End 2003 - New releases from our favorite bands come out at the end of the year

  
Belle & Sebastian
Dear Catastrophe Waitress
 Twee-pop, this time with a backbone

The Brian Jonestown Massacre
And This Is Our Music
 A slighly different sort of BJM here with more electronica underpinnings and a reflective feel prove to be, IOHO, a perfect evolution for the band/man

Broadcast
HaHa Sound
 Delicate, hauntingly dreamy soundscapes punctuated by prickly experimentations

Rob DeNunzio
Umami
 Nice listen

The Decemberists
Castaways and Cutouts
 Gentle, effortless, carefully crafted folk pop

Goldfrapp
Black Cherry
 Goldfrapp goes electroclash, attracting a large new Castro fanbase

The Monolith
Here Comes The Monolith
 Impeccable pop songs complete with enough engaging hooks and boy-girl harmonies to bring a tear to the eye of any Elephant 6 aficionado. Amazingly strong first time effort from some SF locals who we had the pleasure of catching at Cafe du Nord recently.

Mid 2003 -  
Manitoba
Up In Flames
 Genre bending mash-up rock with lots of moving parts, playing out more like electronica than your average pop song

Alpine Stars
B.A.S.I.C.
 We don't recall the 80s style synths actually sounding this good in the 80s

Sidestepper
3am (In Beats We Trust)
 Carribbean music for the 21st Century via a British producer

Britta Phillips, Dean Wareham
L' Avventura
 Beautifully understated, day-dreamy evocative that leaves you thinking, Luna who?

Blur
Think Tank
 Slipping after giving Coxon the boot or was 13 just that good? Probably a little of both.

mellodrone
A Demonstration of Intellectual Property
 An apt name for the band

Caia
The Magic Dragon
 Meditative, moody, but borderline montonous downtempo

The Warlocks
The Phoenix Album
 Good, solid classic space rock

Arkestra One
Arkestra One
 Great, slightly melancholy, downtemp disc

The White Stripes
Elephant
 Never much of a fan when we first heard them back in Detroit, like a fine wine, we think they're improving with age

Beginning 2003 -still getting caught up on a lot of good music released in 2002:  
The New Pornographers
Electric Version
 Four stars for four perfect power pop songs: From Blown Speakers, Laws Have Changed, All for Swinging You Around, and It's Only Divine Right

The Flaming Lips
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robot
 Three stars for the sheer brilliance of "Are You A Hypnotist?"

Lemon Jelly
Lost Horizons
 Flitatious, playful, quirky uptempo downtempo

Royksopp
Melody A.M.
 Frosty, filmatic, dreamy Norwegian electronica

Comets on Fire
Field Recordings from the Sun
 We caught them live at Thee Parkside, echoplex in full swing generating a wall of pure rage.

Tahiti 80
Wallpaper For the Soul
 Airy, upbeat, French pop

Jazzanova
In Between
 more Jazz coming from electronica programmers and producers

Shearwater
Everybody Makes Mistakes
 Really beautiful americana