Alright, so I'm pretty favorably disposed, these days, to any band that can do the D.I.Y. thing, no fancy-shmancy computers and whatnot involved, and pull it off. Oddly, I've found myself yearning for the days of hand-cut 7" sleeves, painstakingly glued together and assembled like poor bastards like myself used to have to do back in the day; I'll grant that the advent of cheap CD-Rs and laser printers has been a godsend for a lot of musicians, but there's still something intensely personal about a handmade release, y'know?

Of course, these days "D.I.Y." also seems to equate to "sounds like ass." Sorry, but my indie-nostalgia only extends as far as the packaging. For me, the days when you could record your album using a tin can for a mic and get away with it are long-dead -- or should be, at any rate, pushed off a cliff into the sea or dumped in a shallow grave. Take this EP, Who's the Creampuff Now?, the first ever release from badass instro-rockers Blades. The sleeve's hand-made, complete with scribbly pen on a freaky bit of cover collage-art, and the back cover's pretty much hand-written track names and a teeny little bit of info. Actually, it even pushes my limits for what you should do for a release (after a certain point, it's just laziness, folks), but given the cover art and the way it sounds, man, I can forgive it.

There's certainly nothing sloppy about the music here. Blades play math-rock-y, churn-and-sway indie-rock that recalls June of 44, Slint, Rodan, and the rest of that whole Kentucky/Chicago axis of bands, and they do it like nobody's business. The whole thing's tight as a drum, muscular and intricate, with freakin' incredible drumming from Kyle (no last names needed, apparently), who, along with bassist David, pretty much propels the songs along from track to track.

Top of the heap is second track "Fury Christmas," which nearly comes off like two or three separate songs mashed together, except that the music's so driving you don't even mind when you check the CD and see that yep, you're still on track 2. Chris and John's guitars are sharp-edged and precisely dissonant without being grating, reminiscent of underappreciated mathcore heroes aMINIATURE, and the rhythms flow beneath like a river flush with rain, shifting and surging in unexpected directions.

There's noise in there, too, but it adds nicely to the whole. In fact, for me that's the appeal of bands like these -- Blades is one of those groups that can combine seemingly discordant musical elements, whether you're talking off-time rhythms, keening, screeching guitars, or bursts of flat-out noise, and meld them into something that's (believe it or not) quite beautiful in its own right. A good example on Creampuff is "Flares 'n Stacks," which starts out delicate and meditative, just two guitars dancing hypnotically around one another, but rises steadily to more majestic, ambitious-sounding heights. At points it makes me think of a more down-to-earth, slightly less "metal" Pelican, and that's no bad thing.

The Pelican resemblance stretches further on "You've Reached a Lion, So Leave a Message," which sounds in a few spots like dextrous heavy metal dudes Mastodon in its noodliness; heck, it's practically prog-rock. Squint hard enough, and some of the bridges could be straight off of Rush's 2112. And no, I'm not trying to slam the band by saying that -- I've got no problem with a little prog influence, so long as the band doesn't let it get in the way of coming up with actual interesting songs, and Blades certainly has no problem there. (The fact that there are no dorky lyrics here about priests of Syrinx helps, naturally.)

There are a few fumbles along the way, but that's to be expected. First track "Goons, Hired Goons" swipes one of my all-time favorite Simpsons lines ever but leaves me somewhat cold, in the end hitting like a length lead-in to "Fury Christmas" instead of a standalone composition. And then at the end of "You've Reached a Lion, So Leave a Message," the music reaches its conclusion and fades out but then drifts for another six minutes on subtle layers of static and oceanic samples before swinging back in for a bit of pseudo-surf rock/spy music. The first bit's relaxing in a white-noise machine kind of way, especially on second or third listens, but the tacked-on bit of surf-rock's really not worth the time -- I'd almost rather they just kept on with the splashing water and birds and then faded to nothing.

But eh, these are small quibbles, considering that I've already spun this little disc five times in a row. Even the "bad" spots are hardly that, and the good spots more than make up for 'em. I'm already wishing for more from those Blades guys.

[Blades is playing 7/7/07 at The Backroom (The Mink), with Maserati, By the End of Tonight, & Sharks and Sailors.] (Jeremy Hart // 08/14/07)

Bobcrane represents the foray of Ryan H, better known as the mastermind behind the epic drone-rock unit Vopat, into the world of electronic music. The basic element of Bobcrane's sound is what would be labeled as '90s industrial (think Treponem Pal or Rammstein) but with a less aggressive demeanor. Mixed in with this are liberal portions of drum & bass, ambient, and all other manner of electronic music. The end result is a pack of unusual and menacing compositions of mechanized sound. His Mighty Hurricane Machine is definitely not your typical electronic or industrial album, and definitely not for the typical electronic or industrial fan. Bobcrane is breathing new life into a genre that's been stagnant and worthless for almost as long as it's been around. (Manfred Hundhammer // 08/01/07)

It only takes about the first five seconds of the first track of their it's-been-fuckin-long-enough-y'all debut CD, "No More Good Songs," for Houston indie-rockers Bring Back The Guns to demonstrate why they regularly top local critics' lists of Local Bands That Really Deserve Some Damn Respect (and Cash, Please, Lots of It). Over a pounding, stomping beat and crunching guitars, singer/guitarist Matt Brownlie yells and howls, ducking in and out of noisily melodic lines and crazed polka-sounding drums, sounding like that crazy guy on the corner who catches you unawares late at night when you're out walking all by yourself. He comes off as being mad as a hatter (at least lyrically), frantic and insistent and scary, but his words and delivery are still somehow fascinating nonetheless.

And honestly, that's pretty much always how Bring Back The Guns' music has struck me. They're weird and clever, almost too smart for their own good, and they play music that simultaneously gives a big middle finger to pop convention and manages to be addictively catchy. The closest comparison I've been able to come up with -- and yeah, I know this is dangerous -- is to the Pixies. Not since Black Francis & co. infused rock with freaked-out college-graduate smarts have I heard a band that comes as close as BBTG, and I mean that in the best possible way. Just when I think I know where a song's going, it abruptly switches gears and does something totally different.

To the band's credit, it's easy to screw something like that up. Take a song like "The Art Of Malnutrition," for one; it starts off quiet and cartoony before clicking into a bent Modest Mouse-esque groove, then veers into more dramatic, nearly math-rock territory and a grand, urgent-sounding chorus. There are so many damn places it could fall flat on its face. But in spite of itself, it all flies, exactly like it was supposed to, like it's the most natural thing in the world. The various bits and pieces don't feel like they've been grafted together but instead just flow easily into one another.

Actually, I kind of lied above, now that I'm thinking about it. Beyond the Pixies, the four guys in Bring Back The Guns also strongly remind me of countrified psych-rockers the Grifters; songs like "Let's Not" or "Take It Like A" have that same loose-limbed, swaying majesty, those wonderfully murky guitars, not to mention a similar sense of not giving a shit about what other folks think. Of course, there's also the fact that, like the Grifters, I generally don't have a clue what Brownlie's singing/screaming about -- is "The Art Of Malnutrition" an acid critique of political talking heads? Um. Maybe? And what about that "I work my Christian body / for the ravens and the snakes" bit, in "The Season For Treason"? No freakin' idea. I like the words anyways, so why mess with it?

I should note that even for somebody who's followed this band for a while now (not as closely lately as I'd like, it's true, but hell, I think they've been playing some of these songs for something like three years now), Dry Futures still holds a number of happy surprises. There's the churning, heavy, sinister instrumental "Face Smear Pt. 1 (All Right Now)," which sounds like a Queens of the Stone Age song being covered by Polvo, the hypnotically dangerous "The Family Name," and the slow-simmering fury of "Radio Song '04," all of which I'm pretty sure I've never heard before.

After all that, there's also finisher "In Piles/On File," which is probably the most straightforward "song" on here, an almost New Wave-sounding blast of brilliance that shows these guys can play it straight/simple but mostly choose not to. (Hell, there are a few Specials-sounding moments in there, especially with the guitars...) Oddly, though, the normalcy of this one track makes the rest of Dry Futures gleam even brighter, highlighting the unique, strange-but-catchy nature of the whole thing.

[Bring Back The Guns is playing 8/10/07 at The Proletariat, with The Show Is The Rainbow, The Dimes, & Always Already.] (Jeremy Hart // 08/10/07)

It's amazing what a shift in the musical climate can do to your supposed musical singularity: e.g., fuck you over completely. Death of a Party could once have been as easily lauded as condemned for the very thing that now knees their necks to the ground, which is a remarkable similarity to their musical predecessors, all those frantic, frenetic, punk rock bands spiked with dance beats and dynamics. I've come down on both sides of the fence, so far as this predicament goes -- make it new or make it up to me somehow, you sick fuck -- and, as I feel more inclined to say today, just make it, well.

Do a good job, you. If you can't do it, be more like someone who can. If we can't be innovative, we can be excessive; and just possibly, we can exceed. That is, there's something to be said for capable imitation, particularly as filtered through individual perception. Which is just a fancy way of saying that if Death of a Party can write Gang of Four songs as Death of a Party, then that's actually a pretty neat trick (think Pierre Monard not translating but "recreating" Don Quixote). Immersion isn't such a bad thing if you're immersing yourself in the right stuff, right?

But then the quality of said immersion ends up being what we measure success of said band by. If we're going to fuck with originality, then we need to privilege excess. So, does Death of a Party sounds like Gang of Four? Kind of. Could they sound more like them? Absolutely! Should they try to? You fucking know it, dude. See, the thing is, Death of a Party isn't a bad band but they can't possibly be a great band; perhaps they should, then, instead, merely behave like a great band (hello, hotel room!) and, along the way, do their best to sound like said pre-existing great band (or bands). We're not talking brand confusion -- this is more like musical non-progression as a sort of comfort food. It's the same reason Bloc Party's first record was so easy on the ears; this was rock 'n roll that we knew was rock 'n roll and that was more than enough. So why not tear a page from the same book?

Of course, you're welcome to be indignant about this and anything else but the fact remains that Death of a Party's best will be interesting, perhaps, but important? Never. They simply don't have the talent. They barely have the sound and here, by the way, this reviewer if forced to seriously stretch to find words for "angular" and for "sharp" that have not been previously used (read: "exhausted") by presumably similarly exhausted critics. Let's see... Moderate rock that sounds like someone cutting off their fingertips in a dimly lit kitchen. Occasionally as piercing as a chopstick through the drum of an ear. But, I mean, with a beat you can shift your eyes to. There is the occasional, lambent lurch -- like there's a great party going on and you can hear it, too, but you're in the next room drinking cough syrup. But this (as a whole) never gets particularly New Wave-y; it never gets sticky. It stays fast and loose, and if that's enough for you, buy the damn thing. Just be warned that though the style is impeccable, there's not much oomph behind it. The production's more tinny -- more tin-snip-y, even -- than I'd like. Too much damn treble. Not near enough oceanic fullness to back it up.

When you're this hard on a band (and again, not a bad band! a fun band! probably great in basements, great with girls), it does seem like one should let the band speak for itself, at least for a bit. And so, buried beneath the disco-from-hell racket are actual lyrics. Actual content! Which you may want to avoid. Or to touch with gloved hands, at the very least. Before rubbing your eyes, etc. "With great regret I did entrust / this song to you / of drowning in your arms / into the deepest blue" isn't bad so much as it is lugubrious. There's got to be a less wordy and less adolescent way to say this. There's something about the super-verboseness that's been dripping into radio these days like poison from a fucking funnel.

And you can blame Panic! At the Disco and you can blame The Academy Is..., et al, but spare a little blame, too, for whoever isn't stopping this influx, for the non-succinct, the casual, and the only apparently clever. As the late Vonnegut pointed out, one has to be careful who one pretends to be. Or as Frank Herbert said, "long pretense creates reality." You can't act average. I mean, look: you can't imitate the incompetent (e.g., The Blood Brothers). You can only repeat the same mistakes. Lyrics like "In exhibit a, she states; 'you'll be the fox.' / in exhibit b, she says; she says, 'I'll be the hound and I'll find you in a faceless crowd / Yeah, you know I'll hunt you down'" seem familiar but sour, with that feeling like, "not this, not again."

Sound like whoever you want, but say something, man, anything. More of the same makes me want to die. The imitation of a style is the nascent version of the same; it doesn't take much to be nothing much. Here's to hoping Death of a Party try to be a little more ambitious in their future fawnery. As is, it's all a little of this, a little of that, and lined with razors. There are some sequins in there, too, and probably some shit-kicker shoes. Das ist weichgespült, as they say, close, I imagine, to what I'm saying (as a whole) but translated literally as: "treated with softening agents."

[The Death of a Party is playing 8/3/07 at Warehouse Live, with The Lovemakers, The Riff Tiffs, & DJ Cuba Gooding Jr.] (Russell Swensen // 08/01/07)

This pop-rock female songwriter, producer, and collaborator (wow, that's a mouthful) hails from New Jersey, and the first time I listened to Deb Ferrara's album, Anything But Ordinary, I was a bit skeptical. The name of the album threw me a bit off, so of course I raised my expectations. To my surprise, the music is as good as Southern food -- it fills you up and leaves you more than satisfied. I couldn't help but reach for the volume knob when "Loving You" came on. Most of the songs are about love, pain, and happiness; you know, all the stuff that we are most experienced in. It's a good thing all of the songs have a catchy beat. You'll catch yourself humming her music in the shower, promise.

Okay, so what does her music sound like? The closest thing would be a mixture of Faith Hill (without the accent) and an old school John Mellencamp. This indie artist is definitely worth a listen. Aside from this album, Deb has quite an impressive resume of artist she has collaborated with, so much so that my eyes widened as I was doing my research. Some amongst the many include BB King, Jessica Simpson, and Destiny's Child. Be sure to keep an ear out for Ferrara's music; it's booming on MTV's Made. For an indie artist, I'd say Deb Ferrara is a success and is becoming well-known. You go, girl! (Veronica Ramos // 08/10/07)

Do you like your beer cold? Do you like your chicks hot? Do you like to pump your fist out the window of your bitchin' '79 Camaro when Judas Priest comes on the radio? If you answered "yes," to any of those questions, then The Gods of Kansas are for you.

It's a shame The Gods of Kansas don't have a time machine a la Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, so they could go back to the '80s and make it big. Despite how talented they are and how hard they rock, the basic fact is that The Gods of Kansas are 20 years too late; the kids these days are into being pussies, not into rocking out. A track like "Don't Touch the Radio" would've been an instant radio hit, and one like "Oh! The Magic" would've been a stadium rock mainstay back in the day. Despite the fact that The Gods of Kansas aren't going to be selling out stadiums, they can at least have the satisfaction of knowing it's their CD being played by the dudes who beat up emo kids at the mall. Rock on... (Manfred Hundhammer // 08/10/07)

Guff has a remarkable ability to turn gold (well, okay, aluminum) into lead. On their album Symphony of Voices, they take every possible opportunity to screw themselves over in the studio. Their melodies are inoffensive, but between the arrangements and the studio processing, they turn them into something much worse. It's not like this would be the Mona Lisa otherwise, but the production still doesn't help matters.

The most irritating aspect is the way the band uses effects. It's like they set themselves a goal of using every bad '70s and '80s studio effect they could possibly find. On "Symphony of Voices," they use an effect that's frighteningly close to the vocoder on Frampton Comes Alive. Worse still, on several of their bridges they suddenly make the vocals sound far away, and it's so over-the-top you it makes you want to laugh (until the third or fourth time they do it, when you want to cry).

The processing you might be able to blame on their producers, but the band has to be held responsible for their arrangements. The members of Guff are the masters of the strange bridge. During the rest of each song, they're able to restrain themselves, but for some reason they lose their minds during the bridges. On "Saving the World," the bridge goes from standard up-tempo rock to a half-tempo power ballad with this heavily tremolo-ed synth part, which has such a strange sound that you want to laugh. And they manage to screw up the choruses of most of the other songs here. It's amazing how 20 to 30 seconds of sheer crap can ruin an otherwise bland-but-not-awful song.

Guff undoubtedly doesn't care. They're playing on the Warped tour this summer, which will erase any lingering shreds of self-doubt about their albums. And anyway, Guff sounds like they're in it for money and girls rather than for art. So it shouldn't be a surprise to anybody that they use novelty so well to hide the fact that their songs are boring. (Henry Mayer // 08/10/07)

At times, Plague Park, the debut album by Handsome Furs, sounds almost untouched by human hands. That seems a strange thing to me, as I find a close affinity between this album and Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which I consider to be one of the most nakedly "human" albums ever recorded. Aside from the issue of humanity, there are plenty of similarities between the two. Both records are sparse, ominous, and claustrophobic. Both deal heavily with the issues of place, history, personal identity, interpersonal identity, and the breakdown of all of these. The difference is that, where Springteen's guitar, harmonica, and soul-baring howls evoke the spirit of humanity at its most fragile and honest, Dan Boeckner's cold, disaffected vocal delivery, static-electricity synths and fractured guitars, along with Alexei Perry's metronomic drum machine beats, seem more like the last ditch effort of MIT scientists to create an artificial intelligence with human emotion. Think of the Handsome Furs as the house band in a Philip K. Dick novel.

"What We Had" starts the album off with a shiver. "It's cold flame and diamonds / Nobody here, just empty space." This song should be a lament, with its incredibly bleak depiction of a relationship that is far worse than over, even while it might still exist as some trimmings-and-trappings imitation of itself. Dan Boeckner's delivery, however, can't summon enough sentiment for much more than a declarative voice when he announces, "And what we had / Don't mean anything / And what we had / Is already gone." Instead of tugging on heartstrings, Boeckner seems to be pulling his own puppet strings, a 21st Century Pinocchio longing to be a real boy. All this floats just above the surface of repetitive, crashing guitars and weaving synths, punctuated by hollow percussive intrusions. The whole song sounds as if it was recorded in a vacuum, with no intrusion of light or sound, and no possibility for these sounds to escape their own confinement; a fitting sonic accompaniment to such resigned, claustrophobic lyrics.

The lead guitar that provides the melodic thrust on "Hearts of Iron" sounds like a robotic Neil Young, circa Ragged Glory, whose jammed servos have him stuck on repeat. Lyrically, Boeckner and Perry draw from the Finnish creation myth of Ilmatar, Goddess of the Air. Implying a deep mistrust of man, his origins, and his destiny, the dream-sequence song follows the life cycle of the world, from mythical accident to mechanical inevitability; iron-egg infancy to iron-heart obsolescence.

"Cannot Get Started" actually gets started quite nicely, featuring an almost groovy beat and nicely timed keyboard hits. As with most of these tracks, the music itself functions mostly as a sonic whitewash for Boeckner's voice. Turning things around a little, the last minute of the song allows the music to break free a little bit, bringing in a nice guitar figure that plays well off the basic drum pattern and keyboard filigree. Even Boeckner's vocals find a more assertive position, bringing in more depth of emotion and character than found elsewhere on the album.

"Dead and Rural," the album's dance track, features New Wave-inspired keyboards and an almost upbeat pop feel, an idiosyncrasy considering the title. Then again, that sort of juxtaposition makes sense on an album which, lyrically at least, plays opposing concepts against each other at every turn. Somehow, the whole thing comes together to sound like it would be more at home on a mid-'50s pop record, like something by Buddy Holly or the Everly Brothers, than on a 21st century electro-pop workout.

Album capper "The Radio's Hot Sun" is probably the most sparse of all, mostly featuring acoustic guitar and tambourine as accompaniment to Boeckner's vocals. The album opens with a bit of a bang, and ends here with a definite whisper, winding down like a mechanical toy whose springs have expended all of their potential energy. (Nick Hall // 08/10/07)