Music

Poet Saul Williams’ newest album, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!, was produced by recent collaborator Trent Reznor. The album, a commentary on racial bigotry and epithets, will only be available to download for free or with a $5 donation to the artist, starting November 1 on Williams’ website.

Brooklyn decibel terrorists A Place to Bury Strangers have been creating a massive buzz with their economical bursts of noize-toon, neatly encapsulating influences of The Jesus and Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Joy Division, Spacemen-3, Big Black, and Ride.

“I’d be crazy not to follow / Follow where you lead,” mews Thom Yorke on “Weird Fishes / Arpeggi,” the fourth track from Radiohead’s long-awaited seventh album In Rainbows. It’s a lyric that may pertain to the innovative band’s worshippers.

Though Russian Circles’ last album was released in May of 2006, the melodic metal instrumentalists built mounds of momentum in 2007. Enter, that six-song, 44-minute album, was released in the United Kingdom, and the trio toured Europe with progressive radio rockers Tool.

Two Lone Swordsmen — aka Andy Weatherall and Keith Tenniswood — have traced a sweeping career arc over the last two decades. Moving from mutated trip-hop (Andy Weatherall as Sabres of Paradise with his classic Haunted Dancehall) to vintage Warp Records-style downtempo electronics (Stay Down) to hard electro (the outstanding Tiny Reminders), the Swordsmen milked electronic music for everything it was worth — until, it seems, they tired of it.

Experimental indie rockers Menomena began their fall tour in Boise, Idaho on Friday, October 26. The trio, whose ever-changing live dynamics are not to be missed, will add banjo-tinged indie rockers Illinois to the tour starting on Halloween.

Marfa, Texas, might be the least rocking town on Earth. For starters, it’s in the Big Bend area of west Texas, seventy-four miles from the nearest interstate and a three-hour drive from the nearest city, El Paso. Marfa eerily resembles itself circa 1956, the year that the James Dean classic Giant was filmed there.

For a group with such an independent pedigree, Maritime’s one-off show at Los Angeles’ Viper Room was a welcomed retreat from their opening stint for pop rockers Jimmy Eat World. This was such an intimate gathering, singer Davey Von Bohlen (shown left) later bellied up to the bar with the twenty or so fans in attendance.

Who knew such a petite frame could contain such pith, such Pat Benatar-like feistiness? That’s what you get in Jenny Lewis, the main musician and minx from Rilo Kiley, a band that exemplifies the term “indie darlings.”

Post-hardcore is not a genre known for being sleek and graceful. Bands like Fugazi and Jawbox were known for complex melodies and accessibility, but their music was also characterized by a fierce aggression. However, those are not hard and fast rules, which New York’s The Forms make perfectly clear on their self-titled second album.