BILL FAY - From The Bottom Of An Old Grandfather Clock

An idea of a demos album might scare people--well, monsters should scare people. This makes me so happy that my joyous feelings could slay any monster. Happy Halloween.

WAX POETICS - Anthology Volume 1

The Brooklyn magazine Wax Poetics has established itself as the consummate archival publication for the roots of soul, funk, hip-hop, jazz, Latin, and the like. Detailed histories, revealing interviews, and gorgeous vintage photography are rendered with the kind of reverence reserved for the obsessive music lover. This anthology collects the best material from the magazine's first five issues (2001-2003) in a beautifully presented hardcover volume. With Wax Poetics' popularity slowly increasing over the last few years, this is the perfect way to catch up on the origins of an excellent read.

VARIOUS TITLES - VP Records' 17 North Parade series (reggae reissues)

With the recent reissue standstill from labels like Blood & Fire, new material has become scarce for diehard reggae/dub collectors. These people can get excited about the 17 North Parade reissues from VP Records, which feature complete titles (many for the first time on CD) from artists like Joe Gibbs, Dennis Brown and Yellowman. The original year of release is marked on the cover for fans whose preferences tend to be defined by eras or in-house studio bands. Highlights include Dennis Brown's Visions and Gibbs' African Dub series Volumes 1-4, but the whole series is so affordable that the curious can take a chance.

HIGH ON FIRE - Death Is This Communion

Matt Pike is pretty much a latter-day stoner rock legend; his seminal band Sleep's Jerusalem is a hallowed, single 52-minute monolith of sludgy riffage. But his work in High On Fire has consistently been more and more aggressive with each new release, trading the molasses haze of dope for an athletic adrenaline. Death Is This Communion is yet another example of his exceptional skill at wrenching primal ferocity from the guitar, and his vicious bandmates never miss a chance to help him pummel a point home. Er, and by that I mean, it tears the flesh clean off your bones. You dig Mastodon? You'll love this.

NEIL YOUNG - Chrome Dreams II

How you view Neil Young's latest depends on a few things, not the least of which being whether or not an 18-minute song like "Ordinary People" is your idea of transcendence or self-indulgence. Despite having two tunes over 14 minutes, Chrome Dreams II is not the relentless guitar jam session you might expect. Whether the rockabilly-lite of "The Believer", the gospel-tinged "Shining Light", or the scuzzy "Dirty Old Man", this album shimmys from style to style. As for its place in Young's history, well, when you're up against some of the greatest albums ever made, it's hard to fault Dreams for being merely good.

ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS - Raising Sand

Understatement has never been Robert Plant's strong suit. In Led Zeppelin's heyday, that was a good thing. As he's grown older, however, his lack of restraint has been a real Achilles' heel. So, hearing him sing with such gentle touch on Raising Sand is quite mesmerizing. No doubt matching voices with the exceptional Krauss forced him to keep things in check, and the spooky guidance of T-Bone Burnett was likely a huge factor. Still, this record's bloody gorgeous. Saying that Raising Sand is Plant's best work since John Bonham was alive could be taken as faint praise; it's meant as anything but.

HOLY FUCK - LP

This Toronto quartet have been successfully experimenting with the possibilities of live electronic music for a few years now, but with LP, they've happened upon the secret to bringing their party off the stage and onto record. Fashioned on the road, these tunes vibrate with tangible energy and locomotive intensity, but the secret is the dollop of sugar thrown into the mix. Instrumental pop hooks give these songs the added buoyancy that was lacking on their self-titled debut. What's more, their madcap ability to keep their bleeps and bloops fluid rather than rigid allows for a looseness missing from most electro-dance music.

CUFF THE DUKE - Sidelines Of The City

Following singer Wayne Petti's tender solo album earlier this year, Cuff The Duke return with a third record that rests somewhere between the earnest straight-and-narrow of Blue Rodeo and Wilco's detours. If these references aren't exactly original, the songs are of strong quality--minus a couple slight lyrical missteps, this record is full of solid tunes and Petti's voice delivers them perfectly. "Remember The Good Times" should by all rights be a hit radio single (if those things existed anymore) and the band plays with a trained ear for loving detail.

WEEN - La Cucaracha

Ween has built a fanatical reputation on industrious absurdity. Whether it's their unpredictable three-hour shows, writing songs that use "spinal meningitis got me down" as the main hook, or being able to conjure up Nashville country, euro-techno or cheesy metal with equal aplomb, Dean and Gene are pretty much unlike any other act in music. In other words, either you get (and love it) or you don't, and La Cucaracha ain't about to change that fact. Another platter of genre-hopping madness.

PLANTS AND ANIMALS - With/Avec EP

A Montreal live fixture for years, the first on Secret City for P&A takes the form of a surprisingly substantial four-song, 25-minute EP. With/Avec is the kind of release that could achieve what bands always hope for with an EP--an appetite whetter that never fully satisfies, bringing anticipation to fever pitch for their 2008 full-length. The ingredients are certainly there: Plants and Animals play highly malleable music, a tender blend of whispered-folk and high melancholic drama. A closing cover of Nina Simone showstopper "Sinnerman" is a bit of a tougher sell for three white guys, but hey, they almost pull it off.

THE DIABLEROS - Aren't Ready For The Country

After an onslaught of buzz for this group's debut, You Can't Break The Strings In Our Olympic Hearts, The Diableros were one of 2006's happier breakouts; so unflinchingly exuberant was that record that it seemed to register through sheer force of will. Aren't Ready For The Country reaffirms all there was to love about the band. Pete Carmichael's vocals are charismatically unschooled, relying on passion and honest conviction to read from his bursting heart. Under a dense muck of reverbed guitars, organ and drums, lays the band's simple secret: in the Diableros' world, guts win out over finesse every time.

THE OLD SOUL - Gold

Gold is the kind of bursting-at-the-seams pop record that bandleader Luca Maoloni was born to write. Far less indebted to The Beach Boys' classic pop than their debut, Gold also benefits from greater focus and even better tunes than in the past. Sonic omnivores, the Old Soul use every tone available; this record is punch drunk with gurgling synths, flowing strings and tons of unexpected flourishes, not the least of which is the giddy steel drum hook on "Let's Neck". For all the chaos, Maoloni's spirited vocals keep your ears on the song; the man's got melodies like your high school janitor had keys.

CASS MCCOMBS - Dropping The Writ

McCombs has all of the gifts to be a major indie star: an effortless way with melody, a lack of shyness with hooks, and a soaring, rich voice. The only thing barring his ascendency--and you get the sense he likes it this way--are the left-of-centre ticks that he nestles into his tunes. Slightly off-kilter lyrics, stabs of basement production, and somtimes over-reaching vocals constantly keep these otherwise immediate pop songs straining to keep their balance. It's a great reminder that a love of pop tunes and an ear for abstraction need not be mutually exclusive things; often, they're what keep each other honest.

VARIOUS ARTISTS - Larry Banks' Soul Family Album

The long-awaited second volume in Kent's Artistry In Soul series is finally here!  Considering the first volume, Eddie & Ernie's Lost Friends was one of the greatest soul compilations ever, expectations are high. The Larry Banks' Soul Family Album exceeds them all with its mix of deep soul (Kenny Carter's "I Can't Stop Laughing") and uptempo scorchers (Geminis' "Come On Act Right"). This release stakes a strong claim for Larry Banks, who wrote 23 of the 24 songs on this comp, as one of the most unsung composers of his genre.

BAND OF HORSES - Cease To Begin

The debt that Band Of Horses owe to Built To Spill and My Morning Jacket is clear. But credit this group with the good sense to take the most immediate moments of each--their brisk pop tunes and searching, yearning ballads--and remove all the jammy indulgence. This distillation leaves behind pure indie rock delight, which is exactly what these trusted steeds deliver for a second time with Cease To Begin. Ben Bridwell's voice is perfectly suited to these songs; always on the right side of breaking, it's an arrow straight to the heart. A lovely record that pleasingly aspires to be nothing more than just that.

ROBERT WYATT - Comicopera

Wyatt's ability to walk a very thin line between timeless pop and artful divergence is a masterful gift; one made more spectacular by his unassuming way with that gift. This music shrugs its shoulders and finds the quiet corner in the room. It takes a certain amount of initiative to even get a conversation going, and once you begin talking, things don't come easily either. As its title suggests, Comicopera balances in close proximity images of humour and touching commitment with plainly brutal isolation. You can't often truly call an album brave and beautiful, but that's a distinction this record earns.

THE FIERY FURNACES - Widow City

The sheer amount of ideas in "The Philadelphia Grand Jury" alone, the opener from Widow City, would be enough to keep most bands healthy for an entire album. That this seven-minute epic is only the first of sixteen songs on The Fiery Furnaces' sixth release is a telling sign. Anyone hoping for this brother-sister duo to settle down and write tunes as focused and catchy as EP's "Tropical-Iceland" are outta luck. Melodies, hooks, riffs, segues, and left turns rush out of this disc like a busted fire hydrant; it's up to you to either run from the flood or roll up your pants and dance in the spray. Inspired insanity.

PJ HARVEY - White Chalk

The thing that I love about PJ Harvey is the specificity with which she makes records. With every new album, she challenges herself, and her audience, to abandon familiar comforts and adapt to new approaches. The piano-driven White Chalk is possibly the most challenging record she has presented since Is This Desire? or even her sophomore milestone Rid Of Me. To interpret it as a callous and self indulgent attempt to alienate listeners is to have never known what made Harvey tick in the first place. Austere and distant on first meeting, it quivers with new feelings upon every listen.

PICASTRO - Whore Luck

Soft vocals and moody songs surrounded by creative arrangements that sometimes feel like they are on the verge of collapse. Stretched out and contracted rhythms with simple but often obscure sounding harmonies highlight "Stair Keeper". The song "Friend of Mine" shares an uncomfortable but playful bass melody with a subtle and acutely ranged vocal line. A nice touch over its distant and reluctant piano waltz. Also, listen in the album for effective accompanying roles for an extremely exhausted organ and a creaking floor.

SANDRO PERRI - Tiny Mirrors

As Polmo Polpo, Perri was the voiceless creator of beautifully submerged, amorphous music. So it's somewhat shocking to see just how nuanced a singer and songwriter he actually is. Hints of the great potential for Tiny Mirrors have been littered across CD-R releases and 2006's strong Sandro Perri Plays Polmo Polpo, not to mention his always excellent supporting cast of players. But that voice! Bringing to mind such singers as Arthur Russell and Talk Talk's Mark Hollis, Perri's voice is simply a revelation and Tiny Mirrors marks its strongest step into the world yet. Makes you wonder what other tricks he's hiding.