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The sound of tires crossing the seams in highway pavement leading to towns built after the roadways leading there.

Hesitation and remembrance of things without nostalgia. Because who has honest nostalgic memories of wholly distopian youth.

I made a mistake and thought this album, Arcade Fire’s most coherent and self-contained attempt to date, was about the suburbs of today, youth now. I was wrong. It is a reflection on the past. And it is really, really good.

Highs include “Month of May,” “The Sprawl (Mountains Beyond Mountains),” and “Empty Room.” From these selections you can discern that I approve of the vocals of Régine Chassagne. Sure there are are a lot of slow and dull moments, theme’s revisited in a way more reminiscent of a Broadway musical than a pop album. But the second to last track is “Mountains Beyond Mountains” that is a pop bonanza complete with jazz-standard structure, requisite key change in the repeat of the first verse and dripping with mid-eighties synth. It frames the story with a Bruce Sterling/William Gibson view of late 21st century America.

Get it cause it is dirt cheap on Amazon for mp3s. Give it some time, listen attentively twice, and toss what bores you.

The Bird and the Bee is a wonderful duo capable of creating beautiful poppy and haunting music that is very much quintessential LA. When I learned of their venture into 80s covers via Hall and Oates I wondered if they would be approaching this with a degree of irony or cynicism. That could not be further from the truth. This album captures the playfulness and fun of the pop mastery that Hall and Oates represent. There is not a lick of backhandedness or sarcasm in these respectful remakes. If you enjoy pop for pop’s sake (not in the Gaga way) this is a must-have album.

The album should be titled “Covering” rather than interpreting because aside from the female vocals and slight instrumentation changes these are not new arrangements. They are straight covers, beautiful as they are. I highly recommend “Kiss is on my List,” “Man Eater” “One on One” and “Sarah Smile.” Come and sample some of your favorite Hall and Oates numbers in a new, lady packaging.

This bugger Josh Ritter moves from Idaho to Brooklyn after years of successful international touring with his post-folk catalog and gets writer’s block. The results of which is uncanny and of the quality of “Barton Fink” only more people will understand it. So Runs the World Away is 13 tracks of amazing, subtle, literary and scientifically romantic.

So Runs is Josh Ritter’s fifth full-length album, sixth or seventh if you include his first self-released album and/or his live album only available in Ireland. He has learned and evolved across every album and this is no exception. Where Animal Years was distant and cavernous, Historical Conquests was playful and wry, So Runs is complex and mythological. It reads like a brilliant dissertation on folk.

Track themes run the gamut of time, monsters, explorers, folk heroes, relativity, and love all woven together to describe each other. The second track, “Change of Time,” featured on the NBC show “Parenthood,” love, time, water and monsters all stand in place of each other. His wife sings backing vocals in a haunting refrain as a slide guitar sways like a boat in a storm and rhythm section pounds on the hull. Next comes “The Curse,” which was, according to every interview and article he has appeared in, the first song written for the album that broke his writer’s block. It took three listens for me to realize it is about a mummy and archaeologist. It is a subtle and lovely waltz without even delving into the lyrics. Next is “Southern Pacifica,” a song that has replaced Modest Mouse’s “Trucker’s Atlas” as the best traveling the country backbeat on the drums. The play on the snare and hi-hat in the verse is the clack of a train as it slowly passes through town and the chorus’ pace is the train striding across the open middle of the country.

“Rattling Locks” deserves it’s own paragraph. Josh admits it is the darkest song he has ever written, about standing in the cold and the rain realizing the locks to your home have been changed by your ex. In pre-release concert footage I heard on YouTube I assumed the vocal distortion on this song was a byproduct of the recording. It wasn’t. The vocals are purposely harsh and strained, bled out on the edge of the mic’s range. The loathing and hatred of that break, of someone controlling the boundaries of space, of your relationship, the sacrifices and pain. None of that former love plays out. The percussion is pounded out on emptiness. I learned the hollowness of humanity watching you pass in and out of my life. It also happens to contain the first of my favorite physics metaphors on the album: eyes like black holes.

Next the album turns to fatal confrontations between folk heroes, lighthearted skippings of love poems (with another killer physics metaphor), a brilliantly solid Springsteen-inspired rocker, and a horse-thief chase which may or may not be about chasing the remainder of what you were and what you wanted to be. Then it hits a small low point of “See How Man Was Made,” which is a crooning lonely song about not much else except not being alone. But that turns around with a truly remarkable story of loneliness in “Another New World.” An explorer, alone in the masses of society, convinces a chartering club that there is a new world above the north pole and charges off into the arctic circle to be with his ship, the Annabell Lee. The story twists and turns with no resolution.

Next to last is my favorite song, “Orbital.” It is the only song Josh doesn’t play on on any of his albums. It is what love would be if it could be described by relativity. Much like the endearing love that blooms between two unlikely survivors in a missile silo during WWIII from Historical conquests, it hits on all marks while diving into complex scientific territory. A drumline cadence introduces a swirling, twisting array of instruments I cannot even identify. The chorus is simply humming while the world opens up and orbits around the sound. Love as mass transforming to light as it accelerates, as “every time you come around, the room lights up and time slows down…”

The album ends as all of Josh’s do, on a simple light number. This time it is about dispelling fear. He talks of this album as being grown, being past those moments of trying to make it, having fought and lost and won. “Long Shadows” plays to that.

Since this album was released I cannot stand to put it down. It surpasses expectations built by previous outings and makes its own mark. In some ways it brings the sound back around to his earlier albums while retaining what he has learned. Pick it up and check out one of his tour dates to see a really amazing and authentic performance.

The Weakerthans defy tradition by releasing an album titled Reunion Tour as their fourth full-length album then go for a live album with mostly new material and a few old favorites. What to do as a reviewer with this material but to just revel in the fact that since I have not seen them live this allows me to at least pretend it is the power and passion of a live performance that is causing the waves of tears to cascade down my crimson face during “Virtute the Cat Explains Her Departure.”

OK, keyboard dried of salty embarrassment I can return to typing. The album. Well, as a fan, I love the fact that they put something out rather than just leaving us with nothing for another four years. As an objective reviewer I can’t help but saying it is just OK. The album includes everything of even minor note from their previous album with a number of good ones from their earlier work. Nothing about Reunion Tour would make me get this album for that material. But “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open” and “Left and Leaving” would drive someone to pick up the album with the latter title. It is a fan’s delight, but not much more. This isn’t so much an indictment of the live album as praise for the intimacy of their studio albums.

But as a fan’s delight, oh how it delights. An album with both Virtute’s is a must own. This damn feline is one of the most powerful characters ever written into song and to have the bookends of the story of strength on one disc is a Weakerthan’s must-have. The performance is sincere but very much similar to album performances. The fanfare on “Manifest” stands out a bit more than it does on the album with some vocal support. The encores of “Fire Door” and “Virtute Explains” are the nuggets of wonderful as well as the crowd cheering and singing along declaring their hatred for Winnipeg (where the album was recorded).

And that is what this album captures: the Weakerthan’s ability to encapsulate the changeful nature of home, of location and self. The ending tracks start with “I Hate Winnipeg” in the namesake town with the crowd cheering them on. Then it leads in to “This is a Fire Door Never Leave Open” which languishes in the tormented tension between staying to keep promises when home is driving you away.

“And I love this place the enormous sky and the places hands they are haunted by so why can’t I forgive these buildings, these frameworks labeled ‘home’.”

And closes on Virtute telling us why she left. DAMN THAT CAT I AM CRYING AGAIN!!!!!!!

“I can’t remember the sound you found for me.”

The crowd calling out that line. This is the Weakerthans. Looking back at the shattered remains of change and embracing the lack of narrative that could tell you why history broke your heart but doesn’t.

So that crazy lady from that movie your girlfriend saw, Zooey Deschanel, and M. Ward are staying together for more awesomeness. Besides the odd one-off cotton commercial you heard her in Zooey does have quite the voice, and by teaming up with her and her manic pixie dream girl alt-old county vibing style M. Ward keeps from becoming just another indie washout. I kid, I don’t doubt M. Ward but by teaming up with this one he gains an edge. And Volume Two is worth every cent.

On Volume One Zooey and M. do covers intermixed with originals. This time around it is all but two originals and they all could have been re-imagined (as those Hollywood bastards call their lack of creativity these days) Hank Williams originals. My personal favorite is “Lingering Still” which keeps me playing the A-side over and over. While that righteous bastard Justin Bieber is singing monosyllabic baby babies like Rivers Cuomo (and apparently being guilty of screwing over Gears of War press releases), Zooey is cranking out solid chorus after chorus about haunting memories and heartbreak. Check this out from the fifth track, “Lingering Still”:

“And the world’s like a science and I’m like a secret
and I saw you lingering still, still,
I saw you lingering still…”

This is instant classic material with a calypso backbeat like Nancy Sinatra.

Pick up She & Him Volume Two. I recommend a vinyl and free mp3 download from the label so you can love it at home with the depth it deserves and then carry around the sad digital offspring of brilliance on your lifesavIngs-podphonepad.