​Hospitality w/Dustin Wong, Glass Ghost
Glasslands
Friday, February 3

Better than: Listening to old K Records albums.

Thinking that Hospitality is a Scottish band, is an understandable mistake. The recent Merge signees are, in fact, from New York City, even if their smarty-pants pop has more in common with bands like Camera Obscura than many of their noisier hometown compatriots. The group crafts luscious songs that more often than not reference the members' friends, personal lives, work, and relationships. Amber Papini furthers the Anglo-Saxon suggestion with an idiosyncratic, lovely voice that contains just a hint of a British accent (she's from Kansas City, by the way). And the carefully put-together guitars, bass, drums, and sometimes horns and synths, practically beg to be listened to over a cup of PG Tips on a rainy day.

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Black Moon
Southpaw
Wednesday, August 17

Better than: Funkmaster Flex's 2007 Fourth of July weekend '90s marathon mix.

1993 was a very good year for hip-hop. Wu-Tang Clan, Souls of Mischief, Lords of the Underground, and the under-recognized Rumpletilskinz all made their debuts, while Cypress Hill, LONS, KRS-1, and A Tribe Called Quest furthered their already admirable reputations. One exceptional debut that year was Black Moon's Enta Da Stage, a record that set the path for the Duck Down label (though the album was technically released by Nervous) and the entire Boot Camp Clik. Who knew that a skinny, short kid with "baggy black pants, knapsack, and a beeper" named Buckshot, an MC whose cadence recalls jazz improv at times (listen to "Buck 'Em Down" to see what I mean), would go on to create something of an indie hip-hop empire. Heltah Skeltah, Smif-N-Wessun, OGC, and others all subsequently made their mark upon golden era hip-hop, and Duck Down is still going strong today. So why not add Enta Da Stage to the list of albums performed in their entirety, especially when a live band is handling musical duties?

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Archers of Loaf
Music Hall of Williamsburg
Saturday, June 25

Better than: The banging club night going on next door at Public Assembly, where outside the line stretched around the corner and a guy had passed out on the sidewalk.

Some might think it's a slight exaggeration to say that Archers of Loaf were the epitome of 1990s indie rock, but it's an arguable position. The band did what it did better than a lot of its contemporaries. Like Pavement, Archers' music was pleasingly sloppy, but it was free of formless jamming and overly cryptic lyrics. Like Superchunk, the guitars grated and swelled into massive waves of punk-rock distortion and squealing bent strings, but they rarely fell back on form-and-file pop-punk power chords. And like Built to Spill, they knew how to write a perfect indiepop tune, sometimes slowing it down and letting Eric Bachmann's scorched-throat singing carry a song, but they didn't let sweetness or sentimentality soften the deal. Since Archers' demise in 1998, only Bachmann has really continued making music via his pleasantly folksy project Crooked Fingers, although CF has never come close to the visceral slapdash of his former band. Then again, that might have been the point—at the very least, his vocal chords needed a rest.

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Jonah Flicker

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The Go! Team
Bowery Ballroom
Tuesday, April 12

Better Than: Trying to go anywhere in the spring monsoon taking place outside.

The pre-show soundtrack of Motown, Stax, and the Beastie Boys was a hint: The Go! Team's show on Tuesday was not going to be your run-of-the-mill indie rock gig full of stock-still spectators. But when the band's cheerleading squad finally took the stage, no further encouragement was needed; the audience was not content to simply observe and report. Nothing less than exuberant dancing, encouraged in no small way by Go! Team frontwoman Ninja, would suffice. Resplendent in a sports bra and stretch pants and mining a seemingly bottomless hole of energy, she led The Go! Team workout program, and shame on you if you were not participating.

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​David Bazan is losing his religion. Sort of. On his heavily autobiographical new album, Curse Your Branches (Barsuk), Bazan, who formerly led Pedro The Lion, integrates deep questions about faith with tales of boozy emotional philandering. He's been spinning similar stories for years now. But recording under his Christian name seems to have brought some Christian issues to the surface. For the first time since 2005, he's touring with a full band, in a van which he purchased with money donated by fans on his website. They play the Bowery Ballroom this Sunday.

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Jonah Flicker

​Polvo
The Bell House
September 24

About halfway through Polvo's triumphant appearance at the Bell House last night, someone in the crowd yelled out, "It feels so good to be 20!" Yup--the nostalgia was thick and palpable as the band took the stage, still projecting that awkward high school kid vibe, even though they've all got to be pushing 40. Much of the crowd was only marginally younger--people who loved and were inspired by Polvo's music in the mid to late '90s, eager to relive their college-rock years.

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