A Guide to Domino Records

"Tonight there'll be a ruckus, regardless of what went before," predicts Arctic Monkeys' songwriter Alex Turner in "The View From The Afternoon," the opening track of the band's debut album, living up to his promise by taking us on a whirlwind tour of provincial teenage life as experienced in Britain today. It's effectively one long, extended fight, from rumbling with nightclub bouncers to getting slapped around by cops in the back of a riot van — a typical end to a typical evening in his hometown Sheffield, the staunchly left-wing northern industrial city laid low in the '80s when Thatcherite stringencies killed off the local coal and steel industries. But with his tales of Eccleshall phonies in Hunter's Bar and taxi-rides to Hillsborough, Turner invests his songs with a vivid sense of locality comparable to the coolest of American hip-hop 'hoods. That same strain of South Yorkshire pride comes through in the unapologetic dialect inflections he employs, and in the track title "Mardy Bum" (Sheffield-speak for "whinger"), which finds him chiding a girlfriend who's "got the face on."

Sheffield's pop, like the city itself, has always been marked by a sardonic, rebellious artiness — previous exponents have included Pulp, ABC, Cabaret Voltaire and the Human League — and so it's no surprise to find Turner making Shakespearean reference to "Montagues and Capulets," or cynically observing that "there's only music so that there's new ringtones," or being singularly unimpressed by a nightclub show-off in the single "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor." Or, indeed, calling the album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, a perfect encapsulation of the bluff, no-nonsense local attitude.

Harnessed to a contemporary punk-pop sound infused with the scrawny, white-boy R&B feel of the early Stones, Who and Pretty Things, the result is the most potent release so far from the post-Libertines wave of British social-observation rockers, by a band that appreciates the value of taut discipline, but without sacrificing either the raucous edge that gives it life, or the artistry that illuminates that life.

When I spoke to Clinic's main man, Ade Blackburn, around the time of this quietly psychotic debut album from 2000, his name-dropping was abnormally recherché: hot favorites included Crime, the Californian cop-dressed punks, and doo-wop group the Penguins. In actuality, the ghosts of Phil Spector, the Velvet Underground, the 13th Floor Elevators and Pixies (the unsettling bits that Kurt Cobain left behind) swept variously through the band's spooky sound at the time — "record-collection rock" comes no hipper than Internal Wrangler. Far from lame referencing, though, the lab-coat-wearing Liverpudlian quartet here translated their fanaticism into a brilliantly singular breed of garage rock. In their armory: twangin' guitar, a '60s Phillips organ sound so thick you could fill your sandwich with it (see "The Second Line"), plus even further-flung relics such as harmonium, harpsichord, pocket clarinet and "psychedelic box," which provides the weird vibrato effect on the title track. Post-Britpop, such invention was just what the doctor ordered.

Strawberry Jam assumes its place in a paradoxical trajectory that has found Animal Collective getting stranger as they tend toward the more conventional, and vice-versa. The group started focusing on songcraft on 2005’s breakthrough Feels, but the follow-up takes another step, with compositions that are more rigorous in at least presenting the illusion of conventional rock songs. (It’s certainly a world away from the smeary murmurs and abstract blasts of noise that mark Animal Collective's early catalog.) “Peacebone” rambunctiously sets the tone, with a pounding, primitive rhythm and manic vocals that warn against obsessions with the past and wander into choice bits of skewed wordplay (“I was a jugular vein in a juggler’s girl...I was supposedly leaking the most interesting colors”). The song also spins out something like a store of traditional musical riffs, though the more you listen, the less comprehensible the tools within start to sound — hence a mix of calypso, art rock and Godzilla growls that come together to sound like nothing with any real precedent. The rest of the album follows similar cues, with highlights including “Chores” (a song sung by Panda Bear that features a gorgeous bit of would-be church music near its end) and “Fireworks” (a live favorite that careens between demonic rock screams and melodic yelps from what sound like very joyous elves).

The Notwist first surfaced in the early '90s during the grunge years, before they began to experiment with electronic textures on 12 and Shrink. It was on Neon Golden that they got it right, though, and the nods to Autechre and Aphex Twin on “This Room” are an integral part to the music rather than just bolt-on curlicues.

Markus Acher hides a wealth of emotion behind his simple vocal style, recalling Belle and Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch on tracks such as “Pick Up The Phone”. This combination of restrained-but-heartfelt vocalization, mixed with electronic beeps and blats, can be seen as a clear inspiration to later electronic pop acts like The Postal Service. Headphone freaks will find plenty to explore in the dub space of tracks like “Propeller 9,” which layers FX over piano, banjo and sax. The Notwist wrote their first bona-fide gold-medal song in “Pilot,” which sits somewhere between New Order, Arab Strap and the Pet Shop Boys. Maybe back in 2002 this excellent little band were overlooked in favor of the crash, bang, wallop of neo-garage acts like White Stripes and The Hives, but this counterintuitive mix of rootsy, organic music and creaky electronica is a thrilling, unique listen.

Like most contemporary duos, the Kills are both constrained and liberated by their format: They need to draw their energy from within a small unit, but also channel it out into something bigger than the sum of their limited parts. Some duos choose to evolve by super-sizing with guests, but on their third full-length, Alison “VV” Mosshart and Jamie “Hotel” Hince have chosen to make minimal adjustments that resonate maximally. The most stunning of them is that the Kills have discovered their inner groove. (No wonder Spank Rock’s XXXChange helps out on production on a few tracks.) It still sounds like there’s only two of them — they haven’t suddenly gone orch-pop or anything — but many of the tracks have a great pulse that’s all the more sexy for not being in-your-face (just check out “Cheap and Cheerful,” “Last Day of Magic,” “Hook and Line” or “Alphabet Pony”). And almost of all them throw in a simple, deadly break: well-placed handclaps or a sudden acceleration that hurtles them to the finish line. “Hook and Line,” for instance, is a lesson in how to wring out maximum effect out of a relatively simple tune; it brings to mind the ruthless efficiency of PJ Harvey’s debut, paired with the brooding sexiness of early Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Brilliantly rejuvenating themselves, the Kills demonstrate how much you can do with very little.

If The Devil, You + Me was your first exposure to German indie band The Notwist, you would probably be forgiven for not realizing that they started life as a heavy-metal outfit. The pared-back, unshowy but sun-dappled instrumentation that recalls American Analog Set on songs like “Good Lies” is about as far from the virtuosity and brash showmanship of your average metal band as you can get. This said, little flashes of their origins still remain. Cuts such as the sublime “Gloomy Planets” are shot through with jagged shards of buzz-saw guitar, but they're not designed to overwhelm the listener so much as to throw the rest of the song into sharp relief. This uneasy listening experience is a particular gift of main songwriter Markus Acher — who beguiles with sweet and simple melodies and heartfelt lyrics only to subtly subvert the listener’s experience with creeping anxiety. The ambiguities of crackling electronics and glitchcore techniques pull the rug out from under the listener in slow motion, making The Devil, You & Me a little gem of an album.

When the UK dance-punk trio Test Icicles broke up on the heels of their 2005 debut, guitarist Devonte Hynes traded his battle ax for a steel-petal guitar and ditched Bacchus in favor of sober realism as his muse. Or so it seems, given the sound of his solo debut, Falling Off the Lavender Bridge. It's an indie-pop record that tarries with alt-country, folk, chamber pop, even musical theater, moving with the rhythms of a lazy, pensive Sunday afternoon.

Though the British Hynes wrote Bridge's songs, the album was engineered in America's heartland, with Saddle Creek resident producer Mike Mogis and featuring cameos from Faint drummer Clark Baechle and members of Tilly and the Wall and Cursive. Brimming with lush instrumentals — along with the occasional profane lyric, usually uttered in frustration with the opposite sex and Hynes' own perceived shortcomings — Falling is cogent, unabashedly melodic and stridently, sometimes painfully, earnest. While the music is relentlessly upbeat, Hynes funnels the renowned Test Icicle brashness into his lyrics. "It's All Shit," a whimsical woodwind interstitial a la Masterpiece Theater, rides up against Hynes' angst-ridden words, cribbed from the bathroom walls of Conor Oberst's horny alter-ego. Such contrast can be unsettling, but real art doesn't hew to propriety or emotional restraint.

Water Curses is comprised of four songs that were recorded during the sessions for Animal Collective’s 2007 hallmark Strawberry Jam — though there’s enough difference between the EP and the album to make it count as considerably more than just a dump of outtakes. Taken as a whole, Water Curses ranks as Animal Collective’s poppiest gesture yet, with a newly apparent sense of song structure and simple hummability burrowing deep into that part of the brain where earwigs go. The opening title track finds Avey Tare flitting through melodies in dense lyrical lines that rise and fall over a carnival mix of polka drum taps and glimmers of what may or may not be real steel drums. “Street Flash” follows in a more meditative mode, with a slowed rush of sounds and a brilliantly grafted sample of a scream (or a cry or a laugh — it’s hard to tell, exactly) acting as the hook. “Cobwebs” is slower still, and prettier, with a pointed lyrical refrain “We’re not going underground.” The outgoing “Seal Eyeing” plays like a contemplative hymn, all but ambient in terms of energy and irrepressible in terms of tune.

It's not that often that side projects are more ambitious than the players' main bands, but the Last Shadow Puppets, the collaboration between the Arctic Monkeys' Alex Turner and the Rascals' Miles Kane, is one of those rare birds. With their day jobs, Turner and Kane are revivalists of different strains of "angry young British man" rock, but with the help of drummer/producer James Ford (also of Simian Mobile Disco), arranger Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy), and the London Metropolitan Orchestra, on The Age of the Understatement they revitalize the lush, symphonic pop of early Scott Walker and David Bowie, when they needed an orchestra to express just how sweeping their feelings were. The title track's galloping strings-and-timpani drama begins the album, making it readily apparent just how ironic The Age of the Understatement's name is, and just how well the Last Shadow Puppets have recaptured that lavish late-'60s/early-'70s sound. The main update to it comes from Turner and Kane's voices; stark and suave like Walker and Bowie they are not, but that's a good thing -- their boyish, unpretentious voices and brotherly harmonies keep the album from dipping into kitsch. Instead, a surprising urgency runs through The Age of the Understatement, most noticeably on the taut "Calm Like You" and "Separate and Ever Deadly," but also on softer moments like "The Meeting Place" and the extremely Walker-esque "My Mistakes Were Made for You." Whenever the drama threatens to become too monotonous, the band knows when to change things up: "I Don't Like You Anymore" brings in more of the Arctic Monkeys' spit and spite, building up to a livid guitar solo that practically shakes with loathing, while "Standing Next to Me" and "Time Has Come" rein in the bombast. Despite all the intensity, the Last Shadow Puppets have a light touch -- their songs are short and don't overstay their welcome, and the whole affair is just arty and indulgent enough to make it special. It's not an overstatement to say that The Age of the Understatement is a likable, accomplished working holiday.

For ten years now, Clinic have been chipping away at their own mentally unstable breed of garage psychedelia, oblivious to its relative trendiness at any given time and seemingly even less hassled by any woolly muso notions of “progression.” After four albums and two singles collections, 2008’s Do It arrived sounding exactly like they always do — primitive, macabre, ageless. The sense of déjà vu-doo is intentional, even down to the album’s sole out-and-out thrasher, "Shopping Bag," arriving at track five, just as it did on 2006’s Visitations. Spooky!

This Liverpudlian quartet do not, however, eternally retread safe ground, à la Status Quo. Yes, their musical means are limited: on "Corpus Christi," the razor-edged lead guitar follows a dum-dum simple bass line, note for note, just as the 13th Floor Elevators and countless other Nuggets-era bozos prescribed it. They clearly believe in the Julian Cope idea that anything worth doing on a guitar can be achieved with boxing gloves on, while tripping on premium-strength Owsley LSD. It’s their aesthetic choice: when I once spoke to their guiding light, Ade Blackburn, he declared that he knew what he liked, and wouldn’t go changing any time soon.

However, within their minuscule sliver of the infinite sonic landscape, time and again Clinic make wonderful — and deeply unsettling — things happen. Surrounded by rustling maracas, neo-’60s FX-ed axes and a toffee-thick organ which might as well come with a free lava lamp, Blackburn is a worryingly unfathomable presence. He sings of the sparkling joys of reminiscence ("Memories") and sinister sorcery ("The Witch (Made To Measure)") with the same trembling compulsion. The deeper you get into Do It, the less valuable other styles of music seem. Really, Ade, keep ’em coming, just as you like ’em.

Where many argued that this Northampton, MA group’s first two albums were merely frustrating collections of unfinished song fragments — some years before Guided By Voices became celebrated for it — III was, by contrast, a wild and sometimes bizarre revelation. 17 years later, it remains one. Oh, it’s still maddeningly inconsistent in approach and compositional quality. But it’s much better recorded (despite several solo home demos) and, at its best, III is the flowering of what soon became one of America’s most enduring indie rock outfits.

The missing piece added since 1990’s The Freed Weed is underage high school dropout bassist Jason Lowenstein, whose inclusion not only gives the unfocused, largely incoherent, barely tenable group a third songwriter and some crucial rhythmic underpinning, but also lends a more focused intensity when he is allowed to play. Holdovers Eric Gaffney and Lou Barlow’s rocky relationship seemed as volatile as that of Barlow’s with J. Mascis in Barlow’s previous band, Dinosaur Jr., (Barlow’s lingering bitterness over being fired from Dino three years prior led him latter to pen III’s true classic, the memorable opening diatribe about Mascis, “The Freed Pig.” Don’t miss it!). The green Lowenstein must have suffered constant anxiety over his fragile tenure in a band whose members liked working alone and whose implosion seemed always imminent.

Yet this ever-present, dysfunctional, precipice-of-collapse feeling permeates every second of the aggressive, impolite, claustrophobic III, adding a punishing edge of belligerence that pinballs back and forth between Barlow’s emerging melodic sophistication and unabashed romanticism and Gaffney’s off the cuff, art-noise rants (full of post-punk’s uncompromising anti-pop and hints of Sub Pop’s emerging grunge). In the midst of this constant clash, Lowenstein’s three contributions, grouped together on the second half, stake out a middle ground like a timid-but-determined peacemaker.

The nascent trio would improve the formula again on 1993’s surprising Bubble and Scrape with Lowenstein's greater emergence, just before Gaffney's inevitable exit. But for all its schizophrenia, III shows undeniable seeds of their impending, more dependable greatness.

In 1980, the same year the Ramones entered Hollywood (Rock n' Roll High School) and the Clash released a bloated three disc-er (Sandinista), Josef K, an Edinburg-based post-punk band, recorded two albums in three weeks, scrapped one because they thought its production was too glossy, released the other (their only full-length) and then split up. If post-punk's reigning credo was "Rip it up and start again," Josef K was its case study.

Along with Edwyn Collins' crooning, quirky pop group Orange Juice, Josef K defined early-'80s indie's Scottish Sound. The band was willfully arty (they were called TV Art before settling on the Kafka-referencing Josef K) and stoically anti-careerist. Entomology compiles tracks from across their brief, bright discography: from Sorry for Laughing (the abandoned album) to The Only Fun in Town (which actually saw release), a few singles for the legendary Postcard Records and their parting 1981 Peel Sessions.

Musically, Entomology is urgent, fractured and raw. Many of the tracks are skeletal, frenetic punk: "Heads Watch" rides a hypnotically repetitive, chiming guitar riff and skipping and tripping drums; "Drone" is an off-key, vaguely punk-funk frenzy. Singer Paul Haig doesn't attack with punk snarl, though; the vocals are studied and slightly dour, like a slightly chirpier Ian Curtis.

Some of the most thrilling moments on Entomology come when they finally pump the brakes. The swooning, swinging shuffle of "It's Kinda Funny" is an early highlight, with Haig & Co. sounding uncharacteristically playful, and "Chance Meeting" plays the part of refreshing, charmingly sing-song romp. Throughout, the band sounds sharp and forceful, a flash of striking creativity and skill caught, as if by accident, on this incredible collection.

Young Marble Giants' Colossal Youth is a collection of sparse, evocative tunes emphasizing Alison Statton's floating vocals and minimal guitar/organ/bass/drum machine arrangements. Comparable to little else from its time or since, this is rock music at its most austere. The original album had 15 songs; subsequent CD editions added a few more. But the 2007 edition on Domino is the one to buy, pushing the total to 46 tracks, with additions from the Testcard EP, the 1979 "Final Day" single, the Salad Days album, a compilation cut, and a 1980 session for John Peel -- everything they ever did, in fact.

"You must think me very naïve," Edwyn Collins began on "Falling and Laughing," the first-ever Orange Juice single, released back in the spring of 1980. A sweet sentiment, but one that seemed out of step with the seriousness of post-punk, which trafficked in the illusion that we had all passed beyond the days of untouched innocence. Campy, delicate, sensitive and ultimately hopeful, Orange Juice was certainly a different kind of band, then and now. As Collins cried: "I only see what I want to see."

Glasgow School collects Orange Juice's earliest material for the now-legendary Scottish label Postcard Records, including the brilliant "Blue Boy" and "Simply Thrilled Honey." (For the next chapter, check out Edwyn Collins: A Casual Introduction.) The songs are raw and delightful, and they delineate an alternate vision of post-punk that grafts the form's defiant, twitchy gallop with the snaking basslines and shuffling backbeats of disco and funk. The compilation is essential for its inclusion of Ostrich Churchyard, the previously unreleased Orange Juice debut album. Despite spring-wound, head-bobbing tracks like "Satellite City" and "Wan Light," the album's heart is in the slower, woozier numbers like "In a Nutshell" or the delicate "Consolation Prize," where Collins' weathered, heartfelt croon is on full display.

Formed in 1980, Edinburgh's Fire Engines were an unsung prototype for Franz Ferdinand. They were famous for their 15 minute "jigs" (they despised the word "gig" as "too rockist") and their best-known song was "Candyskin," which, perversely, they fail to include on this 2005 retrospective — they probably considered it too refined. Instead, Codex Teenage Premonition is a blistering, rowdy mix of early demos and singles like "Get Up and Use Me," coupled with a handful of live tracks.

Taking their cue as much from Captain Beefheart as punk, particularly the zigzag wanderings of Magic Band guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo, Fire Engines' mission was to get back to the sheer, adrenaline-fueled, abrasive essence of rock, as evinced on the runaway rockabilly of "Insert Yourself" or the tumbling excess of "Everything's Roses," in which guitarist-vocalist Davey Henderson and Murray Slade practically leapfrog each other as their guitars spill higher and higher. Fire Engines burned out too soon — that, after all, was what rock was supposed to do.

In mid 2006, house music began nudging up to the mainstream again. In the UK, artsy indie boys Hot Chip took the throbbing, multi-coloured pop of The Warning all the way to the shortlist of the year's Mercury Music Prize. Makeshift Feelgood, the long-awaited second album from veteran geezer DJs X-Press 2, was a joyful rush of giddy nu-Balearica and guest vocalists.

The second album from Canada's Junior Boys more quietly reboots house for the mid '00s. Yes, Frank Sinatra is in the mix, on a gorgeously ambient, aching version of 1959's "When No One Cares." "In the Morning" is another winner, a muscular groove built around panting gasps and seductive vocals. But that's about as leftfield as So This Is Goodbye gets: these are mostly tasteful, wide-open beatscapes that skirt perilously close to chill-out. And coffee-table electronica can sound even more jaded — if less interesting — than Ol' Blue Eyes slumped at a bar in the wee small hours.

2003's Rounds represents the perfect synthesis of Four Tet's — aka Kieran Hebden's — multiple and seemingly irreconcilable musical loves. Hebden's instrument is the computer, yet here he finds a way of feeding into it those most machine-unfriendly of contrasting genres, free jazz and folk. Previously, he had been accused of picking and mixing elements from his record collection. On Rounds, however, he creates a matrix of activity, in which the computer dices, filters and figures out impossible loops and pulses; the jazz elements maintain their jamming spontaneity and insistence on the right here, right now, and the beautiful folk elements maintain their absent reverie. It's some achievement. There's scarcely a duff or lazily repeated moment here amid these hanging sound gardens of fast-fingered gamelan waterfalls, broken beats and unexpected injections of musique concrete. Particularly outstanding, however, are the diaphanous "Spirit Fingers," the controlled, digital frenzy of "Hands" and the stately, episodic "My Angel Rocks Back and Forth."

Ulrich Schnauss' second record for City Centre Offices moves away from the early-'90s U.K. techno touches of Far Away Trains Passing By in order to zero in on another early-'90s U.K. phenomenon. Though it was plain to hear in the debut that Schnauss had an affinity for the likes of Chapterhouse and Slowdive, it didn't become the crux of his sound until his version of the latter's "Crazy for You," from Morr Music's 2002 Blue Skied an' Clear compilation. Schnauss' version of the song was so dead-on that it could've been released -- without any suspicion -- as a Chapterhouse remix of the original. Though it's just as reliant on the past, A Strangely Isolated Place is an even stronger record than the debut, with a wider range of moods, improved beat programming, unobtrusive vocals, and an overall effect that is less inhibited. "On My Own" could've been the most blissed-out and forward-looking song released on Too Pure in 1992, with a steady Neu!-like rhythmic thrust and sun-bleached guitars shooting equal amounts of blurry rays and fuzzy shards. "Clear Day" is another track that could double as a Chapterhouse remix of Slowdive, only with an outtake from the first singles sped up significantly and bolstered with an energetic hip-hop beat that comes close to being lost in a dense swirl of effects. Admittedly, Schnauss might still be a little too sweet and amiable for most "serious" electronic music followers. That's clearly their loss.

Mouse on Mars and Mark E. Smith enjoyed working together on the 12" version of "Wipe That Sound" so much that they decided to give their collaboration its own full-fledged identity, Von Südenfed (a witty mash-up of Germany's süden -- that is, southern -- region and the decongestant Sudafed). Though much has been made of how strange this pairing of artists is, it's really not that unpredictable: Smith, Andi Toma, and Jan St. Werner all like to defy expectations. More to the point, Smith has made a career of breaking and re-forming language in his own image, and in much the same way, Toma and St. Werner keep reconfiguring their music. Besides, getting hung up on the "quirkiness" of Von Südenfed's origins overlooks just how enjoyable Tromatic Reflexxions really is. It's clear that the trio shares a playful, fruitful creative spark -- even "That Sound Wiped," which uses leftover pieces from the initial "Wipe That Sound" collaboration, barely resembles its source materials. Sonically speaking, Tromatic Reflexxions is aggressively accessible, combining the tussling beats and splattered synths of Varcharz with the poppy, structured approach of Radical Connector, as well as elements of electro, dub, shortwave, hip-hop, and much more. The album leads off with three of its strongest tracks: "Fledermaus Can't Get Enough"'s irascible beats and vocals sound like LCD Soundsystem's "Losing My Edge" went over the edge, while "The Rhinohead" brandishes a stomping beat and some of Smith's most melodic vocals in a long time. "Flooded," which is based on a dream St. Werner had of showing up to a gig only to find another DJ there, is a surreal, subterreanean dancefloor emergency, complete with synths that sound like sirens and sonar-like echoes on Smith's vocals. Speaking of Smith, he is as cerebral and caustic as ever; when you can make out what he's ranting about, it usually sounds like an internal conversation or argument, as on "Family Feud," a domestic dispute with Smith voicing all the relatives. "Speech Contamination/German Fear of Osterreich" blurs his versions of English and German together into a third, irresistibly rhythmic tongue. With tracks like "The Young the Faceless and the Codes," you can listen closely for the cheeky wordplay, or just appreciate how perfectly Smith fits into the mix, as on "Serious Brainskin." Tromatic Reflexxions leaves some of its most surprising songs for last, like the cranky, acoustic driven hoe-down "Chicken Yiamas" or the lilting, Afro-pop-tinged "Dearest Friends," which closes out the album. Brimming with gleeful collisions of sounds and words and puzzles you can dance to, this is an immensely fun working holiday.

Ontario’s Dan Snaith, the man who used to record as Manitoba until some jerk from New York forced him to change his moniker to Caribou, makes headphone records, pure and simple. That’s not all they are, of course: Snaith’s structures are so sturdy they carry across a room at medium volume. But his details are so fine they lose something in that traveling distance — and they’re worth the ear time of anyone who enjoys that kind of fine-tuning. “Hendrix with Ko,” the “hit” off Snaith’s third album, now in a special edition with a half-dozen tracks added to the original ten, is as good an example of the producer’s delicate hand as you can ask for. Murmured ba-bas with slight mike hiss, a breakbeat that rattles like paper on a fan, foreshortened harp swirls used for percussive purposes as well as textural ones, near-subliminal whirring clicks: all this before a light, gurgling bass comes in, finishing the foundation for a song as feathery as its surroundings. Even when the thing revs up about a minute and a half from the end, there’s something appealingly hesitant about it — it pulls you in further rather than pushing itself out.

That’s what Up in Flames does as a whole, actually. Snaith is often aligned with the likes of Boards of Canada, and for good reason: like the Scottish duo, the solo Canadian creates aural versions of old, overexposed photographs from childhood, stray toys dotting iffy carpeting off to the side of the images’ subjects, the scenario accruing a sense of wonder with the passage of time. “I’ve Lived on a Dirt Road All My Life” sounds like the theme from an early-’70s New Hollywood film under heavy dub pressure; “Skunks” unfurls a simple guitar pattern over shifting percussion and snaking free-jazz sax. The basic music-box melody of “Crayons” conveys genuine playfulness, over which Snaith murmurs, “Don’t know what I feel like/I just want to get away.” With music this effectively dreamy, who couldn’t relate?

More immediately accessible and warm than Cuckooland, more ambitious than Shleep, Comicopera, in three acts, is the end result of Robert Wyatt looking around and examining the craziness and wild unpredictability in real life in 2007. Knowing one man's opinion of things hardly matters, he brings together musicians from Israel, Spain, England, Norway, Cuba, Brazil, and Colombia in songs that originate with him, but also from these places and Italy. It's full of humor, horror, absurdity, shoulder-shrugging "what?"-styled confusion, exasperation, and even nostalgia, though his particular brand of that is with the eyes wide open. The sound of the record is what immediately separates it from its predecessors: it feels more like a recording made in a studio with a live band than one assembled in pieces. And indeed, in many cases, that's what happened. Old friends like Brian Eno, Phil Manzanera, and Annie Whitehead are present, some not so old ones like Paul Weller and Karen Mantler, and other collaborators he has more recently encountered in Anja Garbarek, Orphy Robinson, Yaron Stavi, Mônica Vasconcelos, Gilad Atzmon, Chucho Merchán, Maurizio Camardi, and Alfonso Santimone, just to name a few, with songwriting contributions from his companion Alfie Benge, Garbarek, and Eno, among others. The first five tracks, under the heading "Lost in Noise," are centered on personal observations of love and loss, and at 62, Wyatt has seen his share of friends pass on and ends with a bomb going off. The middle section "The Here and Now," from cuts six through eleven, examine what it actually means to be English under these circumstances -- i.e. in a war -- and the third, "Away with the Fairies," in tracks 12-16, is where Wyatt's narrator, utterly fed up with the messiness, violence, conflict, and the real noise of life, completely abandons singing in the English language. The truth of the matter is it sounds far more "high concept" than it is. Wyatt claims that his method of working is that he just collects bits of things and puts them together. The songs in the first section are lovely, tender, bittersweet, airy, and melancholic. On "Stay Tuned," Wyatt sings as a narrator who is nothing more than particles of air: "In between/lost in noise/somewhere/somewhere..." as Garbarek's voice soars wordlessly above in between verses, as Eno's keyboards and effects, Seaming To's clarinet and harmony vocal, Whitehead's trombone, and Stavi's bass violin create a kind of chamber jazz around those words, hovering in the front. Letting the words assert themselves like a whisper in the ear or a voice in a dream, Vasconcelos takes the lead vocal as the accusing betrayed lover on the jazzy pop ballad "Just as You Are," and Wyatt takes on the mess, about trying to make excuses. The center is punctuated by Paul Weller's guitar, Wyatt playing hand percussion, and Stavi's bass violin creating the most taut sort of discomfort between the voices. England becomes a place where there is a beautiful day for walking about -- as Manzanera's guitar strolls along through "A Beautiful Peace" before Wyatt lets the cat out of the bag: "but not here," because a bomb has gone off and war has begun. Religion gets skewered too -- albeit with his characteristic subtle and dry wit despite the very real anger and emotion -- and the jazz just keeps coming. Wyatt's narrator switches places amid the finger popping subtle jazz and lilting rock tunes and he becomes the bomber (he makes no distinction as to which one is officially military or terrorist because all the man wants is peace, not bombs of any kind) as well as the bombed, who have either no idea what the hell is going on or who have done their own part to participate by their blind and numb assent. There is a hint of what's to come in part three with the instrumental "On the Town Square," with Wyatt on cornet, Del Bartle on electric guitar, and Gilad Atzmon's tenor saxophone, all playing around a killer rhythm by Robinson on steel pans. ("A Beautiful War" is a scathing indictment of the wars we watch on TV without wondering about the consequences of them.) His and Mantler's voices here are almost like nursery rhymes: "It's a beautiful day/For a daring raid/I can see my prey from afar/So I open the hatch/And drop the first batch/It's a shame I'll miss the blaze/But I'll see the film within Days/And I'll get to see the replay/Of my beautiful day..." On the next cut, "Out of the Blue," the aftermath of such actions becomes clear: he and Eno wrap their voices in something akin to true strangeness and horror: "For Reasons beyond all understanding/You've blown my house apart/You've set me free/To let you know/you've planted/everlasting hatred in my heart/You've planted your everlasting hatred in my heart." Jazz is a not so subtle subtext here, as a social force as well as an aesthetic one, and while these songs of Wyatt's and his collaborators may not be rooted in what Blue Note releases these days as acceptable, they are far more interesting. These tunes are also quite literally almost as accessible in their way as anything on the mighty Domino imprint (Franz Ferdinand's home) that this set has been issued on, even without screaming guitars and popping snare drums. In the third section, Wyatt's protagonist just goes off to find out what else is in the world, singing in Spanish and Italian. Poems by Lorca are set to music (and Wyatt plays a mean pocket trumpet as well as keyboards, and handles percussion). Abandonment of the conflict seems like the only proper thing for a world citizen to do. Here is where players like Robinson playing steel pan drums and vibes, subdued Latin and Caribbean rhythms, and jazz all get mixed up together in a seamless and quite lovely brew. (Check the instrumental by Robinson called "Pastafari.") The final cut may be a bit troubling in that it is a reading of Carlos Puebla's homage to Che Guevara, "Hasta Siempre Comandante." But it's nostalgic, not defiant; not blind assent, but a reverie, that if anything seems to wonder what happened to get from idealism to this place the protagonist finds himself in. And, if idealism is to come from anywhere, it must come from outside the English-speaking world. It's one of the hippest tracks here, played by a killer Italian band (with help from the voices of Wyatt, Mantler, and Vasconcelos), playing a wonderful meld of rhumba and jazz. Comicopera may not be all comic, and indeed inverts the entire comic opera notion of beginning with a catastrophe and ending with redemption, but Wyatt's never been so simple. What he has been, however, is close to brilliant, and this delightfully engaging little set will, if heard, more likely than not bring more people sniffing 'round his large body of work than anything he's done since the early '90s.

The second album by Argentinean singer Juana Molina calls attention to itself by understatement. Listen to it inattentively, and it's sunny background music, with more than a hint of vintage Latin-American pop (both Brazilian bossa nova and the Uruguayan music Molina has claimed is closer to her heart) — she's got a winsome, breathy voice, and her fingers scarcely brush the strings of her acoustic guitar. But as you pay closer attention to it, it keeps getting weirder, deeper and more beautiful, like the sound of a pond at night surrounded by frogs and bugs.

Actually, there's wildlife all over Segundo — both real and artificial. The album, Molina has said, was recorded mostly as first takes, at a time (1998-1999) when she was living in California; plenty of ambient sounds creep into the recording. "El Perro," in particular, has a lyric about an endlessly yapping dog that can occasionally be heard in its background (Molina treats it as a random percussion element, surrounded by a digital whine that keeps warping away from true pitch and rumbling electronic growls). And for a record that's more or less built around the meditative voice-and-guitar model, Segundo is actually richly layered with quiet but unearthly synthesizer tones and textures. They're subordinate to her calm, liquid singing — "technology must be a servant of music," she has said. In Molina's hands, though, technology is a particularly lithe and devoted servant: on the eight-minute "Mantra del Bicho Feo," she vocalizes wordlessly over squelchy, insectoid synths and rattling drums until all her handiwork fades away, and the only singers left are the birds who've been adding their harmonies since the beginning of the song.

It's easy to look at the Sons and Daughters as a vehicle for Adele Bethel's vocals, easy to overlook the rest of the band because she is so arresting. Her voice has star quality, big and powerful but subtle and rich. She never over-sings and at times she can send shivers down your spine. You could see her singing power ballads and making tons of money. That she chooses to sing with the band she does is pretty amazing; that the band she sings for knows how to use her vocals to their fullest potential is also pretty amazing. This Gift is truly a team effort and a triumph for the band. Their previous records have been good -- The Repulsion Box contained some memorable songs ("Dance Me In" being particularly ace), but it was lacking something. Possibly what was lacking was Bernard Butler. His production here is much fuller than Victor Van Vugt's on The Repulsion Box; it's also more immediate and punchier. His use of buckets of reverb, differing guitar tones, and glittering arrangements gives the record a more three-dimensional feel. It gives the band a sheen of glamour and drama that was lurking below the surface waiting to burst out in a shower of mascara and the fire of love. The musicians in the band all raise the stakes with their performances, too. Scott Paterson's guitar cuts and shreds with abandon, dropping memorable riffs into almost every song. The rhythm section of David Gow on drums and Ailidh Lennon on bass is rock-solid and tighter than spandex. Most of all, what has changed for the band is the quality of the songs. Instead of a decent record with a few gems, This Gift is so full of intensity, drama, and memorable songs that it's hard to isolate any as the highlights. If pressed, though, you could go for "Darling," a dramatic and menacing rocker with a brilliantly bright chorus filled with angelically harmonizing Bethels; or "This Gift," which evokes X with the desperate vocal interplay between Bethel and Paterson and the ragged beauty of the melody; or maybe the raging "House in My Head," which gives Bethel a chance to really let loose; or "Gilt Complex," a tough song with some of Paterson's rawest playing. Really though, just about any song could be singled out for praise. It's that strong of an album, strong enough to satisfy a desire for tattered glamour, for dramatic, inspired, and powerful guitar rock of the kind that maybe only the Bad Seeds at their best could once conjure up. Sons and Daughters are that good.

The introductory heavy-metal hammer-ons of album opener "Dança do Zumbi" should clue you in to the fact that this is a group that does not value subtlety — if its members even understand the concept. In fact, Bonde do Role represent the artier and, not coincidentally, trashier fringe of baile funk, the Brazilian mutation of Miami bass that fired up the inhabitants of Rio favelas and, a bit later, the worldlier subset of U.S. indie rockers. If you ever wished M.I.A. was a bigger Licensed to Ill fan, Bondo do Role could be the band for you.

They’re good, filthy fun for the rest of us as well. DJs Pedro D'Eyrot and Rodrigo Gorky chop up hard rock guitars, Atari bleeps, Latin-tinged hip-hop beats and whatever other bits of blare are within reach and likely to keep sweaty bodies in not-quite-ironic motion. Meanwhile, spunky frontwoman Marina chants and taunts and teases with demented glee. “Meet me after school and I’ll beat you like gorilla,” she threatens on the upbeat “Gasolina,” before digressing into a spirited shout out to Afrika Bambaataa. We can only guess that her Portuguese lyrics are probably just as silly — and whole a lot sleazier.