Ryan Adams & The Cardinals - Jacksonville City Nights

Wink: The best Adams record since Heartbreaker. Old school country music & his best lyrics in years.
Alex: Vulnerable, pretty country - a bit like Ian Tyson but with country Tom Waits humor.
Monty: Ryan Adams takes another step towards redemption with this country records goodness.
Gene: Three records in 2005, and not one as good as Whiskeytown. It's a shame.

Cattywompus - Wildfire

Wink: Black Crowes style blues rock'n'roll. Great riffs, perfect tones. Great rock for guitar lovers.
Alex: Southern rock lacking energy and purpose. Also Dave Matthews and Pearl Jam.
Monty: Bluesy rock that barely satisfies the brainless masses.
Gene: The poster children for Enzyte for musicians.

Quincy Coleman - Come Closer

Wink: Mighty good big band jazz influenced pop. Spans musical genres, does it perfectly. Divine vocalist!
Alex: Squirrel Nut Velcro inauthentic staccato arrangements, but beautiful layers and builds. Very cool.
Monty: Sexy, sultry, smoky songs that soothe the soul.
Gene: Unpretentious Gen X torch singer + wacky cabaret band + magic pixie dust = nifty.

Collide - Live At The El Rey

Wink: Well-recorded live document of a goth/industrial band at their peak. Great performance by fair band.
Alex: Sensual hippy goth-metal. Sorta. Awfully pretentious and pretentiously awful.
Monty: Cool, gutteral industrial grooves spoiled by over-reaching female vocals.
Gene: Incompletely cloned Ofra Haza does techno goth.

Chris Cotton - I Watched The Devil Die

Wink: Fucking brilliant talking blues Phil Ochs style. Great fingerpicking amid lo-fi production. Very very awesome.
Alex: Real nice delta blues and some tinny country blues. Jazzes up Skip James & John hurt.
Monty: What can I say? Thoughtful, heartfelt old school blues - It's awesome!
Gene: Where in hell is the sweet, cotton-pickin' whiskey jar when I needs it?

Frequent Flyer - Frequent Flyer

Wink: Some kind of campy, joyous, off-key samba… perfect for the cocktail party where no one's listening.
Alex: 60's cocktail space-lounge v-neck Letterman sap! Underwater stylized suck.
Monty: More café rock, kind of mindless suckiness.
Gene: Imagine semi-tone deaf Brits trying to invent Bossanova, then scream.

House On A Hill - Ladyslipper

Wink: Emo guitars and subdued rock rhythms with just a hint of mathiness. Dark, moody, nice.
Alex: Very clean shoegazer with some odd time signatures and headache chords, Half good.
Monty: Good framework, but it is missing "something". I look forward to the next iteration.
Gene: I'ts dog feldspar math lithium kites green shaffra Utah moody grass peat. Dig?

Junius - Blood Is Bright

Wink: Gothic shoegaze. Walls of sound and heavy mid-tempo beats. Great guitar lines, nice moodiness.
Alex: Joy Division without the urgent guitars. The sharp tones give me a headache.
Monty: Heavy thick melodic songs with not-so-hot vocals.
Gene: Cure your post shoegaze, gothic tendencies.

The Laura Smith Quartet - Adult Entertainers, Child Educators

Wink: Musically schizophrenic female-led music of strange beauty from heavy electronic to folk. Cool sounds. Neat.
Alex: Pleasantly monotonous. Low-key electro-folk plus edgy techno-cabaret. Pass.
Monty: As soon as the song actually starts I will tell you all about it.
Gene: Psychedelic rave music. Probably better on x.

Mates Of State - Bring It Back

Wink: Sonic beauty & indie perfection… Polyphonic Spree minus 20 people. Cool music & captivating vocals. It's great!
Alex: Scrapbook music, clever phrasing, indefinable and fascinating. Happy & catchy & impossible to hate.
Monty: I missed the 80's, so I don't really get it.
Gene: The Cocteau Twins take a ride on time machine with Laurie Anderson & The Flaming Lips.

North To Emerson - …Anywhere But Here
Wink: The old school new school punk revival. Excellent musicianship, great songs - best punk vocals 2006.
Alex: The Descendents of All. Very impressive drummer, nicely sloppy vocals. Big fun!
Monty: Pop-punk, a good change - it is good despite what the other fuckers might say.
Gene: The skin skippin' alone makes this listenable.

The Pantones - Sleepless Nights, Silent Mornings

Wink: College rock indie alt-country goodness. Very nice songs, great musicians, cool hooks. Connells, only different.
Alex: Is you alt? Or is you alt-country? John Denver compositions, college rock spirit.
Monty: Modern indie country with that 70's flare.
Gene: Neo-pseudo country makes me want a pony.

The Paper Champions - End. Transmission EP

Wink: Emo makes rock the same as the kids on the radio. Good, but redundant.
Alex: Various volumes of vocal droning. Also droning guitar. And the drums drone, even.
Monty: Hoobastink, die die die die die die die die die die die die die die.
Gene: Why do bands keep making this record?

Slideshaker - In The Raw

Wink: Toss Iggy in a blender with Jack White… you'll get something that rocks like this.
Alex: Now I wanna be your dog! Kicks ass but needs cowbell. Fuzzy, jangly.
Monty: These guys fucking rock! Kinda makes me think Dead Kennedys doing indie rock.
Gene: Like the stooges crossed with Iggy Pop. Good and sleazy, sweet low end.

Solace - Balance

Wink: Highly textural ambient ethnic soundscapes. Dynamic compositions filled with modern bits, and classics, too.
Alex: Drum and bass without the bass. Indigenous musics bastardized. Pirates.
Monty: Some kind of urban tribal shit that I really, really, don't get.
Gene: Half-hearted techno. GeiroYamasiro-gumi trying to take on Circue du Soleil.

Vague Angels - Let's Duke It Out At Kilkenny Katz'

Wink: The modern indie Velvet Underground. Brilliant songs about god-knows-what, seemingly random music perfectly arranged.
Alex: Spoken poetry with musical background. Waterboys meets Blue Aeroplanes. Good sound.
Monty: Too much spoken word for me - way, way too artsy fartsy.
Gene: Led Velvet Beefheart lives. Again. And again.

Wes Tucker - Beauty In The Broken

Wink: Bluesy college groove rock built on solid songwriting and good guitar playing. Great chick music.
Alex: College blues, hippy soul, waiting room jazz.
Monty: Brilliance intermixed with mediocrity that frustrates as much as it entertains.
Gene: When guitars go wicky-wicky or slide blues, this rocks… even the slower stuff.