Pungent Indie Rock

Silversun Pickups -- Well Thought Out Twinkles (3.2mb mp3 from the band's label)

This band must get sick of being compared to other bands in the modern rock canon, but I do mean it as a serious compliment when I say that they remind me of earlier Smashing Pumpkins with occasional nods to the Pixies. Not in a copycat way, but with good solid influences and their own twist on them.

Things get started here with a chunky, almost bluesy groove that downshifts into the verse, then returns with a sort of classic-rock vengeance later on. I didn't really warm up to the song until I had heard the excellent break at the half-way point a few times -- such a thick, tight sound with a chugging bass line, a spacey keyboard floating along behind, and then growing intensity and distortion as things get rolling again to finish things up. This is fantastic rock, and I can only imagine how amazing they'd be in concert.

That's Just Rank

S -- Falling (5.5mb mp3 from the band's label page)

This category is reserved for weird songs, ones nobody should really like immediately. Fans of Bjork will probably catch on to this tune pretty quickly, though. The transitions between sections are often abrupt and jarring, going from frantic minor-key intensity to near-silence and techno blips without warning. It's so worth overcoming the listening challenges, though -- at 2:24, you think it's over, but then the last minute builds up to a beautiful, soaring sort of chorus that still gives me goosebumps a year and a half after I first started putting it in playlists. So maybe the category isn't quite right...nothing rank about this.