sometime in New York City, Mind Games, the unlistenable Two Virgins), some mediocre albums (Walls and Bridges, Double Fantasy), and two all-time greats (Plastic Ono Band, Imagine). Even on their most disappointing albums, however, McCartney and Lennon showed flashes of brilliance. McCartney’s excellent career-overview, Wingspan, evenly divided his work between the “Hits” (Disc 1, which included all his charting singles) and the “History” (Disc 2, which featured all his best lesser-known album tracks). Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon, a new 2-disc collection of Lennon’s best solo work, takes a slightly different approach; like Wingspan, it jumbles the chronology of the songs, but this set mixes Lennon’s classics right in with the lost gems. It makes for a fresh listening experience, and an album that contains almost all of what one really needs to hear from Lennon’s sometimes genius, sometimes sophomoric, solo catalog.

The set begins with Lennon’s last truly great song, the joyous “(Just Like) Starting Over,” taken from 1980’s Double Fantasy. The rest of the usual suspects are here as well, including, of course, “Imagine” (a classic, granted, but also hard to swallow, considering Lennon wrote, “Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can,” while sitting in his mansion), the wonderfully melancholy “Jealous Guy,” and the still-exhilarating “Instant Karma! (We All Shine On).”

But it’s the inclusion of songs that aren’t well known that make this the best Lennon collection ever released. “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out)” (from 1974’s Walls and Bridges) may be the best song of Lennon’s entire solo career. Masterfully produced, it contains some of his most honest lyrics, great slide guitar, a soaring middle eight, and would’ve been at home on The Beatles (a.k.a. The White Album). Also present is Mind Games’ beautiful “Out the Blue,” Plastic Ono Band’s relentless “Isolation,” and the excellent, Cheap Trick-backed version of “I’m Losing You,” (from 1998’s Lennon Anthology box set of outtakes).

Like any best-of, there are some head-scratchingly absent tracks. Imagine’s “Crippled Inside,” a raving country send-up, featuring George Harrison on dobro, is essential Lennon, and should be here. Lennon’s jaw-dropping Ronettes cover, “Be My Baby,” the standout track from Lennon Anthology, also deserves to be here. Even more perplexing, due to these absences, is the presence of half-baked songs like “Intuition” and the mind-numbing “Woman is the Nigger of the World.”

Ultimately, Working Class Hero has all the ups and downs that marked Lennon’s solo output, which makes it a fitting retrospective. The best moments — “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down And Out),” “Isolation,” “I’m Losing You” – and the worst moments – “Power to the People,” “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” “Intuition” — show that for those who possess it, genius is just a series of moments that sometimes come in spades, or sometimes don’t come at all. It was true for McCartney, and it was true for Lennon.

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If the Traveling Wilburys ever recruited a 6th member, it certainly would have been Dave Edmunds; the Welsh born roots rocker — easily one of the all-time great guitarists who is never recognized as such – married Phil Spector production with Chuck Berry rock and Everly Brothers harmonies to create a sound that was sometimes country, sometimes pop, sometimes rockabilly, but always distinctive and exuberantly fun. And he did it before anyone else, including Tom Petty, Bonnie Raitt, and Bruce Springsteen. Finally reissued and remastered, 1978’s Tracks on Wax 4 and 1981’s Twangin’ are two gems chock full of blistering guitar, sing-a-long power pop, and dirty rock n’ roll. They are also the last albums Edmunds ever recorded with Rockpile (his backing group that included songwriting partner Nick Lowe), and perhaps not coincidentally, are the last truly great albums Edmunds has made.

Though slightly uneven, Tracks on Wax 4 is home to some of the guitarist’s greatest work. Opening number “Trouble Boys” is a deliriously good rockabilly stomper, and would’ve fit comfortably on his masterpiece, Repeat When Necessary. “Readers Wives,” another screamer, falls flat, but the pulsating Buddy Holly tribute “Deborah” rights the ship, showcasing Edmunds at his best, with crystal clear (but not overdone) production, masterful guitar, and an exhilarating vocal.

Twangin’ was Edmunds’ next-to-last album of straight up rock n’ roll before he entered the wilderness of the Jeff Lynne-produced synth years (which is saying a lot, considering this critic is a monster ELO fan). The joyous “It’s Been So Long,” with its insanely catchy call-and-response chorus, almost dares you not to sing along, and the heartbreaking “(I’m Gonna Start) Living Again If It Kills Me” somehow does the same. The John Fogerty cover, “Almost Saturday Night,” shows that when Edmunds picks the right material, there’s no stopping him; this version is better than the Fogerty original.

Tracks on Wax 4 and Twangin’, while not opuses like Repeat When Necessary and Get It, were Edmunds’ last records to have that perfect mix of clean garage band production and quality songs of all genres. Though Edmunds is mostly a cult favorite at this point in his career, these albums remind us why he deserves to be remembered. For those who don’t know his work, they’re the perfect place to discover a lost legend.

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There’s something to be said for knowing what you do well and not trying to deviate from that strength. Hard rock group Disturbed is a perfect example of this axiom. Their recipe of classic Heavy Metal head-banging and arena-friendly anthems filtered through Nu Metal musical sensibilities have proven successful with the buying public on their past two CDs.

And with their new release, Ten Thousand Fists, it is a case of more of the same, which is not a bad thing. Songs like “Deify”, “Stricken” and the title track have a driving backbeat with lead guitarist Dan Donegan’s crunchy licks providing a more than capable compliment to lead singer’s David Draiman sonic howl. Even a remake of Genesis’ “Land of Confusion” has been perfectly reworked to suit Disturbed’s brand of metal.

Perhaps this CD may not break new ground as far as testing the limits of hard rock. But if you’re looking for something to ease that long drive home from a hard day at the office or need some background music to help release some pent-up aggression, you can’t do any better than Ten Thousand Fists

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With the renaissance of Rock/Metal music becoming stronger by the month, there’s usually a ton of one-hit wonders that get their 15 minutes and get out the door. Not so with Thor. This guy has been banging around the Rock scene for over thirty years and with his new CD, “Thor Against The World”, he proves that he still has some chops left.

The most prominent thing that comes to mind most about this CD is Thor’s chameleon-like vocal ability. All throughout “Thor Against The World”, his voice goes from a variety of style changes whether it’s an Alex Mitchell (Circus of Power) cadence in the title track to a homage to Alice Cooper in the aptly named “Creature Feature” to an Ian Astbury inflection for the single off the CD called “Glimmer” (although, I’m not sure why there’s a sax solo in a two-part guitar hair metal song - sounds more than odd). But other than that unusual gaffe, don’t be surprised if you find yourself tapping your feet and jamming on the air guitar throughout this CD as the music is a very solid mix of late 70’s Arena Rock and 80’s Hair Metal. Hell, there’s even the requisite power ballad to satisfy the lighter-waving crowd.

So, if you’re into Lamb of God or Clutch, this CD is probably not the one for you. But, for those of you out there who still dig classic rock and roll or have problems letting go of your acid-wash jeans and pine for the days when Metal ruled the world, this CD is right up your alley.

You can purchase the CD reviewed here using the Amazon link below or by going to the Smog Veil website.

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Once you’re into the first minute of the CD’s initial song, “Circles”, you can tell that Bob Mould’s experimentation in electronica has paid off in “Body of Song”, his return to a more guitar-oriented rock CD. His voice is actually in front of the music, not lumped in with the screeching guitar chords. There are slight changes in his vocal delivery, whether it’s a low, almost raspy baritone in the low key “Always Tomorrow” or using a voice modulator (think Cher’s “Believe” but not as disco cheesy or irritating) in “(Shine Your) Light Love Hope” and “I Am Vision, I Am Sound)”. And there are some slower and (dare I say) power ballads like “High Fidelity” and “Gauze of Friendship”, which may freak out some longtime Husker Du or Sugar fans but in a good way.

Even though with these new facets, the constants in a Bob Mould song have always been solid song writing and catchy alt-rock hooks and those properties are still intact and flourish with this new release. For example, the first single, “Paralyzed”, a song about a dysfunctional one-sided relationship, is typical in Mould’s ability to craft an upbeat tune about such a downer of an idea. So, for those who are looking to escape the drone of mainstream radio or those who can appreciate an artist truly immersed in his craft, you can’t do any better than “Body of Song”.

You can buy the CD reviewed by clicking on the Amazon link below.

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