An odd pairing? Maybe. But anytime you put megawatt pop/R+B juggernaut Justin Timberlake and renowned Texas guitarist/producer Charlie Sexton (Arcangels, Bob Dylan) together on a project together, well...just put us down as "highly interested". Set for January 19 release, When Everything Breaks Open from childhood Timberlake chum and noted songwriter Matt Morris (and one of the first signings to Timberlake's new Tennman label) handsomely lives up to the obligatory industry buzz with a vision that appears to know no genre boundaries, easily bridging rhythmic, soulful and even bluesy pop styles with a charging and impassioned folk/pop troubadour heart. Yeah, it's that good.

“Charlie and Justin can be seen as representative of different sides of my music,” Morris says. “There is an earthy, rooted, sometimes melancholy side to some of my writing that is in line with Charlie’s personality and approach. There is a playful, high-energy, soulful side that speaks to who Justin is, as a person and producer. The two people are very different from one another, but they both have impeccable instincts.”

Lead track "Just Before the Morning" reflects that stylistic dichotomy, shimmering Edge-like guitar arpeggios giving way to Morris' soulfully expressive tenor-to-falsetto vocals and richly textured production, a rapturous pop anthem of power and purpose. And despite the heavyweight help, this is ultimately Morris' own ambitious personal statement: a category-defying album of smart, nimble adult pop, modern soul vibe and surprisingly imaginative risktaking. Highly recommended.

Myspace  Artist Site

Mark Morris - "Just Before the Morning" (from the album When Everything Breaks Open)

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If you're like us, you might be slightly taken aback by Brooklyn alt-pop songwriter Lara May Meyerratkin, AKA El May, and her delightfully cryptic self-titled debut album. The loose lo-fi atmosphere, left-of-center song structures and her occasionally unvarnished, understated vocals are deceptive on the surface as the tracks, in the course of just a minute here or there, reveal themselves as deeper, distinctive and completely original approaches to modern indie pop. Meyerratkin, who began her musical career as lovable, idiosyncratic popster Ben Lee's on-stage instrumentalist, brings much of Lee's shaggy charm to her own sharp, engaging songs.

El May's debut is, not surprisingly, pretty much a D.I.Y. affair, recorded in Nashville, New York and L.A. this past year with Meyerratkin producing and handling nearly all of the instruments and vocals. Listening to tracks like the bright and buoyant "Don't You" (featuring vocals from Nada Surf's Matthew Caws), gorgeously Bangle-ish "Draining A Lake" and layered retro-pop tapestry of "Want For Wonder" evoke thoughts of El May as the long lost niece of Brian Wilson. The offbeat melodies and kitchen-sink production are entangled with striking harmonies and a sound that isn't so much sunny as mellow-in-the-shade. Don't rush...spend some time with El May. You'll thank us.

Myspace  Artist Site 

El May - "Don't You" (from the album El May)

El May - "Order In the Nothingness" (from the album El May)

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UPDATE: Yim Yames, AKA My Morning Jacket's Jim James, has added Cortney Tidwell's excellent Boys to his most fab Removador website/digital music store -- finally giving the album (on which he guests) an "official" U.S. release January 19. Tidwell not only delivered one of the finest releases of the year in Boys, she absolutely made our socks roll up and down with a live show this past fall in Nashville that still has us reeling with giddy delight. Read on:

There are any number of puzzling aspects to Boys, the sophomore album from Nashville's Cortney Tidwell -- the most important of which is why this adventurous, critically adored and simply stunning, genre-smashing '09 album still has only been released outside of the U.S. (until now). Other head scratchers might involve how this troubled daughter of a Music Row A+R exec and 60's country singer ended up with a blenderized concoction of airy Bjork-meets-Cocteau Twins vocal electronic atmospherics, stark neo-folk songs, unsettling Radiohead-styled dissonant power and a dark shadows lyricism that makes Polly Harvey seem like a moon-in-June romantic.

Boys - a concept created with her husband/producer, children and male musician friends in mind - is an album of opposites attracting, a schizophrenic dichotomy of dream pop, trip-hop and eerie, even spooky undertones. Already a huge critical hit in the U.K. ("spectacular" - MOJO, "stunning...an album of grace, beauty and invention" - Q), Boys is a sometimes challenging, always rewarding collection of songs that offer haunting allure and subtle pleasures. From the quietly magnificent, drifting "Oslo" to the Twin Peak-ish menace of "Solid State", Tidwell's disarming voice finds that special space between lullabye slumber and intoxicating dreamscape. Highly recommended.

Myspace Artist Site Removador Page

Cortney Tidwell - Solid State" (from the album Boys)

Cortney Tidwell - "Oslo" (from the album Boys)

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Dallas trio Shapes Stars Make! follow up on the promise of their self-titled '08 EP with These Mountains Are Safe, an album of broadly cinematic Sigur-Ros-meets-Radiohead post rock and progressive, often ambient-textured, indie pop. While the band's dreamstate lyricism and vocal melodies add to the overall theme of neo-psychedelia, it is the interplay of chiming, droning guitar riffs and echoing, scattershot percussive runs that make SSM's if not overly distinctive then highly effective instrumental chops such a cathartic listen. This is music full of grand gestures and dramatic flourishes, richly produced (by John Congleton) and immaculately arranged but still grounded with grit and sweat.

Lead track, the instrumental "Le Dodici", is three all-too-brief minutes of nimble, glittering chord progressions riding atop a pounding Bonham-styled drum foundation, layers of synths and bass lines moving in for a flurried crescendo. As with the EP, Mountains possesses both subtle shadings and wall-of-sound grandiosity, creating and then dismantling intricate musical atmospheres of mood and intensity. Shapes Stars Make! are clearly a band with a overstuffed grab bag of big ideas, blessed with both technical ability and symbiotic interplay.

Myspace  Artist Site

Shapes Stars Make! - "Le Dodici" (from the album These Mountains Are Safe)

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Early Oscar nomination handicappers are already abuzz over Jeff Bridges' extraordinary performace as an aging, down-on-his-luck and world-weary country singer in the film Crazy Heart, opening December 16. Of particular note is the incredible soundtrack produced with the usual meticulous care from T-Bone Burnett, a man who certainly knows his way around soundtracks having handled three of the best with country and Americana themes: the multi-platinum O Brother Where Art Thou, the Johnny Cash biopic I Walk The Line and the wonderful Civil War epic Cold Mountain. The soundtrack to Crazy Heart oddly enough doesn't arrive until a month after the movie opens but we're thinking that this collection will be essential listening. Tracks from the Louvin Brothers, Buck Owens, Waylon Jennings and Townes Van Zandt bring some classics to the mix, but it's Burnett's new productions that distinguish the album.

 Bridges handles five of the soundtrack's songs solo, most co-written with the recently passed Steven Bruton (to whom the film is dedicated) while supporting actor Colin Farrell takes one and the two team up for one of the many highlights: "Fallin' and Flyin'". But the biggest beneficiary of the whole project just may turn out to be Ryan Bingham, the Lone Star alt-country singer/songwriter who released the excellent Roadhouse Sun this past June, an album we called "a musical recipe that's soaked in equal parts whiskey shots, truckstop hash and a spicy burrito." His track "The Weary Kind" is a quietly brilliant slice of real and raw music, a song that captures the film's spirit (and Bridges' performance) perfectly and Burnett wisely chose the song to be the film's theme (and end credit roller). Look for an expanded version of the soundtrack (with seven more songs for a total of 23) on February 2. "The Weary Kind" video and Crazy Heart trailer after the jump...

Official Film Site New West Site

Ryan Bingham - "The Weary Kind" (from the soundtrack to Crazy Heart)

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Glasgow-based folk/pop trio Zoey Van Goey may have a twee nerdy charm just below the surface of their clever, often lyrically surreal and quietly mindblowing debut album The Cage Was Unlocked All Along, but we're certainly the better for it. Jangly guitars, electronica flourishes and the lovely vocals of Kim Moore bring an undeniable sunny disposition to the shiny surface of the ZVG mystique but beneath the well-mannered charm there's a deeper, darker subversive element bleeding through. There are songs of apocolyptic computer meltdowns and teaching English in Japan, romantic ballads of kidnapping, bandits and buried treasure. Described by one critic as "cuddlecore", this is music that seems to intersect somewhere between a smile and a grimace, smart songs that bring you back to reveal something new and interesting with each listen.

The threesome's first single, 2007's "Foxtrot Vandals" was produced by Belle and Sebastian's Stuart Murdoch and moves at a brisk trot, all strum and propulsive, shimmering kick. But with producer Paul Savage at the helm -- and with many more months of writing and studio work -- Cage ended up veering off into more shadowy and daring territory: quieter, pulsing with electronics and decidedly more studied in tone. Songs such as the delicately structured "City Is Exploding" and the chiming, atmospheric "The Best Treasure Stays Buried" seem to drift with a languid nonchalance but the razor-edged lyrics - and Moore's wonderfully cryptic singing - keep the imagery and lovingly crafted melodies in sharp focus. Cage, released in the U.K. this past fall get a U.S. street on January 19. Highly recommended.

Myspace  Artist Site

Zoey Van Goey - "The Best Treasure Stays Buried" (from the album The Cage Was Unlocked All Along)

Zoey Van Goey - "City Is Exploding" (from the album The Cage Was Unlocked All Along)

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 "This one is pure Spoon", says frontman Britt Daniel of Transference, the highly anticipated new album from the Austin, TX indie alt/rock, art/pop mainstays, "for better or worse." New project is the band's first full-length since 2007's well-received Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and follows up last year's EP Got Nuffin, the title track of which will be reprised on Transference. Spoon has released seven albums since first  launching with a debut EP in 1994, each one successively finding greater sales success. Ga Ga was the band's first top 10 album, selling nearly 50,000 copies its first week out.

 "This is the first record we've made without a producer or heavy of any kind," continues Daniel, "and I don't know for sure because I'll never hear this record in the same way that someone who didn't make it will, but I think you can tell it. I can. When I listen to it I think, hey, that's how I woulda done it! Which is really what you wanna to hear from a band, isn't it?" We'll speculate that Spoon is looking to ratchet things up a bit with a bit more dissonance and ragged riffs this time around after many critics praised Ga Ga but found the band in something of a "if it ain't broke" holding pattern.

Myspace   Artist Site

Spoon - "Got Nuffin" (from the 2008 EP Got Nuffin and forthcoming album Transference)

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Over the course of two critically praised albums, Kentucky-raised, Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Dawn Landes has found that interesting three-way intersection of loosely structured folksy Americana, cheeky, trendy TV-friendly alt-pop themes and the stripped-to-the-core soft side of indie rock -- all of which add up to what might be termed "garage pop." Throw in a vocal style that's all sexy, diffuse nonchalance and songs that don't so much swagger as saunter and you've got Sweet Heart Rodeo, out in the U.K. now and arriving on this side of the pond January 19 via Cooking Vinyl.

 Brit critics have already embraced Landes and her sweetly eccentric new project: "delicately adventurous", declared UNCUT in a five-star review, "feathery acoustic songs that shuffle and sway beautifully." Adds Q: “Her sweet vocals and country-ish musical tilt recall Cat Power, but with a fresh and affirming, rather than jaded, worldview”. Lead single "Romeo" is a stylishly poppy combination of Ingrid Michaelson quirky melody and Feist-ian effervescence while the Pretenderish "Young Girl" is an angsty bit of moxied drive. Smart and oddly endearing, Sweet Heart Rodeo offers up a fresh if at times wistfully moody collection of songs that simply get better with each subsequent listen. Recommended.

Myspace  Artist Site

Dawn Landes - "Romeo" (from the album Sweet Heart Rodeo)

Dawn Landes - "Young Girl" (from the album Sweet Heart Rodeo)

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Aaron Immanuel Wright - Eleven Daughters (Jazz)

A Hero A Fake - Let Oceans Lie (Hard Rock)

Baracca Dorias - Handsome Melting Point (EP) (Rock/Shoegaze/Pop)

Barton Carroll - Together You and I (Folk/Rock/Pop)

Cold War Kids - Behave Yourself (EP) (Rock/Pop/Alt)

Crazy Heart - Original Soundtrack w/ Jeff Bridges, T-Bone Burnett, Ryan Bingham (Alt/Country)

Danny Barnes - Pizza Box (Folk/Rock/Pop/Americana)*

Dawn Landes - Sweetheart Rodeo (Pop/Folk/Rock/Indie)*

Eels - End Times (Pop/Rock/Alt)*

Gail Pettis - Here In the Moment (Jazz/Vocal)

Gretchen Wilson - Greatest Hits (Country/Rock)

Ivo Neame - Caught In the Light of Day (Jazz)

SOMA - Jewel and the Orchestra (Import) (Rock/Pop)

Josephine Foster - Graphic as a Star (Folk/Pop/Alt)

Kevin Barker - You and Me (Folk/Alt)*

Lindstrom and Christabelle - Real Life Is No Cool (Pop/Dance)

Maxwell - Urban Hang Suite (Legacy Edition) (R+B/Pop)

Michael Wolff - Joe's Strut (Jazz)

Motion City Soundtrack - My Dinosaur Life (Rock/Pop/Punk)

Neil Sedaka - Music of My Life (Pop/Adult)

Scout Niblett - The Calcination of Scout Niblett (Alt/Folk/Pop)

Shapes Stars Make - These Mountains Are Safe (Rock/Post-Rock)*

Spoon - Transference (Rock/Pop/Alt)*

Sunshine Collective - Wanna Play (Pop/Powerpop)

Tape Deck Mountain - Ghost (Rock/Pop/Alt/Indie)

The Editors - In This Light and On This Evening (Rock/Alt/Pop/Electronica)

The Red Krayola - Five American Portraits (Rock/Alternative/Pop/Indie/Experimental)

The Wishing Tree - Ostara (Folk/Rock/Progressive)

Vulture Whale - Bamboo (EP) (Rock/Alt/Pop)

Zoey van Goey - Cage Was Unlocked (Pop/Folk) (U.S. Release)*