This two-song, instrumental 12” EP features members of San Francisco’s Tarentel and is every bit as fulfilling as you can imagine it might be with that sort of association.

This album starts off with about a minute and a half of feedback, which is almost good in my book, and then the rest of the record sounds like some combination of the new Dead Meadow record and Radiohead. Really. That description sounds almost too weird to be possible, so let me extrapolate.

So far as I can tell, Annie is a chick from Norway who makes light, airy, electronic pop music. Not much going on here, but not offensively bad either. She could be compared to Briteny Spears in that innocent/slutty girl kinda way.

My good friend Skater Jen has an Aquabats t-shirt that I remember thinking was kinda cool. Not any more, my friend. Any one into this enough to buy it at the store needs more friends.

Five Years of Fireworks comes with two discs: one a compilation of Grand Buffet recordings and the other a DVD with a handful of videos; I opted for the DVD first. The videos are endearingly lo-fi and mostly shot in the haunts of middle-class east coast white geeks: Seven-Elevens, malls, and backyards.

Once in a while I come across a record that makes me want to throw out any sort of sensible criticism and just rave. Aw Come Aw Wry is so good, and so precisely the type of music that interests me, that barring any acts of god (or new Mountain Goats releases) I’ll be expecting Phosphorescent to make three or four of my next favorite albums.

I should be tired of these records by now – the lo-fi sound, the squeak of the fingers moving on the acoustic guitar, the sighing vocal, maybe some lapsteel – but Bare Bones and Branches snuck right past all of my jaded defenses. What can I say? I’m a sucker for melancholy.

In a world inundated with commercial pop and whiney pubescent anthems of the frolicsome teenage wasteland, Sherwood put their stamp on musicland’s endless supply of banality.

Never before has a band more perfectly emulated their sound through the visual imagery of their album art. The band I speak of is Kash, the new outfit coming at you from Sick Room Records.

Has Common regained his sense? After the experimental but not totally wack Electric Circus, Common returns with his sixth album, Be. Executively producing the album and providing nine out of 11 beats is long time fellow Chicago patron Kanye West.

Since I found the group Little Brother, their rising producer 9th Wonder, and their crew of artists The Justus League, I have become familiar with hip hop that takes me back to the Native Tongues era. The majority of the music includes soulful beats and solid rhymes focusing mainly on everyday life.

The duo of rapper Sean Boog and producer Khrysis form Justus League offshoot The Away Team. Their first album, National Anthem, is a combination of consistent rhymes and better then stellar production.