Rating: 6.0

Slide guitar and harmonica are the dusky super duo in country and folk rock, melding like beer and chips, steak and potatoes, or cheese and crackers. A band could be composed of a troupe of retarded turtles, but if there’s slide guitar and harmonica, you can’t help but tap your toes. Seattle folkster Rocky Votolato incorporates plenty of both on his second record with Barsuk, The Brag & Cuss. The singer-songwriter melds a warm retro approach with an organic vibe to create a record that is as comforting as a crackling campfire.

Postcard from Kentucky [mp3]

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Rating: 7.0

Maybe it’s the humidity, but Immaculate Machine’s music conjures up images of cropped-haired liberal arts girls wearing American Apparel panties and high socks dancing in dorms. It’s either erotic or infuriating, a feeling I sometimes run into with indie pop releases that are painted with pastels, keyboards, and clean guitars. But as I will say again and again, if there’s substance in the music, those imaginary theater majors can dance in my head as long as they want. The Canadian trio’s whimsical approach to tune-crafting on Fables weaves a lovely tapestry of jangly hits that stick like glue.

Dear Confessor [mp3]

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1st Mariner Arena, Baltimore 06-08-07

For me, Tool is something of an experience. Sure, the atmospherics and mystical content are retarded at first glance, but there is much more depth in Tool’s music than most credit. I’m mostly talking about writers over at Pitchfork and Stylus who leap at the opportunity to cut an hour of writing time by pasting failing grades on the band’s albums and not much else. I can understand not liking modern metal, but reading verbose jargon about how Tool is somehow the epitome of shit because they aren’t an Englishman with crooked teeth and a Rickenbacker is particularly grating. Tool is a lesser Led Zeppelin, not only because of the mystique and lyrical content, but because Tool is a band of four musical virtuosos. Adam Jones is a modern hero of the rock guitar, pulling more effects out of limited pedals than magician’s tricks out of a hat. Danny Carey can pound drums like a Ben Hur slave-driver on speed. Justin Chancellor can make his bass sound like a screaming guitar, synth funk machine, or metal factory at the turn of a beat. And Maynard James Keenan can bellow out so much disgust, loathing, and incendiary blast furnace rage that he could make it an Olympic event.

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Rating: 6.3

The Go Find is a characteristic melodic indie band of the latter half of the Ought Decade, drawing on the twee pop and lovable aching of bands like Death Cab for Cutie. However, this solo project is from the other side of the Atlantic in the heart of Belgium. Dieter Sermeus incorporates jangling guitar arpeggios with plenty of digitization and somber lyrics. He has a penchant for thick synthetic bass and mid-tempo marches which glaze over the production in a viscosity that gives weight, but never glowers. Although most of Stars on the Wall is familiar, there’s plenty of genuine sweetness to appeal to college rockers and starry-eyed dreamers alike.

Dictionary [mp3]

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Rating: 5.5

What do you get when you mix a former guitarist of a respected indie outfit, chiming guitars, a piano, and a lot of ooey-gooey feeling? Well, generally you get shit, but in this case it’s not quite that extreme and at least it’s not a major label doing the dumping. All Smiles is the name for the pet project of former Grandaddy guitarist Jim Fairchild. The Modesto axeman teams up with Janet Weiss of Sleater-Kinney and Joe Plummer of Modest Mouse to form his solo debut, Ten Readings of a Warning. Although Fairchild certainly knows how to spin a yarn and deal out wild poetry with both his voice and his instrument, the album is largely a mixed bag of a few standouts and a lot of dull.

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