Super Furry Animals, Dark Days/Light Years [Boston Phoenix]

What better way to say hwyl! to this ponderous decade than with a hulking slab of psych jams from one of its most consistent and chameleonic bands?
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Micachu & the Shapes, Jewellery [Boston Phoenix]

The brief and ebullient debut by 21-year old Mica Levy et al. is so tic-ridden and childlike, and so packed with dissonant non-chords and chirping calls of hand-clapped rhythm, you'd think a pack of kids had picked out the instruments and written the arrangements.
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Isaac Hayes, Black Moses / Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak) [PopMatters]

In 1969, Isaac Hayes went from being one-half of Stax Records’ own Holland-Dozier-Holland (Hayes and David Porter were responsible for many of the label’s iconic early hits, like “Hold On, I’m Coming”, “When Something Is Wrong with My Baby”, and “B-A-B-Y") to the bald, beautiful, and tender face of the Memphis label’s post-Otis Redding (and post-Atlantic) second phase.
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The Soundtrack of Our Lives, Communion [PopMatters]

Like many of their contemporary Swedish brethren, the Soundtrack of Our Lives are old-school dudes.
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Listening to the Muses [Metro NY]

Kristin Hersh moved her teenaged band, Throwing Muses, to Boston in the mid-1980s not to pursue glitzy urban notoriety, but because they recognized the homegrown solidarity of the city’s music scene.
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Solo contender: A.C. Newman adjusts to the limelight [Boston Phoenix]

When Carl Newman walks down a New York City sidewalk and seizes some sudden flicker of inspiration by humming bits of melody into his Blackberry, he tends to feel less like a songwriter at work and more like a character out of some fictional satire.
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Boston Spring Arts Preview [Metro Boston]

Elvis Perkins in Dearland, Elvis Perkins in Dearland [Boston Phoenix]

Elvis Perkins is the third Elvis on my iPod, and he's also the least controversial of the lot: he doesn't shake his pelvis or appropriate the unsung musical styles of others, and he certainly hasn't engaged in an epithet-laced bar fight at a Holiday Inn.
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