For the Record

As styles of music cycle around the wheel of birth and death, some pop back up in the oddest places. Here are just ten examples from the past twelve months of indie-rock albums that serve as unwitting reincarnations of classic rock's hubris and majesty.

Tim Kinsella's loose collective of ex-emo smartasses finally throws together its masterpiece. Riddled with oblique tempos and a florid moroseness, this album resembles nothing so much as the 1974 Genesis opus The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. The vital question: Will Kinsella end up as Peter Gabriel or Phil Collins?

2. British Sea Power, The Decline of British Sea Power (Rough Trade)
By 1975's Siren, Roxy Music had perfected the art of the brittle, brainy anthem. And although there's nothing quite as genius as "Love Is the Drug" on British Sea Power's amazing debut, the young group's mix of crooning and abrasion comes deliriously close.

3. Darediablo, Feeding Frenzy (Southern)
Sludge-clogged grooves, ham-fisted organ and song with titles like "Behold the Panther Stone"? Sounds like Uriah Heep's proto-metal epic Demons and Wizards. Add a little math rock and subtract the vocals, and you've got Feeding Frenzy, an album for the twelfth-level magic-user in all of us.

4. The Clientele, The Violet Hour (Merge)
This English trio's sophomore effort is just as fey, folky and redolent of incense as Cat Stevens's Teaser and the Firecat. Coincidentally, the Clientele's round-cheeked leader, Alasdair Roberts, bears an eerie resemblance to Bud Cort's Stevens-reciting character in Harold and Maude.

5. The Rapture, Echoes (Universal)

The Rolling Stones' 1980 album Emotional Rescue was a lame, clumsy stab at cashing in on disco. The Rapture, perhaps the most overrated band of the new century, attempts the same with today's dance-punk "craze," making a record just as forced, awkward and ultimately disposable.

6. The Kills, Keep on Your Mean Side (Rough Trade)
Marianne Faithfull's sweet pop voice degenerated into the cracked, husky rasp of Broken English, her 1979 comeback. Ex-Discount singer Alison Mosshart's sweet pop-punk voice has degenerated into the cracked, husky rasp of Keep on Your Mean Side, her foray into lyrical darkness and angst-scorched blues punk.

7. The Twilight Singers, Blackberry Belle (Birdman)
When Greg Dulli left the Afghan Whigs to form the Twilight Singers, it was like Steve Winwood defecting from Spencer Davis to make Traffic's Mr. Fantasy. In both cases, the result was a more sophisticated, if way less fiery, brand of soulful rock. Let's just hope Dulli doesn't go solo; the world would probably do fine without his equivalent of "Higher Love."

8. Neil Michael Hagerty, The Howling Hex (Drag City)
Filing down the scuzzy garage excess of his Royal Trux days, Hagerty unveils a technically dazzling puzzle of mumbled imagery and logic-defying leads. The spirit of Thin Lizzy's overlooked classic, Nightlife, can be spotted haunting the periphery of his odd, compelling vision.

9. Apollo Sunshine, Katonah (SpinArt)
Todd Rundgren's sprawling Todd was a dense tangle of ballads, prog and hard rock anchored to a playful virtuosity. Likewise, Apollo Sunshine dunked Katonah in buckets of candy gloss and studio sparkle while crafting this melody-dappled mélange of vintage pop.

10. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Vicious Cycle (Sanctuary)
In an ironic kick to the balls, many former stadium rockers are now on lowly indie labels, gasping for air in a market dominated by rap and country. The once-mighty Skynyrd tries brown-nosing both genres on Vicious Cycle by remaking its own 1976 Southern-rock staple "Gimme Back My Bullets" -- only with Kid Rock belching all over the top of it. Even worse is "Red, White and Blue," a cringe-inducing song that out-jingos Toby Keith with the Paleolithic platitudes "My hair's turning white/My neck's always been red/My collar's still blue." Fittingly, the group's new indie imprint, Sanctuary, also boasts such ripe-for-the-glue-factory acts as Sammy Hagar and Meat Loaf. A vicious cycle, indeed.

How Swede It Is
By Andrew Ignatius Vontz

Fuck electroclash. While electronic-music fans in America stopped, dropped and fell in love with the cocaine and leg-warmer-fueled nostalgia of the electroclash scene, the homeboy tribal techno revolution raged globally; a pair of Brits created a Latin Project that inexplicably made my deep-house-hatin' ears perk up; a Scumfrog hopped to the top; and Underworld offered up the best of its best (which is to say, pretty much the best, period) on a two-CD set. Hey now.

1. Swedes
Techno producers in Sweden are sampling, pointing and clicking their way toward a brighter tomorrow for electronic music. If Detroit Techno went to a B-Boy battle, cut the noise on the high end, picked up a djembe, threw in some crazy breakbeats every now and again and did a back flip into a reverb tank, then bam! -- you'd have Swedish techno. Super-clean production, whirling dub effects, hip-hop-style breakbeats mixed in with pounding four-to-the floor madness, tribal hand-percussion polyrhythms and minimal melodies are hallmarks of the Swedish techno production style.