Lazy music writers can't resist comparing this sister-brother duo to another hipster "sibling" combo (the Carpenters), but while there might be a similarity in the art-school blues cut-ups and arch poetics, the Fiery Furnaces deserve more thoughtful press. Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger have crafted a timeless record, piecing together familiar scraps of the Velvets (guitarwise), Bowie (music-hall piano burble), and Royal Trux (secondhand Stones blues), with a result as mysterious as their influences. Guitars mimic tambourines, assorted keys trickle over in carnival cascades, and it's cool as Vicks on a fevered chest. She's the lead voice, untrained but sweet and strong, singing inscrutable, endearingly awkward lyrics about married men, plagues, and intercepted phone threats. He's the primary guitar, wringing out loose, rubbery riffs over swinging piano, delicate jangles, and coarse wah-wah pedal workouts. It's an eccentric travelogue of antique landscapes, mapped out by devoutly modern children. FRED BELDIN

KING TUBBY
The Dub Master Presents the Roots of Dub and Dub from the Roots
(Moll-Selekta)
****

SYSTEMWIDE
Impurely Replied: Systemwide Remixed
(BSI Records)
***

PHILOSOPHY MAJOR
Hypnerotomachia
(WordSound Recordings)
***

Born Osbourne Ruddock in Kingston, Jamaica, King Tubby, who was murdered in 1989, is credited with having invented the art of versioning--now called remixing--and was one of the first DJs, in the hiphop sense, working with "toasters," Jamaican rappers. Moll-Selekta's double CD contains Tubby's first and second "dub albums": The Roots of Dub, which was released in 1974, and Dub from the Roots, which was released in 1975. Both are important: for one, because they contain some of the most beautiful dubs ever produced ("Dub Magnificent," "Declaration of Dub," "Invasions"), and they are the steps leading up to Tubby's first major creative peak, the classic King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown.

King Tubby's descendents are everywhere. Some are in Portland, in the form of Systemwide, who have just released a collection of remixes/versions of their 2002 CD, Pure and Applied. The best dub is not attached to its origins (to the song it versions), but stands as an independent work of art, and such is the case with Impurely Replied. Containing remixes by some of the best dubbers in the world, like Vancouver, BC/Holland-based Twilight Circus Dub Sound System, the tracks on Impurely Replied are not only independent but in certain cases the version surpasses the original considerably, as with English dub master Jah Warrior's "Dub Plate [Remix]."

Another descendent of King Tubby, but by way of New York's DJ Spooky, is Seattle's Philosophy Major. It's impossible not to separate his CD Hypnerotomachia from Spooky's Songs of a Dead Dreamer. Like Spooky, Major's futurism is that of an urban archaeology, a look at the future by opening up and exploring layers of dead technology beneath Seattle's present. Despite its debt to Spooky and the illbient movement of the mid-'90s, the CD is really impressive and ambitious, with several first-rate dub tracks ("The Soundless Hum of Prayer," "...The City of Shells"). Now that dub is here, at the end of America, we can say that dub is everywhere. CHARLES MUDEDE

RYAN ADAMS
Rock N Roll
(Lost Highway)
***

Alt-country's too-prolific-for-his-own-good enfant terrible has gone and done it this time: Ryan Adams recorded the rock album he has been threatening to make since his Whiskeytown days. And it's not a little bit country and a little bit rock 'n' roll--it's an all-out, guitars cranked, sexy, drunken rock record. Rock N Roll is a far cry from his solo debut, the gorgeously acoustic strum bummer Heartbreaker, but it's just as good in its own way. Adams' voice is hoarse and raw--a little bit Paul Westerberg and a little bit morning-after scream therapy. He slows it down for two songs to add texture, but otherwise the album lives up to its title musically. But does he really mean it otherwise? This has been the question haunting the shapeshifting songwriter in every guise. Aesthetically it sounds damn convincing, but then I like my authenticity a little fake and my artifice a little sincere. Adams delivers the tears with a sneer and roughs up the joy with bruises. NATE LIPPENS

SOILED DOVES
Soiled Life
(Gold Standard Laboratories)
***

In retrospect, it's easy to hear how local art-punk quartet Soiled Doves could only sustain existence for a few months. Soiled Life (recorded in 2001, but shelved when the band--three-fourths of whom went on to the Chromatics-- split up) bursts with performance so combustible that sparks fly off the CD. Vocalist Johnny Whitney, on loan from the Blood Brothers, was still refining the timing of his tonsil-shredding howl, but overall these eight blistering songs surpass even the glorious din of the foursome's earlier ensemble, the Vogue; on "Suck This Nest," Devin Welsh slashes away like he just returned from Sonic Youth Guitar Camp, then picks out precise, exposed-nerve-ending licks on the concluding title track. The latter half of the album is especially strong, most notably the seven-minute epic "Hunter Gatherer," with a guest cello weaving through a grid of multi-tracked vocals. Soiled Doves may not have lasted long, but, as a revered explosives expert once said, "They blowed up real good!" KURT B. REIGHLEY

**** Slayer *** Accept ** White Lion * The Darkness