Listening Closely

Rome: Confessions D'Un Voleur D'Ames

Indifference is the enemy. In a martial industrial folk style with a clearly Death in June heritage, yet without the parental pitfalls, Rome delivers transformational marching orders within Confessions D'Un Voleur D'Ames. Jerome Reuter's confessions are a "call from a world where love and despair are locked in an embrace. A black craving in the fangs of war, the joys of stealth in a riot of blossoms." The Luxembourg based artist has stated in interviews that he won't be limited by genres and Confessions easily weaves dark wave, apocalyptic folk, neo-classical and more into a soundtrack for the quietest recovery of sight, losing blinders to see our true uniqueness, giving reign to the highest self. There are messages in the dark, notes like "If we stop, if we stay quiet, we die." At Cold Meat Records, Myspace, Download on iTunes

Chiodos: Bone Palace Ballet

For those that remember my Year of Rock and Roll, the year that rocked harder than any other before or since, then you know that I have been known to embrace my inner headbanger. The Chiodos brothers deliver an incredibly complex release with Bone Palace Ballet. Metallic arpeggios, metalcore breakdowns, piano ballads, bounce pop music explosions, orchestral strings, often all within the same song. In this age of watered-down marketing produced and targeted demographically "artistry", Bone Palace Ballet isn't compromising. Craigery Owens' melodramatically androgynous and angelically ageless vocals can't put the sound in a box either. The result is something I immediately liked and have come to appreciate its brilliance more with each and every listen. Chiodos.net, MySpace, Download on iTunes

Happy Rhodes: Find Me

Happy Rhodes has never achieved commercial success even with eleven releases to her name in the past twenty years. What she has achieved though is a very impressive catalog of incredibly heartfelt and forthright songs, as well as a personal reign as queen of the dysfunctionally dark, damaged and oppressed that have encountered her along the way, a role she acknowledges on her new track "Queen." While most don't make it past her cover art, this being possibly her most accessible to date, even with the demons she added to her self portrait, those who do are likely to stay for her intimate lyrics, dynamic musicianship, stereophonic techniques and four-octave voice that can go from Kate Bush to Annie Lennox in a nanosecond. Her first album in nine years, Find Me was worth the wait. Happy Rhodes, MySpace, Download on iTunes