Music

I have yet to hear a really great tribute album. They’re all just academic exercises – what would Ween sound like covering Barbra Streisand? (Actually, that sounds like something Ween has probably done.) So the Radiohead tribute Exit Music didn’t exactly disappoint: my expectations were quite low, and it just about met them.

The teaming of rapper/singer Cee-Lo Green and slick producer Dangermouse is a wet dream waiting to happen for the hipster/indie crowd. The irony, though, is that music lovers of all genres can appreciate the music on this album.

On Murray’s Revenge, Murs and producer 9th Wonder of Little Brother fame team up for a sequel to 2005’s 3:16. There is definitely a great musical chemistry between these two as they produce another top-notch album. Murs, one of L.A.’s most underrated emcees, is still going strong with another album full of witty, sarcastic, tongue-cheek humor and thought-provoking lyrics.

A Little Place in the Wilderness (Good Fences) is another addition for an era of soft-spoken, sad songwriter albums in the vein of Sufjan Stevens, Death Cab, and Bright Eyes.

If the White Stripes met Le Tigre and Fisherspooner in an alley and fought until their spirits merged and no one died, you would be left with a totally unrealistic situation – but also the music of Prototypes.

Since 1998, the Jonas Kullhammar Quartet have quietly released five albums, received two Swedish Grammys, toured Europe, Canada, and the United States – without the help of major press coverage.

Mission of Burma are back. And I mean that in the symbolic, hyperbolic, metaphoric sense of the word. On this, The Obliterati, the second record of their crucial and laudable reunion, the band has nudged and nuzzled their way into their former selves, rocking an estimable force of hungry, inspired, pedal-to-the-metal indie rock.

iTunes classifies the new Bedroom Walls album as children’s music. Fantastic! Sing along, kids, starting with track one: “In Anticipation of Your Suicide.” I’m not sure how the iTunes program determines genre, but a slight tweak of that system might be in order.

The band that started as a solo project of Wolf Parade front man Spencer Krug has turned into a full band effort, but still sounds exactly like you’d expect Krug’s solo material to sound. That is, it sounds like a semi-lucid, drugged out brilliant little avant-garde pop record that Krug recorded in his bedroom.

“Cursed Sleep” is the new single from Bonnie “Prince” Billy’s upcoming album The Letting Go, and it’s worth getting just to try to pronounce the names of his collaborators.

How could someone who was so good for so long go so very wrong? Vince Clarke was the Midas man of eighties pop, recording Speak and Spell with Depeche Mode, Upstairs at Eric’s with Yaz, and then a zillion hits with Erasure. That wasn’t exactly my thing back then, but you can’t say it wasn’t good – it was irresistible.

The only thing now keeping total Scandanavian rock and roll domination in check is their tendency to seem a bit, oh, goofy. (How serious is a band with a song called “Hey Kwanongoma?”) The Ark – yet another glam-rock unit coming Straight Outta Ølmault, or Malmüüter, or some other place that will require extra keyboard tricks – are no exception.