As posted previously, the Mooney Suzuki hit a home run with me & still sounds as great as it did when I first heard it over the weekend. I'm not sure what the Matrix has done besides work with Avril Lavigne, so I can't comment specifically on all the derision the name inspires when it comes up for a lot of people. I think they did some dance pop or something? Who cares. If their presence can coax a record this great out of garage bands they should work with every last one on the planet. As I said before, not terribly original, a little Stones here, a little MC5 there, and there are moments that sound a bit like Lenny Kravitz--if he could write a decent r'n'r song, that is.

I've gotten to the Hives record only a couple of times as it's paled by comparison. It's good, certainly comparable to their first couple of albums (if a trifle more restrained, velocity-wise), but when it was over I didn't feel as though I'd heard the best rock'n'roll record of the year like the MS did. I'll come to like this more in time, I think.

A pleasant surprise was a blues release on Blind Pig records--Nick Curran & the Nitelifes--Player! Plenty of real uptempo jumpin', trashy r&b, a little Little Richard here, a Stooges cover, some real gusto. Great stuff.

Another pleasant surprise was a new release from this Italian guy named Daniele Luppi. A big fan, apparently, of soundtracks for spaghetti westerns & spy movies from the 60s & 70s, he tracked down some musicians that played on many of those records, a group that I've seen described as having been along the lines of, an Italian version of, the Wrecking Crew, or the Funk Brothers, or Muscle Shoals, you get the idea. The record is "An Italian Story," and it's very, very good. If you have an ear for Troy's 'Musical Mayhem' discs, then I recommend this highly.

Heard a couple of electronica albums I liked--Mocean Worker's Enter The Mowo! Not great, but good. Better than that was a jazzy downtempo sort of album by an act called Positive Flow--Can U Feel It? Also heard the Morcheeba collection from last year, Parts Of The Process. It was okay, but I expected to like it more somehow. Oh, well.

Anyone hear of Spiderbait? I guess they call a lot of melodic hardcore, emo these days? I don't know. All I know is I thought it was pretty decent, not great, but pretty good. Also heard an indie band called Gaze that I enjoyed. Shake The Pounce is the name of the album, and I hear some good melodies & chord changes over fairly typical indie low-fi production. My first impression, which is probably ridiculous, was that it sounded like Guided By Voices backing up the singer for the Cardigans. Good record. And I liked the Polyphonic Spree record, too--Together We're Heavy.

But the Mooney Suzuki towers over all. It's out today; get it. I think there's not a bad tune on it, but check out the title cut, Alive & Amplified, which should give you some idea. This rec should be big, which of course means it probably won't be. We shall see.