Cursive didn't really become Cursive until the 2000 album Domestica, when Tim Kasher started cutting his high-intensity emo-punk with doleful pop. The early singles and outtakes collected on The Difference Between Houses And Homes: Lost Songs And Loose Ends 1995-2001 (Saddle Creek) borrow more liberally from the abrasive side of Superchunk and Archers Of Loaf, and though most of these tracks wouldn't make much sense on a current Cursive record, they have an exciting energy, and unmistakable elements of Kasher's famously painful self-examination…
The Jan Martens Frustration's self-titled collection on Hidden Agenda brings together an album, an EP, and a single originally released in Sweden by this semi-supergroup, featuring members of The Soundtrack Of Our Lives and The Hellacopters. For the most part, the record is as bombastic and hookless as the bands that spawned the JMF, but it contains at least two readily salvageable tracks: the skittering "Linger On" and the propulsive, sunny "Catch As Catch Can"…
On the pop-folk troubadour front, both Malcolm Middleton and Salim Nourallah have just released new albums that refine their respective sounds, and should increase their respective cults. Middleton's Into The Woods (Chemikal Underground) races out of the gate with one of the year's best songs, "Break My Heart," a bouncy, piano-driven lament that has the Arab Strap co-founder listing what he plans to do when his lover inevitably leaves. Nothing else on the record is that good, only because little else could be. Nourallah's Beautiful Noise (Western Vinyl), meanwhile, works the same world-weary rock-scholar vein as Jeff Tweedy and Wilco, with keen results on songs like the delicately John Lennon-esque "The World Is Full Of People Who Want To Hurt You" and the swirling, existential "Montreal"…
On Goldrush's second album, Ozona (Better Looking), the former Britpop mediocrity takes a new direction inspired by touring across the American southwest. Co-producers Rob Campanella and Dave Fridmann integrate the band's new West Coast jangle, country-rock stomp, and psychedelic balladry, giving songs like "Jupiter" and "Counting Song" alluring textures that make them catchier than their barely there melodies portend…
Little Rock's singular American Princes caught a welcome break with superb southern indie-rock label Yep Roc, which will release the band's third record in 2006, and has re-released last year's Little Spaces as an appetizer. American Princes have a sound halfway between the expansive, apocalyptic pop-punk of Canadian bands like Constantines and the desperate, atonal boogie of Kings Of Leon, all stirred into a tall glass of gulping whiskey. The mix produces striking effects on songs like the screeching anti-anthem "Rock 'N' Roll Singer," the inverted classic rocker "I Want To Be Good," and the weary road-ballad "Eyeliner." Album number three can't come fast enough.