Rating: 6.8

Mando Diao is the second Swedish band I’ve reviewed in the past month. It appears as though the twenty-first century is upending the unspoken rule that in order to be European and play rock, you have to be from Britain. In the past year alone, indie bands like Mew or Peter Bjorn and John have demonstrated crossover success in the States and solid chops to boot. Mando Diao’s third full-length album, Ode to Ochrasy shows a talented band exploring facets beyond the 2002 garage-rock revival. Although the diversity on the album is sometimes a liability, these Swedes know what they’re doing and know how to deliver something solid.

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Rating:  8.0

The High Violets are high on the obscurity radar, even as far as Myspace bands go. However, the Portland band stands apart from many of its dream-pop contemporaries through its marriage of the right mixture of bite and beauty. To Where You Are is a potent little album that raises quite a bar above its bland name.

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Rating: 7.5

Acoustic rock is often a dubious territory. It’s a fluid gray area encompassing everything from bright and dirty folk melodies harking back to Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel to chukka-chukka punk crossovers into kinder/gentler land. In any case, you generally want Dreadnought rockers to be doing it as a “fuck this electric shit” statement rather than as an avenue to squish saccharine lullabies about girls into a more condensed commodity.

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Rating: 6.5

Hipsters must be pissed. As the reigning monarchs of pretentiousness and low-fi credibility, these frumpy-haired legions of tight-asses wearing jeans three sizes too small are now in danger of losing their pride and joy to the mainstream. In the past three years, dance rock and indie-infused nobodies have rocketed into the public eye to usher in the era of Ipod and myspace. Album sales are no longer the benchmark of budding talent, no matter how stubbornly the RIAA refuses to think otherwise. The question is whether or not Indie will now be allowed to flourish more than it ever has before or become an even more enticing prize for faltering record companies. In any case, a hell of a lot more people now have access to musical styles that were once only the mainstays of college radio and snooty dorm rooms.

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Rating: 8.0

Low-key isn’t a term often used to describe rock and roll. But every once and a while there comes a band that can bark without the bombast, emote without Emo, and grip without grandeur. One such band is The Annuals, a six-piece jazzy rock band from North Carolina. With an unassuming, diamond-cut devotion to their craft, this odd little band is a fresh breath of air among the stink of artists simply waiting in the fame line.

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Similar to The Decemberists’ work on The Crane Wife, the Kansas quintet White Whale dives into the past for their debut album WWI. It is a world of navigators and admirals, lovers and cynics, and a hell of a lot of ocean. Although a commendable effort from a band that shows remarkable promise, WWI is on the whole a deflated bag of microwaved history and detached feeling under a pretty sky of musicianship. The band is capable enough, but White Whale trips into the whimsy pit of using concept art and fable as an avenue for forging a memorable sound. The result is a sweet outing of daring that doesn’t grip, but seldom fails to glow.

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