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Fountains of Wayne have
always had great hooks, but now the band's added uncommon depth to its
arsenal of pop ditties. Tales of loneliness, job insecurity and
heartbreak lurk just beneath the Top 40-polished surface, and it's that
ability to operate on multiple levels that makes Managers so
welcome.
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Meadowlands is a triumph of integrity over
product, a report on the hereafter from a band that spurned the brass
ring and has struggled mightily ever since making that fateful decision
to continue following its indie-rock muse while its members hold down
day jobs.
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Dan
Snaith seamlessly melds computers and instruments on his sophomore
release, a dizzying blend of '60s Beach Boys pop sensibility and dense
'90s shoegazer aesthetics.
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Not
Radiohead's best album (thematically or cohesively speaking), but it is
the Oxford quintet's most impressive collection of songs from start to
finish.
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Cale smartly addresses the disorderly state of the world, and in doing
so makes one of the strongest musical statements of his long and storied
career.
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A bracing examination of life at street level, as witnessed by a
teenager who, rather than celebrate the treacherous world around him,
takes refuge within the protective enclosure of London's garage club
scene.
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Not as
warm and life-affirming as labelmate Manitoba's Up in Flames,
Rounds nonetheless finds Kieran Hebden blending natural and
artificial elements as powerfully as anyone currently operating in the
field of laptop composition.
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Nastasia proves more is less on Run to Ruin,
which shaves a quarter of an hour off her debut's running time, but
feels far more substantial.
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Jurado
improves with each release, and here he advances well beyond his usual
clip, offering ten folk-oriented sketches of American life that run the
gamut from harrowing to nostalgic, while never seeming overly derivative
or baldly counterfeit.
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Colin
Meloy and his talented cohorts make brainy indie-pop that appeals to the
heart as well as the mind. Meloy might rely on a thesaurus (circa 1875)
to flesh out his tunes, but critically, he never loses the human element
in his tales of shanghaied wayfarers and merry, trench-warfare-loving
soldiers.
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