Peopleodian - It Woke The Moon!

    3 percent drums
+ 12 percent Nintendo
+ 1 percent babesofdenton
+ 84 percent pedals
= Peopleodian

   Too much time
+ an unhealthy obsession with astral bodies 
= It Woke The Moon!

I'm pretty sure the only reason they even added vocals to this band was so that when the CD came out, you wouldn't think it was skipping.  Although the album has some interesting sounds, it mostly drones on and on, never peaking into anything worthwhile.  But really, who wants to hear eight songs about the fucking moon?  And don't try the recipe from “(TV Spot 34).”  It's like this record—bland.

Fox and The Bird - Floating Feather

I didn't know that Lisa Loeb was still making music. This collection of songs sounds like it doesn't wear shoes or bathe regularly. There's not enough cheap beer in the world to make this more interesting. But seriously, there's nothing new or refreshing about this record. It's just upbeat and poppy enough to be annoying, but not enough to be engaging.

The Angelus - On A Dark & Barren Land

The latest effort from The Angelus is the definition of apathy. The album opens with “All is Well,” which is just filler; a soundscape to make the album longer than it needs to be. We finally hear Emil Rapstine's vocals in full effect on “Turned to Stone” and I realize why they've been buried under a wall of sound up until this point. With the feel of Depeche Mode meets Gregorian Chants, this album plods along, seemingly never ending. There are a few moments when the energy picks up, but they are overworked and overshadowed by the dullness of everything around them. The record's final track, “A Sudden Burst of Hope,” doesn't live up to it's name and just wanders aimlessly for over eight minutes. This album is recommended if you enjoy The Cure, naps or heroin.

Teenage Cool Kids - Denton After Sunset

It's been done before and it's been done better. Please quit taping your rehearsals and calling them albums. Also, please find your balls and reattach them. It will help.

Sans Soleil - s/t

As far as I can tell, this album should be bundled with and sold as the soundtrack to a Nora Roberts novel. Which novel? It really doesn't matter. They're all the same…just like the songs.

Sealion - Keep The Camera Rolling

Oh, it's the new album from The Strokes! No, wait. It's the lost Tapes 'n Tapes demos! No, wait, it's the sounds of a truly tortured artist, decrying the shambles of the music scene around them. How fucking original. Oh, it's just Sealion, most of the now defunct Hats & Statues trying to distance themselves from their mediocre folk past by doing a complete 180. Get your angst and witticism here, now with 30 percent more surf punk! Or just use this album as a coaster for you PBR.

Star Commander - The World Was Sinking & I Was Hardly Surprised

Until recently, I thought it wasn't cool to like Bright Eyes anymore. Or Desaparecidos. But the guys in Star Commander let me know that not only is it cool, but the best way to make a record is to just rip off anything that Saddle Creek put out in the early 2000s. The songs pretty much blend together until you get halfway through it to “New Jersey”, which is as boring as the name suggests, then it's right back to more of the same. Don't worry, though. The record's final track is a nod to Daniel Johnston, just for a bit of indie cred. Sadly, the tone of the song's opening doesn't last and the album ends the way it began—borrowed and whiny. To offer Star Commander a bit of advice, I only had to look as far as their lyrics: “Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself.”

Sarah Jaffe - The Way Sound Leaves A Room

I love a good B-sides and demos EP. It's always fun to hear an up-and-coming artist tackle tunes from your favorite bands. It's just as much fun to hear the raw versions of new songs from the eagerly awaited next album; But to open with a Drake cover seems like a stab for broader commercial appeal, or a blatant display of Sarah Jaffe's awful taste in music. Either way, she immediately lost me for the rest of the album. Follow that with an off-key rendition of a Cold War Kids single, just to show us the diversity she keeps on her ipod (just like you do), and we're off to a pretty bad start. So why not keep going downhill, then? Cue another version of “Clementine”. Oh, you know…that song that you've heard a million times in the car with your parents, on the radio at the grocery store and everywhere else with functioning speakers. If you liked it the first time, then buy this rehashing, because there's nothing we love more than things that we already know! At this point, I'm compelled to stop listening out of pure disgust, but I push forward in search of something greater. I don't find it. “Better Than Nothing” really isn't. It's just filler to kill a bit of time before we get to the title track. “The Way Sound Leaves a Room” is Jaffe at her best: strumming, singing, simple and boring. No new ground broken there. “When You Rest” is definitely a step in a new direction. Not to say that that's a good thing, however. This track falls somewhere between a bad 80s new wave ballad and Radiohead. The single for the EP, “A Sucker For Your Marketing”, is probably just a fan letter put to a drum track: catchy in all the right ways to get some more radio play. The title of the final track, “All That Time”, reminds me that I wasted the last half-hour of my life listening to this and I get sad. Being a simple piece, it ends by leading into the familiar opening guitar of “Clementine”, reminding listeners, once again, why they love Sarah Jaffe so damn much in the first place. Overall, this EP seems like a transition piece. She's alienated some of her younger fan base by becoming the poster child for adult contemporary. So by updating her sound, without really pushing the boundaries of radio friendly music, she manages to bolster her street cred and keep the money from the KXT crowd rolling in. S-M-R-T.