Amanda Palmer
Who Killed Amanda Palmer?
(Roadrunner)
***
Nope, she’s not related to the Twin Peaks Laura Palmer. The Amanda Palmer here is that familiar, grape-lipsticked, smudgy black eyelined face from everyone’s favourite crash-cabaret punks, The Dresden Dolls. In her debut solo effort, Palmer packs a wallop of smashy, heavy piano overlaid with her recognizable contralto drawls and hollers (contrasted, if only for a moment, with a nice ’n’ high Annie Clark on the Rodgers and Hammerstein cover “What’s the Use of Wond’rin?”). Not surprisingly, there’s some pretty dark lyric material here — most notably in “Oasis,” a punchy, surf-rock sorta ballad about a girl getting raped and subsequently having an abortion. There’s plenty of pithy, smarmy jabs at pop culture too: I particularly enjoy her bemusedly whispering, “What the fuck is up with this shit?” on “Guitar Hero.” Though the artwork and the liner notes by Neil Gaiman may lead you to believe this is a concept album, these sadly have little to do with the tracks, and more to do with extra merch ops. 
FAWNDA MITHRUSH

The Clips
Matterhorn
(Unfamiliar)
****
Being a Vancouver expat, you can imagine my frustration at discovering two excellent West Coast bands — Mother Mother last week, and now The Clips — only now that I’ve moved an entire province inland. The strutting indie-rock freakouts on the latter’s debut, Matterhorn, make those nostalgia pangs ache all the harder. The Clips write shoutable choruses, powerhouse rhythms, and seem like one massive, calculated attempt to make kids dance. They’re LCD Soundsystem with a real backing band, or The Rapture with a longer attention span. At their best, as on “Kassel” and especially “Eyesuck,” Edo Van Breeman’s vocals float breezily over the rest of the band’s barrage, led by well-placed keyboards and a hapless snare drum that gets thoroughly pummeled in all but the slowest songs. And for all there is to ogle already, Matterhorn is still the work of a relatively young band. Barring a disastrous sophomore slump, they might have even better tricks up their sleeves next time around.
MICHAEL HINGSTON

The City Streets    
Concentrated Living
(Paperbird)
*****
It’s been a long time coming, but between swigs of cheap wine, deathwish winter tours, and passing out in your hallway closet, Edmonton’s favourite pill-poppers have managed to release a sophomore album that tugs at your heartstrings and your corroded liver.
Concentrated Living is mostly narrative, like an old western story-song filtered through Kerouac and Li Po, Bukowski and The Replacements. The Streets made their bones on the road, and this disc shows they have the bruises to prove it.
Singer Rick Reid is no stranger to loss and longing, but the man knows the flowers of heartbreak can be beautiful in hindsight. “My friend was there when I ran into the street / The truck was gone, so was her little heartbeat,” he sings on “Ballad of a Blind Dog,” the group’s tearjerkin’ take on Old Yeller — and you know damn well that every word of it is true.
A petty Edmonton expat once wrote an open letter to the group stating “You’re not Bruce Springsteen, I think you should lay off,” but The Boss hasn’t written a song half as good as these in years, so maybe the rest of the world should lay off and let The City Streets do their thing.
TRAVIS SARGENT