Tanlines, a duo from Brooklyn, make music that sounds like the future and the primitive decided to do some heavy petting at a rave. Pure rhythm, in densely produced drums that evolve into tribal, tropical and Euro dance floor frenzies, anchors the group’s infectious dance pop formula on its new EP, Settings. Its two members, Eric Emm (formerly of Don Caballero) and Jesse Cohen (formerly of Professor Murder), have spent the last year charting an exciting course from remix production duo to a band that might encourage us to start taking ecstasy again. Read more Read it in print

The integration of Goths and Regs has long remained elusive, but with any luck their epic standoff might be resolved soon.Your potential movement leader: Elizabeth Harper and her group Class Actress. Harper was originally a budding success in that hard-to-escape female singersongwriter prison, but has quickly evolved into North Brooklyn’s very own Madonna. In Class Actress, her glacial vocals and the restrained sleaze of Anglophile lyricism are at the forefront, creating affair fantasies on top of an expertly produced bed of ’80s drum programming and analog synthesizers. Read more Read it in print

Well. There you are, in the midst of cuddle season and all alone.Your cute relationship-ridden friends secretly think you’re pathetic, spending lonely nights under the covers watching Curb Your Enthusiasm reruns and filling your bong with tears instead of tap water. But I’m here to comfort you, my single male brethren. In 2009, there were many perks to your existence—and with any luck they’ll all stay through the new year. Read more Read it in print

Throughout the aughts (or whatever we decided to call that sad little decade), independent music largely dropped its shy posturing and embraced the epic. Many of the underground’s big guns— your Arcade Fires, your Beiruts, your Antonys—steered things into under-explored territory by emphasizing lush instrumentation and meticulous arrangements. Besides scoring your dinner parties, these grandiose bands birthed strong cult followings with a flair for the dramatic. For a new decade, it’s only natural to guess what would happen if you combined their styles together into a musical behemoth with tight songwriting and an uncompromising attitude towards genre. Your result might sound close to Linfinity. Read more Read it in print

YOU’VE HEARD THIS story a million times. It began in some elusive garage in the mid-1960s with the convergence of early American rock ‘n’ roll and its sweeter British counterpart.Then hundreds of bands popped up playing similar songs—a little Beatles, a little Stones and a whole lot of suburban angst shooting through Vox amplifiers. In 2009, garage rockers still exist and they remain as marginalized as ever. One of the scene’s most notable outfits is a band out of Jersey City called The Black Hollies.The group just released Softly Towards The Light, its third record on Ernest Jenning Record Co., and you can catch a performance at Maxwell’s Nov. 25. Read more Read it in print

RAPIDLY NEARING A critical mass of “important” bands, it’s odd that New York City has churned out so many bland jams in recent years. Sure, many are excited with the onslaught of cutesy guitar and drum duos, Animal Collective clones and masturbatory noise acts designed to appear experimental, but those of us on the outside have been waiting for a battle document to counteract what really amounts to a puzzling local complacency. Good thing DJ /rupture (aka Jace Clayton) and Matt Shadetek are stepping up.With their globetrotting Dutty Artz crew and a new mix record entitled Solar Life Raft— released Nov. 11—this Brooklyn-based production duo avoids rockist tendencies by viewing local music through a polycultural lens that’s actually reflective of its population. Read more Read it in print

The kids were in costumes ranging from Santa Claus to a two-man electric outlet, but the room was hot and they were listless. Glum is the new glam. Had the Bushwick boys and girls ran out of meds? Tall, lean, leatherbooted Susanne Oberbeck. Read more Read it in print

OVER THE PAST few years, the Next Wave festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music has had a chokehold on the hearts of indie kids. Don’t believe me? Just read the reviews of Sufjan Stevens’ BQE performance. These folks are totally obsessed with high-art collaborations, and it’s about to get even more intense as The Long Count—a much-anticipated piece featuring the brothers Dessner of The National, the sisters Deal of the Breeders and renowned visual artist Matthew Richie—premieres Oct. 28 for a run at BAM’s opera house. Read more Read it in print

Already an accomplished artist, actor, musician, composer, director and cult television master, one wonders what’s left for John Lurie to do. He seems to indicate as much by opening the door to his Soho loft on a damp Monday night wearing an open dress shirt that exposes his bare chest. He’s just finishing dinner—a straight steak, no side, plus a glass of whiskey—yet looks like a man who has worked too much, received too little recognition and is ready to air out the posers who’ve taken over the City he used to run. Read more

I COULD START THIS thing off with the expected allusions to beaches, nostalgia, tape fuzz, the ‘80s and bands with repeated letters in their names that make 2009 summer jams, but why bother? Sometimes bands become unwilling victims of their birth date, and I’m not going to degrade The Drums by lumping them into being part of some fake lo-fi marketing movement. While undeniably “now,”The Drums is really just a solid pop band, and that’s great news because it means it’ll probably be around for more than a minute. Founded by longtime buddies Jonathan Pierce (vocals) and Jacob Graham (guitar), The Drums drops Summertime, its first EP, on Aug. 7 and should soon be slaying house parties, ballrooms and festivals across the nation—the band’s local live shows are already hot tickets. Read more Read it in print