John Doe & the Sadies – Country Club
Punk rock has produced few singers with the strength and chops of X’s John Doe, and the force and presence of his vocals (and songwriting) on albums like Wild Gift and Under the Big Black Sun rank with the most satisfying rock & roll of the 1980s. But on Doe’s recordings with X’s acoustic incarnation, the Knitters, and on his debut solo album, Meet John Doe, he showed he was every bit as gifted with country-influenced material, and for years a handful of X fans has been patiently waiting and wishing for Doe to cut a straight-ahead country album. It took a while, but Doe has finally done it, and he’s done it right; Country Club is a collaboration with the great Canadian roots rock combo the Sadies in which they interpret a handful of classic country sides in a style that fuses the moody late-night atmosphere of Nashville’s countrypolitan era with the straightforward guitar-based sound of vintage Bakersfield acts like Buck Owens and Merle Haggard.

Grand Duchy – Petits Fours
Violet Clark grew up loving ’80s synth pop and new wave; as Black Francis, Frank Black pioneered the alternative rock sound of the late ’80s and early ’90s. As Grand Duchy, the duo marry these styles into Petits Fours‘ shiny, surprisingly eclectic style. While Clark appeared on Black’s Honeycomb and Fast Man Raider Man, Petits Fours feels truly like a joint effort — they take turns singing lead and bringing their particular strengths to the fore, and Clark’s contributions don’t feel overwhelmed by playing with an alt rock great (who just happens to be her husband). Most of the songs Black takes the lead on wouldn’t necessarily sound out of place on one of his own albums, especially the opening track “Come Over to My House”’s brash stomp, but even this song has more keyboards on it than any of his work since Frank Black or Teenager of the Year.

Metric – Fantasies
Metric’s third full-length album, Fantasies, is a glossy, slick, and so-clean-you-could-eat-off-it slice of modern rock that may scare off some of the band’s early fans due to the unrepentant commercial nature of the album. Anyone who isn’t repelled by the band’s professionalism and ambition to sound perfect will find it to be quite good. You can’t begrudge them taking a shot at the big time, especially when the result is as good as this. And it’s not like they are doing anything radically different here; it just sounds freshly painted and shorn of any defects. In other words, it sounds just like an album by one of the bands that inspire them, finely tuned machines like the Cars, Garbage, Blondie, and Missing Persons.

The Rakes – Klang
The German word for “sound,” Klang is a fitting title for the Rakes’ third album — and not just because the band recorded it in Berlin. These songs have a lot more sound to them than the relatively muted Ten New Messages, and the bandmembers turn up the volume on their emotions as well: “You’re in It”’s jerky rock kicks off the album with the pungent refrain “Sometimes you can’t smell the shit till you’re in it,” and as singer Alan Donohoe pours out his raging id, singing about sex and drugs and being in hell in a stream-of-consciousness smear, he sounds as wound up here as he sounded deadpan on the band’s previous album. In fact, a lot of Klang feels like a direct reaction to Ten New Messages‘ more studied sound, especially on more unhinged moments like “Shackleton,” another high-strung rant.

Silversun Pickups – Swoon
Silversun Pickups hold Smashing Pumpkins as close to their heart as, say, Mudhoney does the Stooges — perhaps even more, as Silversun Pickups (whose very initials are the same as the Pumpkins) don’t attempt synthesis or reimagination, they merely seek continuance, acting as though nothing happened between Siamese Dream in 1993 and Swoon in 2009. Try as they may, the band cannot deny the passage of time, or their geography, for Silversun Pickups are creatures of their time and place, just as their idols were. At their core, the Pumpkins were Midwestern misfits, something that was evident in their very appearance and sound, something that could be heard in Jimmy Chamberlin’s thundering backbeat, the skyscraping guitars of Billy Corgan and James Iha, and, especially, Corgan’s outcast wail, producing a sound that found beauty in ugliness and vice-versa. In stark contrast, Silversun Pickups are nothing but pretty, shimmering sweetly on the surface, a sound suited for Los Angeles.

Roy Ayers Ubiquity – He’s Coming
Gato Barbieri – Chapter Two: Hasta Siempre
Beck – One Foot in the Grave (Expanded Edition)
Tony Bennett/Bill Evans – The Complete Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Recordings
Art Blakey – Soul Finger
The Boy Least Likely To – The Law of the Playground
Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle
Lars Danielsson – Tarantella
Death Cab for Cutie – The Open Door EP
Dennis DeYoung – One Hundred Years from Now
Diamond Head – Am I Evil?: Anthology
Dntel – Early Works for Me If It Works for You II
Fastball – Little White Lies
Ella Fitzgerald – Ella in Hollywood
Josh Freese – Since 1972
Buddy Guy – The Definitive Buddy
The Handsome Family – Honey Moon
Alex Harvey/Sensational Alex Harvey Band – Live at the BBC
The House of Love – Live at the BBC
Freddie Hubbard – The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard
Ida Maria – Fortress Round My Heart
Joe Jackson – At the BBC
Keith Jarrett – Treasure Island
The Juan MacLean – The Future Will Come
Life on Earth! – A Space Water Loop
Medeski Martin & Wood – Radiolarians II
The Mission UK – Live and Last
The Monks – The Early: 1964-1965
The Monks – Black Monk Time
Lee Morgan – Lee-Way
Mud – Rock On/As You Like It (Bonus Tracks)
Willie Nile – Places I Have Never Been (Bonus Tracks)
Noisettes – Wild Young Hearts
Papercuts – You Can Have What You Want
Pomegranates – Everybody, Come Outside!
Prefuse 73 – Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian
Simon & Garfunkel – Live 1969
Siouxsie and the Banshees – Nocturne
Siouxsie & Banshees – Kiss in the Dreamhouse (Bonus Tracks)
Jill Sobule – California Years
Sun City Girls – Napoleon and Josephine: Singles, Vol. 2
Telepathe – Dance Mother
Trick Pony – The Best of Trick Pony
Johnny Varro featuring Ken Peplowski – Two Legends of Jazz
Phil Woods – The Children’s Suite
Yonlu – A Society in Which No Tear Is Shed Is Inconceivably Mediocre
Various Artists – Honey and Wine: Another Gerry Goffin and Carole King Song Collection
Various Artists – New Rubble, Vol. 4: Utopia Daydream