Zookeeper Becoming All Things (Belle City Pop) Chris Simpson (formerly Gloria Record, Mineral), has completed his first full-length under the moniker Zookeeper, and old pal Brian Malone has released it on his Belle City Pop record label. The album careens between honky tonk dissonance and dissolving harmony ("Trumpets" sounds like the closing tune in your favorite dive bar) against whimsical banjo, organ and horns. Simpson's voice plays well with the Wilco-ish (Being There era)......

Wilco Sky Blue Sky (Nonesuch) Recorded in Wilco's own Chicago studio, the album was recorded by TJ Doherty (the Hold Steady, Sonic Youth) and mixed by Jim Scott (the Rolling Stones, the Dixie Chicks), Sky Blue Sky finds Tweedy & Co. leaning closer to the down-home gritty side of their sound, all while bending glass with avant-jazz guitar hero Nels Cline. Full of guitars and electricity, songs like "Impossible Germany" highlight the relationship between......

Long before there were literate emo boys scuffling around gazing at their shoes preoccupied with death, there was Harold Parker Chasen (Bud Cort). The well-heeled boarding school type, Harold is obsessed with death (or is it just a lack of attention from which he suffers?) and constantly fakes his own death in front of his mother who seems more concerned with marrying off her son than his unstable emotional state. Enter Maude (Ruth Gordon). Harold......

The influence of Calexico's recent collaborations with bands like Wilco and Iron and Wine is immediately evident on the band's newest album, Garden Ruin. Joey Burns and John Convertino, the duo that serves as the group's locus, play down their Latin influences and borrow a few tricks from their new friends. With this new direction, the taut moodiness of the album is dressed up in the appealing pop that their old material seemed to......