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• Music 12/05/05

  Vashti Bunyan—Lookaftering
  This album is the rare instance where a long-forgotten artist re-emerges to create an album every bit as good as her classic output. Vashti started her career as a chanteuse singing Rolling Stones songs but retreated to the British countryside to release her debut album, a pastoral effort that sounded as if it were recorded centuries earlier. This album of new material, her first in 35 years, benefits from the lush string arrangements courtesy of Max Richter and Vashti's own beatific melodies and hushed vocals.
  
  
  Edan—Beauty and the Beat
  Beauty and the Beat merges the '68 psychedelic sound with the rawness of '88 hip hop to create a musical hybrid that is, to borrow a lyric from Kevin Federline's internet-leaked debut song, "straight 2008." A dedicated student of rock and hip hop's golden ages, Edan cleverly weaves surrealistic wordplay among his battle raps and brings back a level of playfulness in hip hop that is sorely needed.
  
  
  Roky Erickson—I Have Always Been Here Before
  Roky Erickson is the legendary frontman of the 13th Floor Elevators, famed Texan psych-punks who released two near-perfect albums in the mid-'60s before lapsing into obscurity due to Roky's own drug use and dementia. This anthology brings together the best tracks from those albums as well as Erickson's remarkably solid post-Elevators albums to reveal an artist on par creatively with Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett. Beautiful packaging and extensive liner notes make this a must-own album for rock fans.
  
  

• Music 11/21/05

  Silver Jews—Tanglewood Numbers
  You might be asking yourself where the Silver Jews' Steve Berman has been for the past few years, but with song titles on his latest album, Tanglewood Numbers, like "K-Hole" and "Sleeping is the Only Love," it seems better that we don't ask. Sounding like a strung-out Springsteen fronting a Nashville bar band, this is some of the most literate and powerful rock music to come out this century. We urge you to buy this album now, because who knows how long it might be before Berman emerges from his next hiatus.
  
  
  Bun-B—Trill
  There just haven't been too many good hip hop albums coming out this year, those you can play from start to finish with no filler. Kanye's new album is one exception, but you probably already own it, so why not give Bun-B a shot? With all this talk of Houston recently, people forget that Bun IS Houston hip hop. For his first solo album, he pulls favors from all those rappers he gave guest verses to over the years, and the result is pretty much the Houston All Star Game. In true form, the subject matter doesn't stray far from jewels, cars, and girls, but the rapping is virtuosic enough that you won't care.
  
  
  Gary Higgins—Red Hash
  Devendra Banhart and Co. have brought about the 10th or 11th folk revival in American history (we're losing count), and this time around authenticity is not quite as important as mystical lyrics and narcotic intake. While many of the obscure groups that have been rediscovered in the ensuing melee sound like the house band at a Renaissance festival, Gary Higgins' beautiful album Red Hash is a true gem and bona fide classic that only had to wait 30 years to be unearthed. The atmosphere of the album is smoky and lysergic, but the songs are tuneful and almost miraculously catchy.

• Music 11/08/05

  Grizzly Bear (With Bonus Remixes)—Horn of Plenty
  This band's debut album, "Horn of Plenty," was the first we ever reviewed, and has been a Refinery29 favorite ever since it came out last year. A quiet and mournful album, "Horn" has a way of quietly taking hold of you, somehow masking the fact that, at its heart, this is a great pop record. Now that the band has national distribution, Grizzly Bear has decided to re-release the album appended with a bonus disc of new remixes from a host of indie stars and offbeat electronic mavens including Ariel Pink, Dntel, Final Fantasy, Efterklang, and Soft Pink Truth (Drew Daniel of Matmus), adding layers to an already complex album and proving that you can have your cake and eat it, too.
  
  
  Giles Giles & Fripp—The Brondesbury Tapes (1968)
  Try listening to this while driving along in early November somewhere New Englandish, when a rainstorm is about to hit and all the trees are nearly bare. It's haunting, majestic, melodic, and if you can't hear it, then we are tempted to believe you might think fashion mullets are still cutting-edge. After the first listen of these songs, you'll feel tempted to kick yourself for giving Stereolab and Broadcast so much credit. This pre-King Crimson material shines like nothing we've heard in ages. Get it while you can because as far as we can tell, it's hard to find. For us, eerie and subtly compelling=essential.
  
  
  Deerhoof—The Runners Four
  We'll admit, it takes some time to get into Deerhoof. The lyrics are at times trite, her vocals sometimes a bit grating, and the arrangements are borderline progressive rock. Why is it then we keep coming back to this CD and pretty much everything else they've put out? Aside from being relentlessly original, there are strong pop hooks embedded amongst the harsh guitars and innovative drumming. Of course, Refinery29 has seen them live a few times, and, boy, that drumming while sitting on milk crates could pretty much seal the deal for anyone.

• Music 10/28/05

  Jose Gonzalez—Veneer
  Why is Scandinavia so cool? In addition to Dungen psych rock, we also get the soothing sounds of folksters Kings of Convenience and now, Jose Gonzalez. A little bit Simon and Garfunkel and a lot amazing, Gonzales offers a fantastic cover of Swedish Refinery29 favorite The Knife. It's always refreshing how satisfying a beautiful voice paired with a simple acoustic guitar can be.
  
  
  Alan Braxe and Friends—Upper Cuts
  Who here likes a little House? We suspect a lot of you do, especially when it's melodic, retro sounding, and French. We are all slightly suspect of including in our selection the dance anthem “The Music Sounds Better with You� by Stardust, but it's been just long enough that we can become excited about discovering it again. Good compilations are hard to come by, but this one really does it for us.
  
  
  Tom Vek—We Have Sound
  Usually we don't like jumping on the hype bandwagon, especially since most newly tagged "It" bands fail to live up to said hype, but Tom Vek is good. Really good. Yeah there's a bit of a Strokes, post-Punk thing going on here, but unlike other bands eager to ride the hype wave, Vek does it confidently, gracefully, and sincerely. The guy has got soul, and so do his songs, which is saying a lot considering who his peers are.

• Music 10/14/05

  
  
  
  
  The Castanets—First Lights Freeze
  Sufjan Stevens is all the rage right now, but personally we are into the more sparse, meditative folk songs of his label mate and protégé Raymond Raposa, aka The Castanets. Enlisting a variety of guest vocalists, this sophmore album really shines.

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