On Monday, August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. The ensuing natural disaster, combined with yet another demonstration by the Bush Administration of its massive incompetence (and criminally negligent attitude toward those deemed electorally unnecessary), created a human tragedy on a scale not seen in this country in at least a generation. One of the hardest-hit areas of the city was the Ninth Ward, home to thousands of poor blacks, as well as to our current protagonists, Mr. Quintron & Miss Pussycat, and their Spellcaster Lodge. If Dubya really does hate black people, I can't imagine his attitude toward white Drum Buddy/puppet-wielding weirdos can be much better. It probably wasn't the kind of "Ninth Ward Breakdown" Quintron had in mind on one of the duo's previous albums. At any rate, the spirit of N'awlins can apparently not be fully suppressed even by events such as these -- the music goes on.

Which brings us to the present album/DVD release, Swamp Tech/Electric Swamp. It was a bit jarring to notice no reference to the hurricane in the music or the liner notes, but that's because Q & MP were about to embark on a tour in support of the disc just before the tragedy struck. So what we have here is the last artifact of that scene from those devil-may-care pre-Katrina days of living nearly under the sea. And a damn fine artifact it is. I hadn't really heard the last few Quintron albums, so I don't know if this is the product of a continuing evolution or more of a break with the past, but I was struck both by the improved sound quality of the recording (even though it was apparently mostly recorded live to two-track stereo), as compared to my memories of previous releases, and by the accessibility of the songs. There's still a certain junk-shop weirdo factor involved at all times, but most of the songs are quite danceable and not particularly noisy or abrasive. They're catchy to the point that after a few too many listens on "Repeat," I had to turn Swamp Tech (I'll get to the Electric Swamp part in a minute) off to preserve what's left of my sanity.

The first track is an upbeat organ/synth boogie about shoplifting, with nice backing vocals by Miss Pussycat. "Fly Like a Rat" features Miss P on shouty lead vocals, while "Swamp Buggy Baddass" is one of those catchy tunes that gets on my nerves after a few too many listens. Another organ jam is followed by the short charming instrumental "Tea Time." The next track, "French Quarter Faggot," makes ill-advised use of the word "faggot" to denote (according to the liner notes) a "...weird person. I think it is cool to be a faggot and if some stupid people are calling you that anyway then it must be something good." Perhaps, but the puzzling aspect is that the song's lyrics seem to be making fun of the person anyway; e.g., "I like the sound of electro-clash." This is followed by, no joke, a Quintronified cover of Kiss's "God of Thunder." The next track, though, "Chatterbox," is probably my favorite on the album. As the liner notes indicate, the following track, "Dream Captains," is basically a power ballad, quite a surprise. The final album track has some more shouty Miss P vocals and is followed by a couple of unlisted clean tracks with Quintron's pottymouth bleeped out.

The DVD portion of the program, Electric Swamp, features Miss Pussycat's puppet world, with a storyline about Formosan termites getting ripped on Cajun sno-cones and the hijinks that ensue. Several Quintron tracks from the album make appearances, such as "Swamp Buggy Baddass" at a termite rave, and "Dream Captains," with non-puppet footage of Quintron as the head Dream Captain, plus several lovely lasses eating a chocolate cake version of the Quintronics Drum Buddy in reverse.

All in all, a fine set from Quintron & Miss Pussycat. Of course, for the true in-person puppetry/one-man-band experience, check them out live if you can. (Conor Prischmann // 06/28/06)

I'm finding lately that I've got a tendency to want to dismiss the little two-song demos/samplers that occasionally appear here on my desk. "What's the point?" I'll catch myself asking. "Fuck, I can't be bothered to listen to this -- what the hell am I going to learn about this band in two measly songs?"

Fact is, though, that's just me being lazy. When I take a step back, it occurs to me that I've bought a ton of albums based solely on the strength of one well-written, brilliant gem of a song: Rosie Thomas, Armor For Sleep, Wolfie, The Black Keys, Asian Dub Foundation, Underworld; the list could go on for pages. Sometimes a song or two is all it takes, and then you're hooked, caught, now and (possibly, anyway) forever.

(This is, incidentally, the general idea behind the "single." Since most songs that make it to the radio in these parts well and truly suck, however, I'd hazard a guess that all those record execs cranking out single after single have shrugged off that "well-written, brilliant gem" bit I mentioned above in favor of a "these people will listen to the sound of wet carpet molding if we tell them it's good" philosophy. To each their own.)

So that brings me to the self-titled, two-song EP/demo from Houston's own Radio Pioneer. I didn't get it sent to me, mind you, but actually went right up to Dwayne Cathey, the band's lead guitarist, after a show and asked if they had any CDs. And yet, even with that, it still took me a damn long time to get around to this disc. Which is a shame, because it's damn good. I should mention that I wasn't entirely sure what to expect, even knowing the band's pedigree -- The Tie That Binds, Guns of August, The John Sparrow, and probably two dozen bands I never got a chance to check out -- but the Radio Pioneer guys certainly didn't disappoint.

The first of the two tracks, "Wrong From Right," melds Mission of Burma-esque guitar lines with emo/screamo loud-soft dynamics and balances delicately-picked guitars with feet-off-the-floor hardcore fury, and while the lyrics are kind of dull for my tastes, the music more than makes up for 'em. The shining star of the disc, though, is "We Both Suffer," which aims for the middle ground between Burning Airlines and Braid and plows right through it at full speed, eschewing the screamo in favor of a more post-punk, DC indie-rock kind of a sound. It burns in all the right places but slows down and shifts gears exactly where it needs to, and that's a rare thing. (Oh, and weirdly enough, what the track really reminds me of is sadly-departed H-town compatriots Panic In Detroit...)

At any rate, it seems that I need to thank Radio Pioneer for getting me out of my cranky-old-man-ish "Two songs? Feh..." stage and reminding me that sometimes that's all you really need to hear. (Jeremy Hart // 06/06/06)

Not without potential, I suppose, but in my book the whole sparse wispy female vocals over even sparser music needs some je ne sais quoi to lift it, and The Way to Bitter Lake just has a whole lot of quoi: almost comically repetitive minimal riffs, uninteresting lyrics, dispassionate vocal delivery, and one of the most estranged relations to rhythmic timekeeping I've ever heard. And yet with all that in the anti, there's something that keeps me thinking that down the road that Spider might mature into something quite powerful -- maybe it's a couple more ambitious lengthy songs, or even just the song title "Don't Be Afraid, I've just come to say Goodbye, 'The Ballad of Clementine Jones'", which is either an inscrutably brilliant formal conceit of a song title (look at the use of capitalization! the quotes! is the singer saying goodbye to the song?) or just a cluster of phrases and punctuation gone sour. So if I hear people talking about Spider a couple years down the road in hushed tones, I'll believe it, or at least give her another try. In the meantime, though, in a universe where my Cat Power CDs work, I can't imagine I'll ever be playing this again. (Doug Dillaman // 06/28/06)

Okay, I'm a bit less panicked now. When I first threw Without Feathers, the sophomore effort from Montreal-dwelling indie-rockers the Stills into the CD player, I had this horrible feeling that the Alzheimer's had finally begun to kick in. I mean, my memory's not great on the best of days, and it's gotten worse as I've gotten older -- I've gone from being That Guy Who Can Quote Simpsons Episodes All Day Long to That Guy Who Can't Remember What Floor He Parked His Car On in the Parking Garage -- but seriously, this was scary. The album started, and as it rolled along I was getting more and more worried, wondering how in the hell it was that none of it sounded at all familiar to me. Surely I remembered some of Logic Will Break Your Heart, the band's 2003 full-length? It'd been a while since the last listen, sure, but not that long, right? But nope, this was pretty damn foreign. Either I'd completely forgotten what the Stills sounded like, or something deeper and more far-reaching was going on.

Thankfully, it turned out to be the latter. The reason nothing on Without Feathers rang any bells is because, well, it sounds like a completely different band. The Stills who gave us the Strokes-ish urban rock of "Lola Stars and Stripes" and the Killers-a-year-early shimmer of "Love and Death" have meandered off over the horizon and come back totally changed men. Gone are the disco-ish beats, the jagged guitars, the New Wave-ish distance -- it's been replaced by something warmer, more down-to-earth, more friendly, somehow. I'm guessing the shift is partly due to the departure of guitarist Greg Paquet, which allowed drummer Dave Hamelin to jump to the guitars and really flex his songwriting muscle. Last time out all the songs were credited to the band as a whole, but on this disc Hamelin's definitely taken the reins (if he didn't have it before anyway; who knows?), writing or co-writing all but three songs, while the band's shuffled in "new" keyboardist Liam O'Neil and replacement drummer Colin Brooks of Sea Ray. Really, the only things that've stayed static in the intervening years since Logic Will Break Your Heart are Tim Fletcher's haunting, half-smiling vocals and Oliver Crowe's stately bass.

Sonically, it feels like the Stills have taken a step further back along the rock timeline than a lot of their New-New Wave peers (although the band never really fit into that whole Interpol/Franz Ferdinand scene, to my mind), back to the earth-toned haze of '70s roots-rock. There're hints of Neil Young, The Band, Bruce Springsteen (see the Danny Federici-esque piano throughout), and even the less-prog bits of Supertramp all over the place, and two of the best tracks on here, "It Takes Time" and the smiling-but-threatening "Destroyer," jump beyond even that to the glory days of Motown, incorporating some gorgeous horns and driving R&B beats for a cool groove with a sharp dollop of indie-kid sweetness dripped on top. There's only one lonely throwback to the Logic Will Break Your Heart days, "Baby Blues," and the band manages to inject some humanity into the sleek sheen even there, thanks partly to the delicate sneer of Emily Haines (Metric, Broken Social Scene). Beyond that one track, though, Without Feathers an organic, chaotic affair, from the gentle opener "In the Beginning," which manages to truck along nonchalantly despite being about an unwieldy subject like, um, the creation of the universe, through "Helicopters," which brings to mind late-period Superchunk, to the jaunty mess of "Oh Shoplifter," which sounds like the Stills are playing the contents of a junk shop in the background. Where Logic was clean, Feathers is rough around the edges and scruffy -- and stranger still, it doesn't seem to mind.

Of course, such a drastic change is bound to throw off a fair chunk of the folks who swooned over Logic Will Break Your Heart just a few years back, and that's unfortunate, because there's a lot here to love. There aren't as many out-and-out hooks as on Logic, it's true, but there's the building, Death Cab-gone-theatrical churn of "The Mountain," the beautifully sparse relationship elegy of "She's Walking Out," the aforementioned "It Takes Time" and "Destroyer," and even the melancholy Pink Floyd-ish piano pop of "In the End." Without Feathers is a slow burner of an album, maybe, but it's also a much more mature, fully realized pile of songs than the Stills' previous stuff. I still love Logic, certainly, but I'm very glad I was able to take the time to let Without Feathers sink in, as well. (Jeremy Hart // 06/28/06)

Take a dash of the Beach Boys, the warmth of a sunset, a sprinkle of Velvet Underground, and a slab of the Beatles, and you might have something close to Kelley Stoltz's ambitious sophomore effort, Below the Branches. It is altogether new, altogether old, and everything you wouldn't expect from the Renaissance man who recorded the entire album and played every instrument on it, from harpsichord to wind chime, solo.

To call Stoltz eclectic would be an understatement. Borrowing from the best of '60s garage rock, '70s rhythm and blues, and the organic sentimentality of singer-songwriters like Nick Drake and Jeff Buckley, Stoltz creates music that's as stunning in its visceral imagery as it is in its sultry feedback. Piano-driven standouts like "Words" and "The Sun Comes Through" open the ears with beats and anxious melodies but take measured turns for the unexpected. They fade into nature to make one's mind wander as their form gets obscured beneath blankets of trees. Suddenly, the listener is greeted by birds, insects galore, and falling leaves. Then the music returns, as fresh as before, but the scene is surreal -- a virtual trip. Stoltz also tries this magic on "Birdies Singing," but this time around the birds chirp throughout; it's a groovy backdrop to a pulsing beat.

Below reveals Stoltz as a mixer of sorts; he loves to pair things that others keep separate. Melody and feedback, the forest and the beach, it's all meshed together in a distinctive fashion. Tracks like "Ever thought of coming back," with its honey-sweet harmonies, are packaged together with Nirvana-like feedback, while "The Rabbit who Hugged the World" is reminiscent of the '60s at its surfer-boy best. Though the lyrics can be drippy and at times too unreal, the music stills allows these songs to shine. It's a hell of an album to find your self in, but getting lost in it is so much better. (Jill Krasny // 06/28/06)

"FUCK CORPORATE FAKERS. SUPPORT TRUE INDIE MUSIC." So blasts the slogan on the press materials of Mexico City quartet Sub-Division. "Watch for the crazy kids of Sub-Division as they make their way up the CMJ charts, just being added this week, and already closing in on the top 20 spot." So reads the text of the press materials of Mexico City quartet Sub-Division. This young band has something yet to learn about how self-representation can obstruct one's purpose. It's to be hoped that they learn it. Though this six-track EP has only three actual songs, the balance being given to unnecessary remixes (including two of the same song), it promises a much greater wealth later on. What this band is doing could be described as punk rock if it weren't so spooky and ethereal, or industrial goth if it weren't stripped-down and (supposedly) largely live, but mostly it's deceptively efficient and darkly intriguing. Though two of the three songs ("Express" and "Leave Me") are seemingly marred by the thudding monotony of an industrial dance beat, both are much shorter their openings suggest -- "Leave Me" is barely two minutes -- and only around long enough to make a musical point and get out of the way. Furthermore, they are complemented by the weirdly pretty "Promise," which seems to disappear when it has hardly begun, even at a full three minutes. Meanwhile, the heavy delay on Amira Baltezar's vocals makes them ineffably disturbing, as if she were a translucent spectre instead of a rock singer. The combination is simple enough to be easily comprehensible yet strange enough to be interesting. If Sub-Division has enough ideas to fill out their music without bloating it with repetition, they may yet discover that people buy music not for its politics but for its aesthetic appeal. (Daniel Joseph Mee // 06/06/06)

Sometimes the hype works, even if it's not necessarily the way it was meant to. I'd heard so damn much about the Subways' debut, Young For Eternity, before I ever actually heard it that realistically, any hopes I had for the band were ridiculously overblown and bound to be smashed into tiny little pieces as soon as I hit the "Play" button.

And yeah, that's pretty much what happened. What I'd hoped for was some good, solid, balls-to-the-wall rawk, a Brit version of Australia's equally youthful Vines and an antidote to all the shiny, super-processed retro-rock coming out of American speakers lately. On the first few listens, I was sorely disappointed -- there were some decent songs, sure, but it wasn't bowl-you-over brilliant. I shrugged, tossed it onto the pile, and moved on.

Later, though, I kept coming back to Young For Eternity, drawn back to the raucous fire of "Rock & Roll Queen," the grimy, grinding rawk of "City Pavement," and the magnificent roar of "Somewhere," a track that marries the Smashing Pumpkins with Hendrix-y trippiness and closes the album with the coolest barrage of pummeling guitars and "Na-na-na" vocals imaginable. The disc, naturally, grew on me in a big way. And in the end, I got what I wanted, although I didn't really know it at the time. As bandmates Billy Lunn (guitars/vocals), Charlotte Cooper (bass/vocals), and Josh Morgan (drums) plowed on through one roaring blast of amped-up guitar rock after another, I caught myself wanting to stop and listen more closely -- and not to fun, fast, headbanging stuff like the title track, but to the quieter, more restrained tracks. I wanted to go back to stuff like the drifting, druggy "Lines Of Light," a song that plays like the Verve's Richard Ashcroft on a really Floydian trip, and album opener "I Want To Hear What You Have Got To Say," which, while it's still undoubtedly loud and raw, is also nicely contemplative and confused (and reminds me strangely at points of fellow Brits New Model Army).

Then I listen back to the warily sweet "Mary" a third or fourth time, wondering once again who the heck this Mary person is to let kids just hang out in her unfurnished flat, and when the thumping drums and plaintive yelp come crashing in, it hits me: the song is a picture-perfect reinvention of those surprisingly dark, disturbing pop-rock tunes from the '60s that talked about car crashes, death, and the end of love. When Lunn hits the chorus in "Mary," there're echoes of Del Shannon's "Runaway," in particular, so much so that I keep waiting for the guy to break into the "I been walkin' in the rain..." bit. Looking a little deeper into the rest of Young for Eternity, there're splashes of '50s/'60s pop-rock all over the place, from the Phil Spector-esque repeated chorus in "Rock & Roll Queen" to the more soul-sounding "Oh Yeah" (the chord progression of which brings to mind "Radar Love"). I know these kids probably claim Nirvana and Oasis as influences a lot more readily than they would, say, Buddy Holly, but I'll be damned if they don't sound to me like they're channeling the essence of music that was made at least 30 years before they were born.

All of this makes a lot of sense, really, when you think about it. From its title onwards, Young For Eternity is a celebration of sorts of youth, and so were all those old songs by people like Dion and Frankie Valli. What's more, neither those old songs nor the Subways are dumbed down to make things kid-friendly, but rather present the trials and tribulations of being young from the point of view of somebody who's actually living through 'em. We have a tendency in our society to treat our young as overdramatic slackers who don't know or experience anything, whether it's loss or heartbreak or addiction or whatever else.

And that kind of thing comes near to a dangerous mass delusion, if you ask me. Face it: right now, your kids are going through all the things you did, and not all of those things are pretty or nice or safe. Sometimes the car is going too fast when it rounds the curve and plunges over the cliff, and sometimes that weird lady who lets kids hang around her flat is actually their connection (okay, so that's probably only my interpretation, but you get my point). All that stuff exists, and it's idiotic to pretend it doesn't and expect young people to just sit down, be happy, and listen to nothing but cheery, vapid pop.

Anyway, my Andy Rooney-esque rant aside, the other nice thing about the Subways' sound is that even when it's raw and distorted and angry-sounding, there's a kind of tender core beneath. Take "With You," for example: the song is a furious blast of jagged rock, but the lyrics themselves are a damn sweet-hearted ode to a just-out-of-reach object of desire. Ditto for "Rock & Roll Queen" or the Supergrass-meets-Franz Ferdinand "Holiday," where seemingly mindless blasts of full-on rock fury disguise the lovelorn teenage yearnings written out in the words. Is it deep, meaningful, all that crap? Nah, not really, but it is heartfelt, and that's pretty crucial. Taken as a whole, Young For Eternity is an impressive collection of what are essentially dead-simple, timeless pop songs, dressed up in noise and fire. Forget the hype; I'll gladly take what's actually in there. (Jeremy Hart // 06/06/06)

If I had to sit down and come up with the single biggest shift in the music industry over the past decade or so, it wouldn't be the portable MP3 player, online filesharing, MySpace, podcasting, or any of the other real visible technological/cultural jumps we've witnessed since the mid-1990s. It's something simpler and more basic, really: the breaking down of barriers between "live" and "electronic" instrumentation. There was a time not that long ago when rock was only rock when there was a drummer, a couple of guitarists, and a singer all standing on stage. At the same time, you were fairly unlikely to go to a rave and see the DJ step out from behind the turntables to play complex Spanish guitar passages -- there were essentially two different worlds, and the gap between wasn't bridged very frequently.

Now, of course, rappers like Atmosphere and The Roots tour with "live" drummers and backing bands, pop divas mutate and manipulate their voices beyond recognition using studio effects, and rock bands are just as likely to have a sampler onstage with them as they are a slew of distortion pedals. Where people like Beck, The Beta Band, Broken Social Scene, and even Sublime and, yes, Korn would once have been seen as anything but the norm, they and innovative bands like them have instead become gatekeepers, showing the rest of the musical world that "hey, look what you can do when you get over your fears..."

And personally, I think that's fucking brilliant. The Rules of Music have always been arbitrary, whatever the context -- "Thou shalt have a verse, then a chorus, then another verse," like it's the unerring formula for a good song -- but the one about guitars, drums, and the rest being "real" instruments, as opposed to samplers and drum machines has always seemed particularly shortsighted to me. It shouldn't be about the tools but about what you do with them. So if Björn of (hypothetical) Norwegian death metal heroes Degorgitated Ulcer wants to trigger overlapping samples of Mongolian herdsmen singing overtones during a guitar solo, heck, he should do it. Does it sound good/cool/interesting? Great, then do it.

I'm especially grateful for the toppling of the Live-vs-Electronic Wall because of bands like Talkdemonic, whose Beat Romantic manages to combine the most beautiful aspects of classical music (strings, which for me beat the heck out of most other instruments) with subtle, DNTEL-esque beats, thick, fudgy-sounding synths/organs, and atmospheric electronics. It's instrumental music that mashes up whatever sounds it needs to make things work, from whatever source, and spits them out as something new -- a decade back, this album would've broken all the rules.

The disc starts off sweet and orchestral with "Veraison," which brings Lisa Molinaro's viola swooping in to provide what sounds an introductory piece to a play about death and rebirth (or something). Then "Mountaintops in Caves" kicks in, with gentle, soft beats and fuzzy curtains of synth noise floating beneath quietly plucked strings. The track after, "Dusty Fluorescent/Wooden Shelves," veers off into the opposite direction, with tumultuous, frantic live drumming and murky banjo (courtesy of Kevin O'Connor, the other half of the Talkdemonic duo).

The stellar, affecting "Junesong," however, is where the band manages to truly meld their two sides together, using somber organs, programmed and live military-sounding drums, synths, strings, and repetitive banjo lines to craft a sound that is at once urgent and elegaic. "Cascade Locks" picks up the baton from there and runs with it, transmuting atmospheric elements into a thumping, head-nodding bliss-out that practically begs for hallucinogenic substances or slow-motion video of birds in flight, one of the two. On later tracks, O'Connor and Molinaro venture even further afield, with the skittering, paranoiac drums of "Manhattan '81," the beautiful string movements of "Bering" that slowly transmute into grating, disturbing noise, the droplet-like keys of "Axe & Red Sweater," and the cheesy "waterfall" video game sounds and wartime(?) samples of the genuinely bizarre yet still involving "Mountain Cats." With each track, it feels like they're stretching their legs a bit more and grabbing hold of new musical territory.

The "songs" are all fairly short, less like movie soundtracks and more like little glimpses of some other place you can't quite see or pieces of one gigantic über-soundtrack -- each piece leads into one another, sometimes directly, but no single piece is itself longer than about three-and-a-half minutes. And right now that feels like a welcome change from the massive soundscapes of folks like Ulrich Schnauss or Explosions in the Sky, both of whom I love, definitely, but who can get a bit long-winded at times. If anything, in fact, I found myself wishing the songs on Beat Romantic were longer, extended out to trance-inducing lengths. Instead, I ended up having to hit the "Back" button repeatedly while listening to one track or another so I could get a real sense of where it was going and what it was doing.

And besides, by then I just wanted to hear them all again. (Jeremy Hart // 06/06/06)

Jazz music -- these days, if you don't like it, you at least know about it. It exists today in various forms, of course, including "light," "modern," and "electronic"... yes, that's right, "electronic." "Electronic jazz" describes a style in which the music is created entirely using synthesizers and other electronic instruments, and Eric Terdjman's Rebirth is a wonderful example of the subgenre.

Of French ethnicity and living in Israel, Terdjman repeatedly proves that one does not need a horn, an upright bass, and a drum kit to keep the spirit of cool alive. His album consists of tunes that, to the ignorant listener, might as well come from an acoustic jazz band. On the contrary, however, he's produced these songs with little more than a keyboard and mixed them on a computer all by himself. With songs like "Sunset," "No Future," "Cyber," and the title track, Terdjman delivers an album that is equal parts engaging, head nod-inducing, and relaxing.

Whether you're a jazz afficionado, a casual fan, or a complete neophyte, I'd heartily recommend Rebirth. While it's good music first and foremost, it's also reassuring to know that the essence of jazz can be perpetuated using today's electronic media tools. (Patrick Graham // 06/06/06)

Holy fucking shit, this is bizarre. I'm sitting here listening to what sounds like mid-century swing-jazz as interpreted by a band made up of Koopas and little mustachioed Italian guys, and I'm not immediately clawing the headphones out of my ears. Which is crazy, because the music, with the vintage Nintendo keyboards, breathily sweet female vocals (all in Japanese, naturally, although some of the song titles are in English) should be, generally speaking, utterly maddening to me. Thankfully, the disc is blink-your-eyes-and-miss-it short, or I have a feeling I'd be stabbing myself in the eyes with a ballpoint pen. As it it, there's just enough to leave a slightly intoxicating taste in your mouth (er, ears) without the sugary sweetness doing any permanent damage.

And yes, you're reading the above correctly -- YMCK's Family Music was completely and totally constructed using the sounds of old video game consoles, particularly those ancient 8-bit Nintendo machines. The band apparently rewires (I'm guessing) the old consoles into their keyboards and then uses 'em to create some surprisingly intricate '50s-style jazz, with a serious nod towards ragtime and the Big Band era. "POW*POW," in particular, sounds to my ears like it could be a Cole Porter song, transposed to the mid-'80s and used as the backdrop for one of the Mario Bros. series of games.

Then there's "SOCOPOGOGO," which, with its badly-digitized samba rhythms, makes me think of "Girl From Ipanema"; "Synchronicity," which pretty much announces itself as pop-jazz from the outer reaches of space; and "Tetrominon - From Russia with Blocks," which is a funkier, more "modern"-sounding bit of swirling, fluttering J-pop (and is dedicated -- yep, you guessed it -- to the intensely addictive Tetris game that pretty much started the GameBoy craze). "Yellow, Magenta, Cyan and Black" runs along the same lines, a J-pop-ish, crush-like ode to the wonders of the CMYK (YMCK in Japan, I take it?) palette. Finally, the album closes with "Your Quest Is Over," which sure sounds like a lounged-up version of the music you used to get when you completed Legend of Zelda; it goes a bit long, but it still brings back fond memories of hours logged in front of a TV, controller in hand.

Taken all together, I don't really know what to make of this. I can't say I'll be listening to it often -- heck, I may never listen to it again in its entirety -- but at the same time, I don't have the urge to frisbee it across the office or microwave it or do something else destructive and childish. Despite my expectations, I find myself not hating this but rather admiring it in a weird way. Maybe it's the innocent joy of it that disarms me somewhat -- while this sure sounds like a joke to me, I think the three members of YMCK (vocalist Midori Kurihara and keyboardists Tomoyuki Nakamura and Takeshi Yokemura) are passionately, intensely serious about this. Maybe somehow, that makes it okay...or maybe it's because they're actually decent songwriters, musically (no clue about the lyrics, beyond the chorus of "Yellow, Magenta, Cyan and Black"), and capable of turning an idea this weird into something strangely catchy.

Is Family Music for everybody, then? Got me, there. Possibly not, unless you're already a fan of either the J-pop "genre" or utterly obsessed with old-school Nintendo games. Come to think of it, though, I may need to get a copy for my anime-fanatic/game-addicted little brother... (Jeremy Hart // 06/28/06)