Oh, Canada, is there no end to the brilliant music born of your cold, cold womb and exported from your exotic land? Here, the sound of the Ontario province is somewhat post-punk and similar to the Afghan Whigs (which is cemented by the vocal likeness to Greg Dulli). Tournament of Hearts is epic in scope and embodies a strange tone which has the power to summon dark delusions and desperate entreatments, an album which is good in its entirety.
Silversun Pickups Pikul (Dangerbird Records)
The six-song debut EP from Silversun Pickups, who are part of Los Angeles' fabled Silverlake music community, begins deceptively with potential pop-hit “Kissing Families,” possibly the best song I've heard all year. To my initial disappointment, the rest contains the same intriguing, effects-heavy guitar arrangements, but instead of pop the pace gradually slows and the songs become intense and mesmerizing. I am now patiently awaiting a full-length.
The Pussycat Dolls PCD (A&M Records)
I don't think you can really consider this music. Instead, it's a messed-up gimmick filled with some questionable tits, ass, voice synthesis and overpaid producers. These are the jerks who, along with the once respectable Busta Rhymes, brought us the song “Don't Cha,” which, to the stripper's delight, offers heavy suggestions of infidelity (“don't cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?”), and which is so overmarketed that an Alibi editor's five-year-old daughter recently came home singing those very lines. The Pussycat Dolls represent the very worst in pop-culture and thus, deserve to die.
