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

DON’T BOTHER WITH the back room at Café Select. Forget the basement of La Esquina.The new place to be in Soho is the burnt out meth lab on Wooster Street. Beginning July 2 at the Deitch Projects annex on Wooster Street, you’ll find an artistic mishmash so thought provoking and racy that it will give the neighborhood’s usual debauched haunts a run for their (rolled up) money. I’m talking jars of mystery meat and faux fetuses, strewn kitty litter, a library, visual and auditory deconstruction, Chinese herbs, astrological pelts, the aforementioned meth lab, a blown up RV, aquarium rocks and a replicated penthouse art gallery. Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe, two New York-based artists completing their third collaboration, are the architects and alchemists behind this secret world.Welcome to the Black Acid Co-op. Read more Read it in print

FISCHERSPOONER,THE HATE-IT-OR-LOVE-IT art pop duo, is back just in time to respond to yet another potential apocalypse. After coming of age as a decadent counterpoint to Y2K and achieving fame in the midst of our post-9/11 party cause were gonna die paranoia, Fischerspooner releases its third record, Entertainment,. Read more Read it in print

Will Oldham, who records primarily as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, is a social character, defined by friendships both real and imagined, not only with the musicians surrounding him, but historical figures and strangers halfway across the world. He’s not, as is oft hypothesized, a lone Appalachian freak sitting in a cabin bleeding his heart out. Read more

If you follow critical acclaim,Tindersticks—the veteran band from Nottingham, England—is apparently huge; but for some reason, the alt-journalist focus group I established to confirm such things didn’t turn up anyone who had heard the band. So, let’s revise that.Tindersticks is apparently huge in Europe, and in the Obama era that has to mean something, right? Performing in America for the first time since an indefinite recording hiatus in 2003,Tindersticks will be showcasing its hypno-, lounge-, orchestral-, narcotic-, groove-centric pop on Mar. 6 at the Brooklyn Masonic Temple. Read more Read it in print