The guitar is the new (old) drone generator of choice for many highly evolved musicians of late. Artists like Fennesz, Rafael Toral, and Oren Ambarchi are taking the ax to fascinating spheres of textural/timbral transcendence. Seattle's Eluvium (Matthew Cooper) joins these crafty tone-benders with his third and best release, Talk Amongst the Trees. Here, Cooper hones the lustrous ambient whorls generated on his excellent debut disc Lambent Material, consistently forging more emotionally charged melodies and deeper resonances. Disc opener "New Animals from the Air" fades in with gently wavering drones replicating the avian wails of David Jackman's Sol Mara. The sound thickens with darker chords that coalesce into a heart-breaking tune that makes you understand why Explosions in the Sky and Mono asked Eluvium to tour with them. Whether he's in elegiac dirge mode ("Show Us Our Homes"), conjuring Gas-like pop ambience ("We Say Goodbye to Ourselves"), or evoking Roy Montgomery's stately, relentless chimes ("Taken"), Cooper induces a profound pathos with admirable economy. DAVE SEGAL

Eluvium play Sat Mar 26 at the Sunset Tavern, $8, 9 pm.

THE KILLS
No Wow
(Rough Trade/RCA)
***

In the beginning there were the blues, and the blues were badass. With nothing to lose, poverty-stricken storytellers described murder and illicit affairs from an unrepentant first-person perspective. The blues' original spirit endures in today's most aggressively rebellious rap, metal, and punk acts, though modern blues artists usually avoid graphic violence and scandalous sex talk, lest they frighten their festival, casino, and cruise-ship crowds. Recently, coed rock duos have become a reliable source for primal blues kicks. The Kills draw their raw heat from Alison Mosshart, who must have conducted her own Luciferian legal wrangling to catalyze her evolution from pop-emo crooner (in her previous band Discount) to PJ Harvey's dirty-blues doppelganger. A siren who makes "get the guns out and burn your house down" sound like arousing propositions, Mosshart growls, grunts, and whispers with sultry intensity. The group's distorted riffs, dirge pace, and stark electronic percussion paint a bleak industrial scene: No Wow conjures images of disgruntled workers who snuck into the factory after hours to hoist weary toasts and take ill-advised rides on the assembly lines. The Kills' beats throb at times, but the guitars stay serrated and the ever-intimidating Mosshart is no dance diva. "If I'm so evil, why are you so satisfied?" she sings, funneling the phrase through an audible smirk. The answer is that the Kills, like the Delta bards, make vicarious menace more compelling than cheerier empathetic emotions. ANDREW MILLER

The Kills play Fri Mar 25, Crocodile, $12, 9 pm.

50 CENT
The Massacre
(Aftermath)
**

"Banks' shit sells/Buck's shit sells/Game's shit sells/I'm rich as hell." Indeed, 50 is undeniably a canny businessman with an ear for talent (even if Lloyd Banks' and the Game's LPs were boring, overproduced examples of the ever-popular thug-rap-by-the-numbers genus IMHO)--and goddammit, he's paid. Maybe that's why the bone-deep hunger of Get Rich or Die Tryin is glaringly absent from The Massacre--or maybe it's because Mr. Candy Shop had to help Dre and Interscope with their overhyped wunderkind's project (i.e., giving up some of his best ideas, beats, and hooks) as he alleged on the radio when summarily kicking Game outta G-Unit… which smacks of Hilary Duff/Lindsay Lohan-style teen diva drama anyway (only with entourage shootings and on-air death threats). Whatever the case, there really isn't an excuse for the tired bullshit that is this album. The "notorious-because-he-wouldn't-leak-it" dis on Fat Joe and Jadakiss, "Piggy Bank," is flat-out laughable. "Clickety-Clank, Clickety-Clank"? This is a far cry from the kid that showed so much fuckin' promise on Power of the Dollar, only to guerrilla his way to 11 million in sales.

P.S. If you're one of those people who purposely over-enunciates his name as "Fiddy"(and I know who you are), please desist immediately. Thanks. LARRY MIZELL JR.

THE HOWLING HEX
All-Night Fox
(Drag City)
****

Howling Hex honcho Neil Michael Hagerty has defied the typical rock-and-roll aging process by making his most glorious album almost 20 years into a career--one that began with Pussy Galore's absurdist raunch and became legendary throughout the '90s with Royal Trux's acid-rock deconstructions. Since the Trux's 2000 split, the guitarist/vocalist has explored a bizarre strain of roots rock that contains no trace of corn or Rolling Stone reverence. Four albums deep into a fruitful solo sojourn, Hagerty has assembled his most fiery ensemble yet on All-Night Fox. For this eight-song masterpiece, the Howling Hex have hit upon a glinting hybrid of J.J. Cale's urgently lackadaisical boogie stomp, Bill Harkleroad's articulate guitar squawk, and Ornette Coleman's harmolodics. Throughout Fox, Hagerty trades hick-savant snarls with Lynn Madison and July McClure, whose honeyed, Loretta Lynn-ish contributions come bathed in luxurious reverb. It all coalesces into a newfangled, old-fashioned rock aphrodisiac that will make you want to fuck till the break of dusk--for once. DAVE SEGAL

THE FREE DESIGN
Sing for Very Important People
One by One
There Is a Song
(Light in the Attic)
***

Imagine what the polar opposite of grindcore and death metal sounds like. That's the Free Design. Comprising the Bible-readin' Dedrick siblings and session hands, the Free Design began recorded life in 1967, launching sonic hot-air balloons that enchanted like era radio fixtures the Association, but that hit the ear (and the charts) with less impact. To give you an idea of the Free Design's vibe, their best-known song asserts "Kites are fun" with utmost sincerity and sweetness and, on One by One, they totally desexualize the Doors' "Light My Fire." Listening to the group's final three albums from 1970-72, you gather that the Free Design are the nicest people ever to enter a studio, that their world was suffused in blinding white light, and that their songs were borne aloft on angels' wings. It should be a recipe for sickeningly sweet schlock, but no. These discs abound with meticulously crafted sunshine pop filigreed with nuanced touches of art-rock baroqueness and faint shadows of harmonic/melodic weirdness beneath the glistening vanilla façade. Too pure for this world… DAVE SEGAL

K. MCCARTY
Dead Dog's Eyeball: Songs of Daniel Johnston
(Bar/None)
****

Ten years after the Alternative Nation gold rush that landed him on MTV for a split second, Daniel Johnston--singer/songwriter/outsider-artist extraordinaire--is finally getting his full due. Along with The Devil and Daniel Johnston, the documentary that earned director Jeff Feuerzeig top honors at this year's Sundance, 2005 brings the rerelease of another key bit of Johnston-ilia, K. McCarty's Dead Dog's Eyeball: Songs of Daniel Johnston.

Originally released in 1994, this career-spanning collection of Johnston compositions--selected and sung by Austin's Kathy McCarty, half of the '80s duo Glass Eye and lifelong friend and former girlfriend of Daniel Johnston--presents Johnston's famously jagged art in a revolutionary new way: in tune, on tempo, intricately arranged, and beautifully executed. Not to devalue the originals--where Johnston's basement musicianship and manic-depressive warble achieve a beauty of their own--but on Dead Dog's Eyeball, Johnston's songs leap out of the psych ward and onto the cabaret stage, where McCarty's clear-as-a-bell singing and pitch-perfect theatrical delivery make the best of Johnston's compositions sound like late entries to the Great American Songbook.

Some listeners decry McCarty's theatricality, but to my ears, her work is a gripping continuation of Johnston's art, which has always aimed to make eternally beautiful music out of deeply private agony. To hear Johnston's harrowing ravages-of-mental-illness remembrances delivered in a voice as clear and confident as the young Shirley Jones only adds another twist to his brilliantly twisted work. The ultimate star of the show is Daniel Johnston, represented by a clutch of eternally ingenious songs--gorgeous enough to make you swoon, sad enough to make you cry, funny enough to make you weep. DAVID SCHMADER

OUT HUD
Let Us Never Speak of It Again
(Kranky)
*

This record was supposed to be the Big One--the vessel Out Hud would use to sail to the ends of the earth, flying the flag of Dance Power for all ports to see. There was talk of Molly Schnick and Phyllis Forbes singing more, and about ditching traditional instruments for pure computer disco. But, as they say, high hopes have farther to fall. Let Us Never Speak of It Again is the blandest Honda-commercial techno/house ever. The beats are textbook PC-made boom-baps, the vocals are unemotional diva blah, and the song that seemed geared for huge protest statements, "Dear Mr. Bush, There Are Over 100 Words for Shit and Only One for Music. Fuck You, Out Hud," is a hookless instrumental. Out Hud's sister band, !!!, are overrated, but at least they take chances. This is just safe. Never let us speak of it again. Ever. ADAM GNADE

BLOC PARTY
Silent Alarm
(Vice Records)
**

If this album were the solution to a math problem, it would look like this: Franz Ferdinand + TV On the Radio = Silent Alarm. And not because FF are Bloc Party's biggest fans, or because Bloc Party are British, or because they have a black singer (á la TVOTR), but because even the lamest cultural clichés occasionally transcend the realm of descriptive expedience (i.e., check boxes on the proverbial dance-rock SAT test) and solidify as inalienable truths. The good news is that there are more than enough Vegemite sandwiches to go around on Silent Alarm--even if a few at the bottom of the picnic basket are a little stale and/or have too much mayo. Not only can you get your skinny-tie swerve on via tracks like "Positive Tension" and "Helicopter"; you'll catch your po-mo neo-soul (or is it retro new-wave R&B?) quasi-groove with "Blue Light" and opener "Like Eating Glass," which doubles as the album's sweetest jam. There are moments where it gets a little too sappy ("She's Hearing Voices," "Pioneers"), like vocalist/guitarist Kele Okereke is gonna bust into some sort of ill-advised Seal crescendo, "Kiss from a Rose" style--but it never gets quite that embarrassing. It does go on a bit too long, though: Of Silent Alarm's 14 tracks, the last five are boring exercises in aimless lite-FM almost-rock best left to Terence Trent D'Arby and the fat guy from PM Dawn. No, really. J. BENNETT

Bloc Party play Sat Mar 26, Neumo's, $10, all ages, 8 pm.

PREFUSE 73
Surrounded by Silence
(Warp)
***1/2

Is this Prefuse 73's sell-out album? Has he gone… bling? The cover shot of a fit señorita and a bevy of guest marquee MCs suggest so. But when you actually play Surrounded by Silence, you notice that despite Wu-Tangers Ghostface and GZA's presence and raps from underground stars Beans, El-P, and Aesop Rock, this music just ain't straight-laced enough for Hot 97 radio or BET. True, the high-powered collab with Ghost and El-P, "Hideyaface," and the Camu-led "Now You're Leaving" represent Prefuse's most accessible work to date, projecting boldface-italic neon funk geared for clubs and commercial radio. But the man who flipped a few scripts with hiphop production techniques is still finding fascinating ways to disrupt steady head-noddin' while coating old samples in glittery grit: Prefuse is still clipping beats with efficient élan and slurring vibes and guitars with sensual care. Tracks with experimental guitarist Tyondai Braxton, folktronica tricksters the Books, psychedelic-soul man Nobody, and brainy MC Beans further solidify Prefuse's status as a robust force in post-modern hiphop. DAVE SEGAL

VARIOUS
Run the Road
(Vice)
****

Run the Road is a grainy black-and-white screen capture from a surveillance video of the London Underground. It perfectly distills the essence of the street-level UK electronic music subgenre known as grime, which splices together skittering Nintendo-sounding breaks with cannon-blast bass and brooding synths. With its aggressive, raw sound--leaning much more heavily on techno and Jamaican music than funk--and its regionality (only now is it starting to reach beyond London's city limits), grime has morphed into almost the UK equivalent of crunk.

When grime evolved out of UK two-step about three years ago, it was dominated by instrumental tracks, which MCs spat over at raves and clubs. Eventually, the MCs' larger-than-life personas started dwarfing those of the producers, a phenomenon that Run the Road perfectly documents. The compilation is rife with personality, from the brooding rhymes of staccato superstar Wiley (who appears on Jammer's "Destruction VIP") to the high-pitched tones of impish five-foot powerhouse Lady Sovereign. And where crunk has its golden goblets and strip-club sonatas, grime MCs find time for plenty of confessional--I dare say "emo"--bits between their battle stanzas and gun talk; perhaps owing to the fact that most of the artists are barely out of their teens.

Regardless, the most intense moments on this compilation are when the moody production steps up to back up rude street rhymes, as on No Lay's lyrical punch-up "Unorthodox Daughter" and ladies man Kano getting rough on the skittering "P's & Q's." There's some respite from the vocal beatdowns as well--a wicked remix of the Streets' "Fit but You Know It" where Kano, Sovereign, Tinchy Stryder, and Donae'o get cheeky over, aptly, a British invasion backbeat. VIVIAN HOST

John Holmes Jenna Jameson Ginger Lynn Fred Durst