One Night Band
Way Back Home
STOMP RECORDS
Street: 10.10
One Night Band = Prince Bruster + The Slackers + The Wailers
Straight outta Montreal Canada, One Night Band offers listeners a feel good album of reggae ska about things like the trials and tribulations of falling in love, to the infamous Houdini. My favorite song from Way Back Home was “Rolling the Dice”, but it was easy to escape into the smooth dub vibe and hypnotizing vocals of all the songs. Their sound is anything but your generic ska, reggae or dub, rather it’s all of them. One Night Band has done a phenomenal job blending their influences into their sound, while still keeping true to their originality. All in all, this has been my favorite CD I have got my hands on in quite some time. So relax, take it in and enjoy! – Sara Edge

Owen
At Home With Owen
Polyvinyl records
Street: 11.07
Owen = Sun Kil Moon + Multiverse
A quiet roar in the direction of the vapid indie kids can be heard from Mike Kinsella’s (Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, American Football, Owls) solo album At Home With Owen. It’s an indie-folk portrait of the fear of being alone, with themes that are self-consciously vivid – each containing a uniform depth (or shallowness, depending on your perspective) on life’s successes and mishaps. The album also features fully orchestrated pieces with as many as three guitars; tasteful, live-sounding drums; backing choruses; and strings. Juxtapose that style with lyrics that are intentionally smarmy and you’ve got the picture. –Josh Nordin

Peter and the Wolf
Lightness
The Worker’s Institute
Street: 10.31
Peter and the Wolf = Stephen Merritt + Nick Drake + Beat Generation – Drugs and Pretension
In what could easily be pegged another apotheo-istic example of the indie rock genre (a simple formula will do here: pathos + anorak + nostalgia), Peter and the Wolf aka Red Hunter shake off the burdensome yoke of labels and play a well-traveled clang and jangle folk song. What makes this album an interesting listen is the way its dissonant in cohesiveness – in which one song sounds like a lost Nick Drake recording and the other the self-parodying bright sway of a United Bible Studies track – comes together to provide an album that can be enjoyed start to finish. While it isn’t subtle, a bit achy breaky (so much so) and considerably lo-fi to a clichéd fault, Lightness is a record in which its faults, like a child with a deformed face, make it cute and charming all the way through. – Erik LopezPlanet Asia
The Medicine
AAB Records
Street: 10.03
Planet Asia = Zion I + Cali Agents + Dopey Dope
Everyone who has been waiting for yet another Planet Asia gem to drop, raise your hand. Yeah, me too. Planet Asia is well known throughout the hip-hop community, but it wasn’t always like that. Ever since his first self titled ep release, Planet Asia (born Jason Green) has continued to outdo himself over and over. The Medicine, produced by Evidence (Beat Junkies) and recorded in his hometown of Fresno, California, is more scattered with massive hooks and more diverse lyrics than his last albums. Budging from critical declarations to ridiculous and cynical statements, Planet Asia has noticeably transformed. It seems that the semi-famous emcee has to duck from the buck shots when he visits his . The Medicine is a whole lot of trademark Planet Asia style tracks primarily made intriguing by the featured artists like Black Thought of the Roots, Prodigy of Mobb Deep and Defari; an uncommon mixture of the compelling and the extraordinary. – Lance Saunders

Rafter
Music for Total Chickens
Asthmatic Kitty
Street: 12.05
Rafter = Dosh + The Microphones
The broken-down instrument indie-rock shtick is pretty standard by now, but very few seem to get it right. Just because you “bent” the circuits in a five-dollar Casio and yodel/bang on an equally cheap acoustic guitar over an even cheaper drum machine doesn’t mean you’re a genius (or that anyone wants to hear you). The key ingredient, the one most miss, is creativity. Rafter Roberts has enough of it to start three fads, ably matching catchy hooks, fun, terrific lyrics, and moderately-slick production to his bizarre ensemble of hushed choirs, percussion, experimental forms, stringed instruments and keyboards. Though poppy hints abound, Roberts has no desire to craft typical indie-radio gems. Instead, he prefers to briefly flirt with a neat chorus and fixed tempo before decimating it with a distorted burp and loose Boléro quote (e.g. “Unassailable”). Experimentally inviting instead of abrasive, logically pieced together and never “look what I can do”, Roberts sonically and emotionally connects the disparate dots of each piece into a unified, dynamic large-scale work. By enthusiastically working a niche, Roberts successfully manages a universe in a genre that few even deserve to visit. – Dave Madden