Detroit wunderkind achieves electro-rock perfection.
The 22-year-old Randolph Chabot is Deastro, a one-man machine synthesizing Death Cab for Cutie, M83, LCD Soundsystem and other future-rock practitioners into a glitzy world overflowing with regret. Keeper's' ten songs are culled from demos and home recordings Chabot pieced together in his parents' basement, a land decidedly far from the dance floors and neon-lit city streets of his music, a place where his bald yearning and incredible talents find no boundaries, a place where he still lives. Like any dreamer, Chabot's imagined world is infinitely better than the one where he resides, "a place where I am free," as he sings in "The Goodman of the House." After learning more and more of his life, I can't help but to think of Chabot as Bastion of The Neverending Story, a young man subtly shifting from spectator to hero in a world of his own creation.

And make no mistake: Keeper's is wholly Chabot's. Certainly M83 has influenced the cut of Chabot's jib, and his voice unmistakably shares qualities with that of Ben Gibbard. But the crisp, sparkling environs of Keeper's come from one young man, and one man alone. Chabot has no other collaborators, and his songs — even with their swooping electronics, enormous guitars and startling self-assurance — ring with a vulnerability that can only come from a belief that no one would ever hear them. Sure, they are about love and longing — universal inspirations — but they are also acutely idiosyncratic, the product of an imagination that has yet to meet an obstacle it can't thwart.

"The Shaded Forests," the album's amazingly pop track (if someone told you this was the new Killers single, you wouldn't blink), is built around the following lyric: "When the wolf lays down to marry the lamb/ He'll lay down his fangs, he'll lay down his plans/ I told you, we're gonna be fine/ I t-t-t-t-told you, we're taking our time" (that last stuttering revealing a bit of Ric Ocasek in our boy), as if he's Hansel telling Gretel to hang in there, we ain't no cake, yet.

Spiraling out from "The Shaded Forests" — and "spiral" is the perfect word for the towering, Autobahn tones of "Michael the Lone Archer of the North Shore" and the spaghetti sci-fi instrumental "Light Powered" — the album's heart rate ebbs, songs like "The Green Harbor" and "The Floating Cradle" emotionally naked and fragile: in the latter, Chabot's self-harmonizing falsetto beckons like a Greek siren. And then there's the cathartic "Leah's Daughter the Giraffe," strings plucking while Chabot gorgeously coos "Oooooh/ The difference is your… eyes."

It bears repeating: Randolph Chabot is only 22-years-old. Music like this doesn't just happen, especially not when only one person is involved. That wunderkind word used at the beginning of this review was carefully weighed, and we stand by it. To return to the fairy tale idea, this could absolutely be one. Except fairy tales end, and for Randolph, this is merely the beginning.

At last: the first full-length from the greatest imaginary soul star of all-time.
This delightful and highly inventive collection of lo-fi archival recordings is the result of a wonderful accident, one that's sent shock waves through both the soul music and the art worlds. The story goes like this: Back in 2004, a Washington, DC-based private investigator and soul aficionado named Dori Hadar went crate digging in a flea market and struck gold. Hadar discovered dozens of highly detailed, expressively-drawn R&B album covers from the late '60s and early '70s, with fake cardboard LPs inside them and, in some cases, even faked stickers affixed to the outside. They were by imaginary artists with names like Mingering Mike and the Big "D." One of them was a benefit album for sickle cell anemia; another was a tribute to Bruce Lee. After posting images and discussing his find on the Soul Strut website, Hadar knew he had to find the creator. Mingering Mike turned out to be a gentle recluse who declined much publicity; as it turned out, he didn't want to lose his two day jobs as a result of any notoriety. The music here is filled with bottomless joy and a true love for soul music and culture.

We're not joking about the fidelity issues. This stuff was recorded on cheap condenser mics using home equipment almost 40 years ago. Mingering Mike makes Daniel Johnston sound like ELO when it comes to sound quality. But none of the music is unlistenable by any means. "But All I Can Do Is Cry," for instance, actually exploits the funky equipment to its full potential. With a weirdly distorting handclap (I think?) that sounds like a broken drum machine, the song could be some forgotten union of Suicide and the Commotions. All of the album's beats are provided by proto-rap beat-boxing or the sound of an Afro-pick hitting a phone book. The sounds of trumpets, guitars and bass all come from vocals provided by Mike and his cousin, the Big "D." There are bizarre faux-African numbers ("Mandingo"), a lengthy dirge about getting buried alive ("Nail in My Coffin"), and love songs that follow the arc from infatuation to love ("There's Nothing Wrong With You Baby"). The immediate hit has to be "Coffee Cake" — a hilarious, 10-minute paean to the joys of coffee cake which makes superb New York School poetry when presented in written form ("The man said it was in this aisle/ Over in the sweets and bread section/ I haven't had it in a long time/ Tastes good with ice cream!"). If there is any justice in the world, the song will make it on to thousands of mixtapes. Adventurous music fiends will discover a brilliant populist hiding beneath Mingering Mike's mask. All you have to do is listen.

Be sure to visit Mingering Mike's homepage for more on his remarkable story and to get a look at his incredible art.

A hi-res version of the cover of Super Gold Greatest Hits is available here

A Brooklyn-based duo and its discombobulating dubby masterpieces.
Mary Pearson and Rob Barber are Brooklyn-based duo High Places and 03/07 — 09/07, as the title suggests, collects the band's work from a six-month period in 2007. Some of it has been released on 7-inches and compilations, some of it is available on eMusic exclusively for the first time. All of it is eMusic Selects. The best description I've heard of the band's tunes? "Every national anthem going off at the same time in a bucket of water." Indeed, High Places ride that careful line between unadulterated anthem and a muddy effects-laden mess, emerging with discombobulating dubby masterpieces.

"Head Spins" bounces along on aquatic steel drums, good vibes and a melody built from samples drained almost completely of their source material. "Sandy Feat" is Beat Happening via King Tubby. Perhaps the most surprising moment is a commission that the group received from Pearson's mother. She asked the duo to write a song for the elementary school at which she teaches. "Jump In" doesn't have a lot of the murkiness that colors much of High Places output thus far. Instead, it nakedly showcases the bells, whistles, woodblocks and doodad's that the group buries underneath. It's a revelatory moment here — Pearson and Barber aren't just noiseniks having fun, they're first-rate pop songwriters.

With their short songs and inclination toward miniaturized releases, it's clear that High Places aren't big on mission statements. You could fairly say that 03/07 — 09/07 reflects what happens when a classically trained bassoonist heads out of the academy (Pearson) and a former hardcore kid gets into the noise scene (Barber). Sure, it's awfully specific and honest, but that's pretty much the charm of High Places. Jump in.

Songs about being left behind, songs about being dead, songs without geography, songs worth repeating.
Breathe Owl Breathe sing of folklore and homespun miracles, oral histories left to thaw in the earth's crust until pre-history's giant ice cubes rolled their wet bulk down the North Pole and into Canada, finally settling into extinction in what we now call the Great Lakes. It's from the shores of these bodies that Breathe Owl Breathe come (Ann Arbor, Michigan, to be precise), and it's in the shadows of those hollowed troughs that these eight songs rest. These are songs about being left behind, songs about being dead, songs without geography, songs worth repeating.

The music is very economical — guitar, cello, drums, piano, other organic sounds — and the vocals float between folk and country, a very earnest mood. It sounds a lot like Smog — singer Micah Middaugh and Bill Callahan have similar voice boxes — and at other times early Lucinda Williams, Victoria Williams and, in the case of "Your Cape," even Loretta Lynn. There's a distinctly — and very specifically — American folk tradition at work here, and I don't get the feeling that Breathe Owl Breathe at all mind their limited scope.

The kinda stuff that drew Alan Lomax and Harry Smith deep into Appalachia and the American South forms the foundation of Breathe Owl Breathe's spare, rustic sound. When singer Micah Middaugh belts, "I've got a toboggan," in the last cut, it could easily pass for a boast, a cataloguing of lower-class luxury the way bluesmen might sing of women and whiskey. Mostly Middaugh and his Colombian co-vocalist/cellist Andréa Moreno-Beals sing about ghosts and winter (it is a descriptive album title), sometimes literally ("Playing Dead," "Toboggan," "Sabertooth Tiger") and sometimes in the context of a relationship ("Your Cape," "Sylvia Plath").

The marriage of their music and lyrics is the sort of chance meeting that becomes a 60th anniversary in a blink. Middaugh, Moreno-Beals and drummer Trevor Hobbs are easy and fluid with one another, enabling their songs to (deceptively) feel more like happy accidents than serious, premeditated songwriting. That's where their charm lies. And that's why we chose them for eMusic Selects. Whether or not you're listening hardly matters: this music has always existed, and always will.

You're gonna love this album. We promise.
After the first-ever Crystal Stilts show in December 2003, Hamish Kilgour of New Zealand band the Clean approached them and said: "You guys were fantastic, the most interesting of the night — it reminded me of when I went to England in '83 and bought the first Jesus & Mary Chain single." Could there possibly be a better start to a career? As Stilts bassist Andy Adler announced, after sharing the anecdote when we met the band, "it's all downhill from there."

Having endured a Job-like start to 2008 (all of their gear stolen — wait, make that impounded), just a few weeks ago the Stilts were confronting whether they should even continue being a band, a notion all the more absurd after you listen to these seven songs — the bulk of the Brooklyn foursome's recordings to date. Sure, Hamish probably overstated it a bit — who knows, though, we weren't there — but there is something in these dingy recordings of minimalist post-punk pop that supersedes pretty much everything else we have heard in a long, long time.

The two best songs are "Crippled Croon" and "Converging in the Quiet," their sullen, confident melodies shining brightest, their fidelity sounding the most like something post-Edison in the history of recorded sound. "Crippled Croon" is mush-mouthed and loose, an upper-register guitar line recalling everything great about Echo and the Bunnymen, early Cure and that whole bag, with Brad Hargett's vocals slackadaisical to a ridiculous — and endearing — degree.

"Converging" is the better-written song, the little post-chorus instrumental bit really nice and cinematic, the whole thing extremely well put-together in a way that — and we say this with love and affection — some of their other songs are not. "Converging" strikingly intersects Hargett's buried-alive vocals, JB Townsend's shrugging guitars and Adler's gesturing bass in some awesome heroin-spike harmony. Though it didn't start out as such, it's now by far my favorite Crystal Stilts moment.

There are others, too, including the really rough demo for "Through the Floor" that we drunkenly convinced the band to include (thanks guys!). Somehow, the rougher-sounding the better with these kids, and in a way that goes beyond the whole warehouses & lofts & sirens & streets & broken windows & peeling walls Brooklyn fetish. Farther down 'neath the hipster mythos, reverb topography and the band's rough treatment are amazing songs by four smart and funny people who we couldn't be prouder to support. You're gonna love this. We promise.

Brooklyn trio bring volume back to indie rock
We are living in a post-indie world. Over the past decade, indie rock has slowly and deliberately shed its roots in the punk and hardcore movements of the '80s: we've gone from Thurston to Lou to Sufjan as our de facto figureheads. The challenging aesthetics of the SST/Touch & Go ('80s and '90s editions) crowd have been softened to more traditional — albeit skewed — forms of songwriting, production and performing. Part of it is the influx of money (and yay for that — people need to get paid!), and part is the bar for what "matters" getting raised. There's no use judging that shift — it was inevitable — but it is worth pointing out that the maturation has marginalized artists who don't toe the (anti-)company line. The stuff that's poppy and cute gets popular; the stuff that challenges does not. It's a meritocracy of sound, so the question is: is there any room left for the weirdos?

All of this is sorta related to our two new eMusic Selections: Hands On Heads and Susu, a trio from Brooklyn. To put a contemporary tag on them, Susu play noise-rock. To put a more appropriate but less faddish tag on them, they play math-rock and/or post-hardcore. You will certainly hear echoes of Sonic Youth in these six excellent, fierce songs, but there's also lots of Unwound, Hoover, Don Caballero and basically the entire city of Chicago from 1992 to 1998. So yeah, you could call Susu a throwback — cuz they are. (You could also call them awesome, cuz they're that, too.)

The intensely loud, epic and barking "Hands Up (The Race)" jumps out immediately. "I've got MY/ Hands UP!" and "Get! Your! Handssssup!" yelps singer/bassist Michael Andrew as Andrea Havis' guitar and Oliver Rivera-Drew's drums swirl, clash and implode around him. From there it fits and starts, churning, chugging and soaring a bit like Unwound's best moment, "For Your Entertainment" off of Repetition.

"Anarchitect" is the math-iest song here, from the clever title to the awesomely idiotic lyrics ("An architect/ Had no neck/ It's not that interesting/ But it is happening") that somehow convince you to shout along by the ending reprise. And then there's "In the Pool," Win's propulsive sleeper hit. All three Susu members are incredibly talented musicians, and it really shows here, with Rivera-Drew doing a great Damon Che with his tom work, Havis slaying with her open-chord hangs in the verses and Andrew flogging the horse with his pounding bass.

Win could have come out on Dischord or Touch & Go in 1993, which is meant as a compliment. It's a record that doesn't fit into now — now, these days, meaning within your last RSS feed — and that's a genuine shame. The underground was where the marginalized once went for solace, but hegemony is a bitch, and so now there must be an underground within the underground within the underground. There, Susu clearly have a home and an audience; our hope is that this excellent collection will get them even more.

Four Londoners create gloriously spazzy synth pop.
Get in. Get dizzy. Get out. That's the slashed-up synth-pop gameplan of London's Hands on Heads, a quartet whose hyper-caffeinated songs hover around the one-minute mark. There is method, though: doses of frantic keyboard skronk quickly give way to bouncy singalongs, often several times in the same song. And don't say they didn't warn you: raucous blurt of an album opener "Is An Umbrella Really Necessary?" lasts all of 35 seconds. No wave don't mean no fun.

Erase Errata's mangled guitar scratches, the one-finger keyboard jabs of Numbers and even the wacked-out, life-affirming synth anthems of Atom and His Package echo across Hands on Heads. But it's neither tribute or regurgitation, as the songs — which they say are about "righteous joy" and "the supernatural everyday" — pummel while showing whimsy, even as they buzzsaw your skull. Check the descending bizzaro-carnival organ line on "Romantic Aorta" or the punk-playground anthem "X as Two Sticks," that galloping squall of a verse stopping on a dime for a surprisingly sing-songy chorus. Totally (Melt) bananas.

Through it all, Luke and Christopher (the bassist and guitarist who split vocal duties) yelp wide-eyed about not wanting to be alone, "drawing triangles on the walls" and other gloriously sincere teenagisms. On the sprawling (almost-three minutes!) "Witches & Lightning" (a demo we talked them into giving us because it's so awesome), we're told, "Right now/ I believe in you more/ Than facts and figures."

We're just surprised that they bought into facts and figures in the first place.