B-Sides
Modest Mouse
No One’s First and You’re Next
(Sony/Epic)
***1/2
Some bands have a knack for putting out challenging and provocative material every time out of the gate — on No One’s First and You’re Next, an odds-and-sods collection of songs recorded between 2004’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News and 2007’s We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank, Modest Mouse brings it way, way more than most other so-called “indie” bands. B-sides have never sounded so good: “Guilty Cocker Spaniels” feels like someone dared the band to fill a song with as many catchy hooks and interesting breakdowns as possible. Yet it’s Isaac Brock, continuing the intrigue with his bipolar, often creepy singing style, who makes the track stand out. “Before I could spit it out / I guess the words had burnt my mouth / What could I say? / Worst of all I laid it out / So you could take it out of context anyway,” Brock moans with unparalleled bitterness — words that most people can relate to, but couldn’t say with quite the same flair.
CURTIS WRIGHT

Dance-Rap
Amanda Blank
I Love You
(Downtown)
**1/2
The Philadelphia-born dance-rapper Amanda Blank has been kicking around hip music circles for about three years now — she’s part of the Santogold/Diplo/Spank Rock in crowd, and is perhaps best known for her guest vocal on “Bump,” off Spank Rock’s YoYoYoYoYo album, memorably boasting that she “keeps it dirty / not like Fergie / and the Black Eyed Peas.” On I Love You, her debut full-length, she lives up to her pledge of dirtiness with songs like “Something Bigger, Something Better” and “Might Like You Better.” (It appears that she might like you better “if we slept together.” Also, it would be nice if you had a big dick.) Every song is slick and deliberately smeary, sleazy, and synthetic-sounding — it’s a sound that conjures up images of brightly coloured spandex with sweat soaking through it. It’s not a bad-sounding record (although I prefer the stripped-down, Tone-Loc sound of “Bump”), but few of Blank’s sexual come-ons have much of a personality. Of course, maybe the problem is that I listened to it at home and not a club: this is music for getting drunk to and then stumbling home with a hipster stranger. All I’m left with, meanwhile, is a coffee headache and a slight burn on my thigh from where I rested my laptop.
PAUL MATWYCHUK

Post-Rock
Sian Alice Group
Troubled, Shaken Etc.
(The Social Registry)
***
Think of Troubled, Shaken Etc., the second full-length album from this post-rock collective from London, England, as a hibernating bear. Its first few tracks are heavy and sleepy — too sleepy for my tastes, actually — and manage to sound both cozy and ominous at the same time, as if you’re walking through the wintry woods with a bellyful of honey. It’s atmospheric, but except for the propulsive “Close to the Ground,” not particularly interesting. And then, around Track Seven (“First Song — Angelina”), the album wakes up with a roar. Well, maybe not a roar, but some very pretty piano arpeggios and a haunting vocal from group leader Sian Alice Ahern — you can’t quite make out the lyrics, but the longing in her voice is what matters. Why, a couple of the songs are even danceable: “Vanishing,” with its Arthur Russell-esque marimba riff, and especially “The Low Lights,” which reminds me of that sexy folk song that inspires Britt Ekland to strip naked and writhe around her bedroom in The Wicker Man. Definitely not a scene (or a song) to sleep through.
PAUL MATWYCHUK

Middle Of The Road
Rob Thomas
Cradlesong
(Emblem/Atlantic)
***1/2
Rob Thomas is the king of not-too-hard, not-too-soft, mom-pleasing rock that will spin endlessly on an array of radio stations. That said, both as the frontman of ’90s pop-rock group juggernaut Matchbox 20 and on his subsequent solo efforts (including his new record, Cradlesong), he’s written a slew of well-crafted songs whose accessibility shouldn’t be held against them. Cradlesong is packed with upbeat tunes: the hopeful, soaring, “Someday” (“Maybe someday we’ll live our lives out loud”), the title track, a celebration of the simple life (“And all our friends they moved to Hollywood / But we ain’t that desperate yet”), and “Getting Late,” on which Thomas muses on what happens “while you’re watching over the moments that make up your life.” Thomas is careful not to stray far from his usual sound, but he doesn’t rehash melodies or musical ideas either — throwing some interesting vibrating percussion into the opening to “Give Me the Meltdown” or adding some twee-ish background vocals on “Hard on You.” With more of a focus on pop than rock, Thomas surprises with a record that’s far from bland.
MICHELLE GARCIA

House
Paul Oakenfold
Perfecto Vegas
(Thrive)
**1/2
Let me admit something right off the bat: I know nothing about house music. Nothing. So I don’t know whether I sound like a philistine when I say every track on Paul Oakenfold’s Perfecto Vegas sounds so insanely similar that I cannot differentiate between any of them. Very energetic and often quite trippy, the album certainly evokes a time and a place. Call me ignorant (no, seriously — do it) but aside from a few interspersed trippy moments and pulsating beats, Perfecto Vegas is nothing but buildups and slowdowns. And yet house devotees adore Oakenfold. Why can’t I do the same? Perhaps it’s like my feelings about the Grateful Dead: I can’t help but feel like I’m missing out on something. Am I not on the right drugs? Or am I not sitting in the right posh lounge, swallowing enough high-priced drinks? And if I’m not, could someone please take me there? And could you buy my drinks as well? These CD reviews don’t pay much.
CURTIS WRIGHT