DOVES
Some Cities
(Capitol)
***

There's just something about some cities, whether Manchester, England or Motown, USA… the type of cities with a post-industrial hole festering in their core. These kinds of abysses stare back. All that empty space allows artists to project themselves into the void, to pool in their own longing, and to determine what they'd like to get out of the city as well as in to the city.

Then there is Some Cities by Mancunian trio Doves. These similar feelings of identifying the placement of displacement have been funneled into 11 songs about this transitory life. It's all odes to buildings gone and corners turned. It's demolition by a glittery, mirrored wrecking ball, its somber vocals crowning more celestial melodies.

On "Black & White Town" and standout "Almost Forgot Myself," Doves make like some kind of bizarre Motown house band--the In-a-Funk Brothers. "Snowden" will make fans of Flaming Lips and Leon Theremin delirious. The rubbery bass lines and metronomic backbeat of the plump opening tracks evoke Doves' past as Madchester dance act Sub Sub. After the first handful of songs, Some Cities trades some bombast for balladry, bogs a little in choosing elegiac over elastic, and the album proves itself to be the median of the brimming atmospherics of Doves' debut, Lost Souls, and the group's more concise, pop-eyeing sophomore release, Last Broadcast. While not as strong on the backend as on the front, Doves' Cities bears no glaringly gaping hole in its yearning heart. TONY WARE

DUTCH DUB
Self Titled
***

Pretty Girls Make Graves drummer Nicholas DeWitt recently released his debut solo CD under the name Dutch Dub, Self Titled. Most of the music on the CD was recorded in Seattle on a four-track, and Chuck Keller, Nathan Thelen, and Jason McGerr perform on a couple of songs. Though the influence of reggae dub is present in some of the tracks--especially "Peanut Butter and Jelly Heart," which has the floating and sorrowful sounds of the defining dub instrument, the melodica--the music itself is not dub and lands nowhere near reggae. The catchy bass lines, electronic drumbeats, and keyboard noises are completely rock. Still, Self Titled has its pleasures, many of which are very small (several songs end before completing a minute and two barely cross the four-minute line) and seemingly made from instruments that were found in the basement of a thrift store. Jamaican dub music, which is also junk music (or music made from junk), is essentially heroic; it takes secondhand pop tunes and transforms them into massive and melting architectures. There are no such heroicisms or ambition or sense of importance on Self Titled. In tracks like "Tiger in Harlem," "Swastikas, Fuzzy Dice and Love," and "Morris Chizer," the echo effects do nothing more than give the fatigued music a little warmth. And that's exactly what Self Titled contains--a little warmth, a little happiness, a little love, and a little loss. CHARLES MUDEDE

THE NATIONAL
Alligator
(Beggars Banquet)
***

The National may comprise two sets of brothers from the Midwest, but thankfully the sibling-factor is the only thing the band have in common with other all-in-the-family acts. Instead of digging backward through their parents' record crates, the National abandon their alt-country roots on Alligator and quietly forge ahead, channeling Leonard Cohen via Stephin Merritt to create a delicate and damaged collection of songs with their third full-length. Filled with apologies, deceit, and paranoia, Alligator certainly isn't the type of album to get your dance party started (it's more likely to make you lock yourself in the bathroom and slit your wrists), but its melancholy (and often masochistic) tension ebbs and flows with easy grace. Some extraneous Isaac Brock-inflected yelping aside, the opener, "Secret Making," sets the album's mid-tempo pace early, with vocalist and sole non-bro Matt Berninger singing about "a secret meeting in the basement of my brain," over a painstakingly laid bed of drums, keys, and reverb-soaked guitars. This formula continues, and mostly flourishes, for the remainder of the disc, save for a few tracks, namely "Looking for Astronauts" or "All the Wine," where the album veers too closely into adult-contemporary territory. However, if you can endure Alligator's Cohen-esque tendencies--as well as nonsensical couplets like "I'm a birthday candle in a circle of black girls/God is on my side"--and persist until the album closer, "Mr. November," you'll be rewarded with near pop-perfection. JONAH BAYER

KUMA
Fast Colliding
****

Kuma's first full-length zooms and swoops like the coaster inside Space Mountain. At times exhilarating, heart wrenching, and dance inducing, the band's potent electro-rock hybrid is unexpectedly habit-forming. The solid and fervent guitar stylings of Dave Dayton and Neal Hallmark, tight drumming from Aaron Nicholes, and keys and programmed sounds by Corey Paganucci paint a pop-surrealist landscape for Bre Loughlin's breathy to banshee vocal travels. Useful comparisons include the Sugarcubes, Curve, Cocteau Twins, and Joy Division--but honestly, you've never heard anything quite like this local band.

Fast Colliding's opening track, "The Wrecking Ball," is a four-minute, guitar-driven composition decorated by gritty samples over which Loughlin laments, "Are there no dreams left for my sleep?/Are there no kisses left to keep?/Then please throw me out of the airplane/because I get to die… someday." But then she comforts with a poppy, optimistic "You'll get to die someday/It will be very good." "Melodic Interlude" is a rapid-fire, sweet and sour farewell to a poisonous lover. "Welcome to Hell," an ode to an apocalyptic ending, is a melodic march punctuated with a sing-along-inducing "Welcome to hell (la la la la)." Six songs into the 11-song disc and the hooks are already in deep. Of all these pretty songs, though, "Ruby" is the best: breathless and confident, piloted by sweet, lackadaisical keyboards and injected with sexy guitar throbs… These are the sounds my DNA would make if it had lips and fingers. AMY KATE HORN

LOVE AS LAUGHTER
Laughter's Fifth
(Sub Pop)
****

Perhaps it's because Love as Laughter recently hit the 10-year mark as a band or maybe it was the wise choice to record their fifth record in a friend's basement over a relaxed pace of five months, but Sam Jayne and company really deliver the goods this time out. Whereas the former Lync frontman used to be his own worst enemy, genre-surfing to the point of incoherence and overdubbing himself into oblivion, Jayne now keeps things simple, pleasantly rumpled, and unabashedly classic rock-driven. Leaving such a clear path lets the listener walk right into the heart of his songwriting and appreciate his knack for wrapping crafty lyrical innuendos around gritty, guitar-pop gems. For the uninitiated listener, the most logical reference point is vintage Tom Petty, from the distinct jangle of his guitar sounds and the casual cadence of his vocal delivery to his construction of memorably melodic bridges. Sweet little touches like the ambling kazoo solo on "Corona Extra" or the nearly inaudible, delicate "pling" of Jayne's guitar strings on the opening notes of "Every Midnight Song" add subtle charm and effectively contrast with more rollicking, sing-along bar-rock anthems like "Dirty Lives." By the time things wind down with the closing "Makeshift Heart," it's refreshingly clear Jayne's learned a lot about the virtues of creative minimalism when he sings, "I'm so glad you realize/That sometimes you need air." All indie rockers should strive to age this gracefully. HANNAH LEVIN

JANE
Berserker
ARIEL PINK'S HAUNTED GRAFFITI
Worn Copy
(Paw Tracks)
***1/2

Paw Tracks is the boutique label of NYC freak-folksters Animal Collective. These latest releases from that imprint (a subsidiary of Carpark Records) prove that their A&R instincts are as peculiar as their music. This is a very good thing.

Jane consist of Animal Collective member Panda Bear and Scott Mou, a DJ and employee of hipster record emporium Other Music. Berserker is a four-track, 54-minute EP that explores the mantric possibilities of extended jamming. But rather than wank out as many notes as they can, Jane go the minimalist route, blissing out like Black Dice did on Beaches & Canyons' spacier cuts. On "Agg Report," the duo set heat-haze keyboard/guitar oscillations and FX'ed coos over gentle 4/4 beats á la Wolfgang Voigt's Gas project. "Slipping Away" is opiated electro funk that will make your endorphins dance the Watusi, while "Swan" is a soul-stirring drone piece that could conceivably resolve the conflict between warring minimalist composers La Monte Young and Tony Conrad. Berserker is both strangely relaxing and unnervingly trippy.

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti is a one-eccentric band from Los Angeles whose shaggy-haired songs tend to instantly polarize listeners. Like his previous album, The Doldrums, Worn Copy sounds like an acid-damaged jumbling of, say, October 1972's entire Top 40 filtered through a gunk-encrusted four-track. Though sharper than The Doldrums', the mix on Worn Copy is as murky as an alkie's thoughts, but Ariel Pink's tunes hold up your memory bank for every cent in its vaults. Think of Ariel as a lo-fi Fucking Champs with more ambitious "pop" aspirations. DAVE SEGAL

DAMON & NAOMI
The Earth Is Blue
(20/20/20)
***

On The Earth Is Blue, Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang (rhythm section for the influential Galaxie 500 and the overlooked Magic Hour) deliver more sad (non) hits, to paraphrase the title of their 1992 debut album. The married couple's last full-length, Damon & Naomi with Ghost (2000, Sub Pop), was a dozy affair, but not without its languid charms. If you like spare yet lush ballads with Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood-on-'ludes vocalizing, the disc will curl your toes nicely, though hard-rockin' types may find it to be the aural equivalent of warm milk. Damon & Naomi's fifth studio album features Ghost's sensitive electric guitarist Michio Kurihara and guests Greg Kelley (trumpet) and Bhob Rainey (soprano sax), but they don't deviate from the long-standing D&N template. This is exemplified by one of the duo's best songs, "Beautiful Close Double," featuring dewy acoustic-guitar jangle, folky amble, Naomi's cooler-than-ice, vulva-soft croon, and Damon's pathos-heavy wails. Poignancy is D&N's métier--they're soaking in it. While Earth could've appeared at any point in D&N's career, its water-treading is undeniably touching and romantic. DAVE SEGAL

Damon & Naomi perform at the Tractor Sat April 30, 9:30 pm, $10.

MOBY
Hotel
(V2)
**1/2

Like Madonna, the singularly monikered Moby feels increasingly less like a crucial musical artist and more like a marketing mogul for the entertainment industry. A shrewd businessman, Moby gained much success throwing his Play singles on anything that stuck (TV commercials, movie soundtracks), making his music as ubiquitous as his bald, bespectacled visage. His efforts turned him into a mainstream superstar in the early '00s, but his early ingenuity dries up the more he offers watered-down electronic pop like Hotel.

The new two-disc release of course comes with Moby's standard branding--a partnership with W Hotels and a book about/named after his tea house Teany. But the core of all these cross-promotions is a gooey womb of dewy-eyed songs of love/lament ("Forever"), Hallmark spirituality ("Let peace and beauty reign/and bring us love again"), and hokey calls to "Hold on to people/they're slipping away" ("Slipping Away"). Soap-opera actors have more range than the gelatinous emotions clogging Hotel's arteries--especially when the lyrics are coupled with the pandering, roll-the-credits melodrama in the music itself. As the name does imply, these CDs are perfect for placating modern travelers--you can especially hear the ambient tendrils of disc two working their way through minimalist hotels (with overpriced rooms and Ikea furniture) around the country. With more recent electronic trends like grime and garagey dance punk filling out the dance floors, though, Moby's antiseptic mix feels two steps behind the times--stuck in some ecstasy-fueled coma from days gone by. JENNIFER MAERZ

Moby performs at the Paramount Wed May 4, 8 pm, $30.

CAESARS
Paper Tigers
(Astralwerks)
**1/2

You may already know Swedish quartet Caesars from the song "Jerk It Out," the theme to Apple's iPod Shuffle ad campaign. That commercial would have you believe life--and therefore music--is random, a cause for celebration. Except nobody told the theme song's composers. "Jerk It Out" has been featured, remixed, or rerecorded on three Caesars releases to date. Both the track and the band's sound--an amalgam of the psychedelic garage-band era celebrated through the Nuggets box sets--are highly calculated. But that's not to say Paper Tigers--the Caesars' fourth album (though only the second collection from the group, who are called Caesars Palace in Sweden, available in the States)--isn't a strawberry alarm clock set to fun. It's a virtual oasis of retro power pop.

Jaunty "My Heart Is Breaking Down" and "Throwaway" are modernized Mersey beat, with a steady, grinning backbeat, chiming guitar, and just a pencil's width of grit on knotty solos. The more jittery and jangly "Jerk It Out," "It's Not the Fall that Hurts," and "We Got to Leave" are rousing thrusts of Kinksian chords with the band's own chugging, frugging production, too crisp to be vintage but appropriately lysergically laced. Mellotron and Hammond B3 flourishes bolster cascading vocal chorales in "May the Rain" and "Soul Chaser." Indeed, the snappish, deliberate imprints of the Stones, Roky Erickson, 13th Floor Elevators, and the Sonics are worn on Caesars' sleeves as conspicuously as one of those pearlescent iPod Shuffles flops about a neck. But for fans of Caesars' brand of thorough homage, Paper Tigers will be a CD more suited for repeat than random listening. TONY WARE

MAGNOLIA ELECTRIC CO.
What Comes After the Blues
(Secretly Canadian)
**

Time has stood still for Jason Molina since he chanced across his perfect sound in the windswept, sparse alt-country rock band Songs: Ohia in the mid '90s. He changed his band's name to that of their final album around the time his music crystallized into a formula, and with it seemingly announced that he was prepared to live the same moment over and over again. There's nothing wrong with mournful, violin-tinted epics like What Comes After the Blues' "Northstar Blues" or the lonesome "Leave the City." Indeed, if this were the first time you'd heard Molina's groove, you'd probably be impressed at his haunted, mournful voice, despite its obvious resemblance to Will Oldham's. Throughout Blues, notes linger into silence and acoustic guitars thrum and hum, sounding like a Neil Young demo tape circa 1973. Trouble is, Molina has been here plenty of times before. Unlike his mentors Oldham and Chan Marshall (whose spooked Americana this also closely resembles), Molina has forgotten the value of exploring fresh terrain.

Steve Albini's production is as immaculate as ever, honed and polished to a degree that you feel like you're farting in the chapel if you even dare to take issue. But Blues is a major disappointment. EVERETT TRUE

Magnolia Electric Co. plays Crocodile Cafe Wed May 4 with the Court & Spark, 9 pm, $8.

**** Vinyl
*** Cassettes
** CDs
* MP3s