JOHNNY DOWD

The Pawnbroker's Wife

(Catamount Records)

****Since 1997's Wrong Side of Memphis, Johnny Dowd's gift for melding the chilling beauty of Southern gothic imagery with the bruising, unflinching commentary of a world-weary country-punk has made him a highly regarded cult figure in the most genuine sense of the term: His fan base would be much, much wider if his records would finally start leaking up from the underground. He calibrates the quality level even higher with The Pawnbroker's Wife, building upon his morbid strengths in the acute presence of percussionist Brian Wilson, a preternaturally talented kid who amplifies Dowd's increasingly romantic backwoods ballads with swoops and stomps of nightmare-perfect drums and bass pedals. The eerie erotic foil of vocalist Kim Sherwood-Caso's frosty soprano, once sequestered in monotone background slivers, now comes beautifully to the forefront, fleshing out the album's most haunting track--"Virginia Beach"--and helping showcase Dowd's thoughtful movement away from death-obsessed dirges toward more sympathetic (and borderline pop) songwriting. Fucking phenomenal, really. HANNAH LEVIN

Johnny Dowd performs Fri-Sat Oct 18-19 at the Tractor Tavern, $10.

DJ Vadim

U.S.S.R.: The Art of Listening

(Ninja Tune)

**DJ Vadim is a Russian based in London. His first CD, U.S.S.R. Repertoire (1996), was a masterpiece of the mid-'90s movement known as abstract hiphop (DJ Cam, DJ Krush, DJ Goo, DJ Shadow), which was basically hiphop sans the rapper. On his second CD, U.S.S.R.: Life from the Other Side (1999), Vadim fell for the trap that tempts all abstract hiphop DJs in Europe and Japan--he hired American rappers. Almost all the tracks on the CD had a guest rapper who made it impossible to enjoy what is most enjoyable about abstract hiphop: its emphasis on the beats. Vadim's new CD, U.S.S.R.: The Art of Listening, is not, as I had hoped, a return to the haunting instrumentals of his first CD. It instead reattempts to blend his experimental beats with rappers and a few singers (one of whom is Edie Brickell, who has not been in a hiphop song since her claim "What I am is what I am" was sampled by Brand Nubian in the 1990 classic "Slow Down"). True, The Art of Listening is better than Life from the Other Side, but what one wants to hear are just Vadim's beats, those weird scratches, and the squeaking doors that are opened not by human hands but by invisible phantoms. CHARLES MUDEDE

SUE GARNER

Shadyside

(Thrill Jockey)

****While fronting New York avant-rockers Run On, Sue Garner reconciled seemingly disparate elements, mixing skewed melodicism and a deeply experimental streak to come up with a sound that perfectly captured a sense of affectless bohemia. With her solo debut, To Run More Smoothly, Garner developed further a homemade singer-songwriter side that she had shown traces of on Run On's final album, No Way. To Run More Smoothly is an album of lovely, melancholy songs about domestic frustration, restlessness, and long-term love. On her latest, Shadyside, Garner is more experimental, opening with "Yes," an affirmation over keyboards and guitar with sparse percussion. It's folk as re-imagined by a vibrant minimalist. Tape collage snippets, reconstituted rhythms, and deconstructed guitar lines run throughout the album. The effect is not a distraction from craft but a strengthening of each song's simplicity. Garner has a warm voice with a slightly honeyed drawl that gives each song an emotional depth and character of its own. Jim O'Rourke, Yo La Tengo bassist James McNew, and avant-guitarist Marc Ribot guest on the album, but the performances are more coloration than spotlights. Taking their cues from Garner, these players are at the service of the songs. NATE LIPPENS

HOLY MOLAR

The Whole Tooth and Nothing but the Tooth

(Three.One.G)

***It's almost over before it starts. The 13 songs on Holy Molar's two-CD set move like an electrocution, whiting out the rest of the world in bright flashes of noise and jarring rhythms, which come together in one violent fit of confusion. Then again, what else would you expect from a collaboration that includes three members of the Locust, together with members of Get Hustle and Virgin Mega Whore? It's a spazcore supergroup, gnashing away at titles like "You're Just One Minute and Thirty Seconds Closer to the Smoke from the Crematorium." Like the Locust, Molar combines a bratty insect whine with short bursts of intense shredding, keyboards circling the shape-shifting rhythms with mechanically ominous melodies. The between-song crowd commotions, wailing sirens, and calls for lockdown, together with jokey MC banter (the first CD is supposed to be a live recording from a San Diego correctional center), only add to the dizzying calamity Holy Molar evokes with such ferocious skill. JENNIFER MAERZ

**** Schmader *** Pennington ** Maerz * Steinbacher