The Beach Boys. Aerosmith. The Dave Clark Five. Following in the footsteps of some of rock and roll’s great five-member bands is the London-bred Sound of the Suburb. A self-proclaimed “high-energy band” from Hampstead Garden Suburb, the Sound has been spreading their love of rock and roll for nearly a decade.

But these aren’t just the strumming of a fistful of middle-aged dads. Born not long after the birth of rock and roll, all five members of Sound of the Suburb – lead guitarist Chris Berlingieri, lead vocalist and front man Rafael Landicho, bassist Steve Phillips, rhythm guitar and backing vocalist Martin Ross, and drummer Mike Solomon – have experience playing rock music on both sides of the Atlantic. They cite such legends as The Beatles, Eddie Cochran, The Police, Elvis Presley and Neil Young as influences.

Initially formed as a cover band, with a repertoire that runs from oldies like “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Johnnie B. Goode” to modern fare like “Dani California,” the Sound began writing and recording original music as well (original material is a requirement for the East Finchley Festival). The group has proven to be a local smash, playing numerous pub events and other special occasions like bar mitzvahs.

The results have culminated in a new CD release, “Sound of the Suburb.” The album’s ten tracks honor the very music that inspired them, melding pop, rock, rockabilly and folk sensibilities, and reminding listeners of a time when the music, not hype or packaging, really was the thing. That said, the album cover photo, featuring the very “Waterloo Sunset” made famous by The Kinks and performed as recently as this summer’s London Olympic Games closing ceremony, is pretty brilliant. Favorite tracks from the album include “’70s Girl,” “The Ballad of East Finchley,” and “Looking For a Sign.” These are friendly guys who know how to rock the house, and “Suburb” not only makes you long for the days of raw rock, but grateful for a band that knows just how to revive it.

It seems the hills aren’t the only spot in Europe alive with the sound of music.

For more information, please visit www.soundofthesuburb.com.

The days are short, the nights are cold(ish), and midtown has thoroughly covered itself in a anxiety attack-inducing amount of holiday paraphernalia. The Salvation Army dudes that are very specifically not Santa line the thoroughfares, ringing their bells. The stores are packed with exhausted parents buying more than they can afford. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, folks: List Season. It’s a time for critics to come together, hold hands, and scream at the top of their lungs about whose opinions are objectively better. It’s a time for pandering to your base, for emphatic hyperbole, for arbitrarily picking what the seventeenth best album of the year is. More importantly, it’s a time for the media to canonize itself, to tell you what’s culturally important and what isn’t. After all, who would let you know what you like if we weren’t around?

Without further ado, allow me to hand out these honors that are totally real and I didn’t just make up right now:

The WU LYF Award for Band Most Likely to be Snubbed goes to: Chromatics

When Kill for Love dropped in March, folks were talking about it like it was the sequel to Nicolas Refn’s Drive. But March is a long time ago, and a lot of prettier prospects have shown up to the dance since, and the sleek yet empty charm has worn off. Expect this to be suspiciously absent from a lot of year-end lists.

Honorable Mention: El-P

The Scott Walker Award for Most Pants-Shittingly Terrifying Album goes to: The Seer, by Swans

After a while, it feels like it’s stalking you. You feel its presence even when you’re not listening to it. This two-hour hodge-podge of no-wave, blues, metal, and bizarrely straight-forward pop sets up shop in your head, enticing you to play it again and again. It haunts you, like Danielewsky’s House of Leaves. And don’t even get me started on that insane, horrifying, perfect album cover.

Honorable Mention: Bish Bosch, by Scott Walker (Disqualified due to its use of stock fart sounds)

The Chicago Award for Most Complementary Album Covers goes to: Beach House’s Bloom and Frankie Rose’s Interstellar

The Crystal Castles Award for Most Same-y, Mediocre Claptrap goes to: (tie) Beach House’s Bloom and Frankie Rose’s Interstellar

This isn’t to say that these albums sound the same (although they do come from the same reverb-y bedroom place covered in Slowdive and Felt posters), it’s that almost every track on them is virtually identical to the one that came before it. The music isn’t bad, by any means, it’s just boring, forgettable, and highly critically acclaimed. Make of that what you will.

The Ever Since They Put Twin Peaks on Netflix Instant, Everyone’s Been Ripping Me Off Award goes to: Julee Cruise

Well that’s it for now, but be sure to join us here next week for part two to find out about 2012’s best occult folk operas and aesthetic shifts! The fun literally never stops. Follow Simon Lazarus Vasta on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc

One of the things I love most about pop music is its versatility. It’s a medium with room for everything: the political and the personal, the avant-garde and the lowbrow, orchestral finesse and two-chord anthems, stupidity and intelligence, beauty and brutality. Additionally, these elements can be arranged any which way, swapped out and mutated into something unpredictable and groundbreaking. And there are hundreds of millions of these things. There are pop songs about everything from the slave trade to lactating men, from stoned professions of lust to the sincere love felt for a desk, from street level survival to dying alone in space. If something exists in space and time, you can bet your ass there’s a song about it.

Being the popaholic waste of space that I am, I’ll listen to pretty much anything, but I do have a soft spot for songs about my favorite subject: pop music. What’s rad about songs about songs is that they have just as much range as pop at large. There’s self-reflexive navel-gazing, revolutionary manifestoes, nostalgia-drenched love letters, and condemnations of the mainstream. Pop songs about pop songs embrace the medium’s limitless potential and celebrate it. You can listen to a few of my favorites here or by pressing play on the embedded playlist below.

1. Losing My Edge – LCD Soundsystem
2. Heard About Your Band – Brakes
3. Top of the Pops – The Rezillos
4. This is Pop – XTC
5. Hitsville UK – The Clash
6. R.A.P. Music – Killer Mike
7. Heavy Metal Drummer – Wilco
8. Slap Dash for No Cash – Art Brut
9. The Medium Was Tedium – The Desperate Bicycles
10. The Song is the Single – BARR
11. Pop Songs Your New Boyfriend’s Too Stupid to Know About – Tullycraft
12. Let’s Kiss and Listen to Bis – Mikrofisch
13. Part Time Punks – Television Personalities
14. Rebellious Jukebox – The Fall
15. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – Ian Dury and the Blockheads
16. Radio Song – Danny Brown
17. Triumph of the Swill – Dead Kennedys
18. Meet the Beatle – Tall Dwarfs
19. The One on the Right is on the Left – Johnny Cash
20. Bad Cover Version – Pulp
21. We’re the Replacements – They Might Be Giants
22. Alex Chilton – The Replacements
23. Thirteen – Big Star

If anybody else has some favorite songs about songs, we would love to see them in the comments.

Simon Lazarus Vasta dives into a huge vault of records at the end like Scrooge McDuck at the end of every day and swears he won’t get out ‘til the third My Bloody Valentine album finally comes out. Well, that’s what he says, anyway; he’s always at the breakfast table the next morning. If you’d like, you can follow him on Twitter @Hunter_S_Narc.

So Toronto synthpunk superstars Crystal Castles released their third album last week. Just like their last record, and the record before it, it’s called Crystal Castles, but it seems it’s being stylized as (III) (which is nowhere near as catchy as Melt). I wanted to review this album for you, gentle reader, but with each consecutive listen it became more and more apparent that Crystal Castles’ lack of ambition and originality isn’t limited to their eponymous naming tradition. The LP is a Frankenstein Xerox of a thing, a selection of squarewaves, synthetic bass drums, and avant-house gurgles and pitchshifts cobbled together from the band’s back catalogue. Nothing stands out, no track bears repeating. Alice Glass’ Julee-Cruise-having-a-duet-with-Poly-Styrene-underwater vocals are the same as they’ve ever been. It’s not a step backward, per se, but the band’s unwillingness to evolve is disheartening.

I don’t know why I’m surprised by any of this, really. In retrospect, Crystal Castles have never proven themselves to be all that competent in the art of Albumcraft. Their first release, 2006’s Alice Practice EP, still stands as their one cohesive statement; a four song rallying cry forged out of placeholder vocals, lightning fast bitrock, and pretentious-ass samples of avant-garde singer Cathy Berberian reading Ulysses. When three of the four tracks showed up virtually unchanged on their 2008 debut, their impact was muted, not only by age, but by having to share their space with thirteen far less worthy copycats. With each successive release, it became more obvious that Crystal Castles had created a distinctive and mind-bending sound, only to do nothing of interest with it. They were making cokefiend psychedelia: frenetic and complex but ultimately empty and irritating. Ambient music for people raised in trash compactors. Dubstep for people too cool for dubstep.

And, like dubstep, Crystal Castles prove to be at their best when diluted by outside influence. The Ulysses sample in “Air War,” the secretly recorded vocals that give “Alice Practice” its name, the Robert Smith-assisted re-imagining of Platinum Blonde’s “Not in Love,” and their classic remix of Klaxons’ “Atlantis to Interzone;” what makes these songs so phenomenal is that they are Crystal Castles and. Their admittedly unique sound and vibe isn’t enough to sustain an album; they need that external x-factor to properly succeed.

What I’m getting at is I think it would be neat if Crystal Castles stopped making albums and re-envisioned themselves as a sick production duo. Every once in a while they could do a showcase in the style of N.A.S.A. or Neptunes, but for the most part they would stick to working on other people’s albums and churning out amazing hip-hop singles. Don’t tell me that Alice Glass interjecting with Timbaland-esque “uh-huh’s” and “alrights” wouldn’t be fantastic.

Or maybe that’s just me. Honestly, they can do whatever they want, as long as I’m not listening to the same fucking record, renamed (IV), in 2014.