THE WARLOCKS **
Heavy Deavy Skull Lover Tee Pee
Heavy Deavy Skull Lover should come with a complimentary packet of hallucinogenic substances. At least, that’s the only thing I can imagine would make this indulgent, meandering set of ominous psyched-out jams into an ace album. Bobby Hecksher’s pitiful whine is drowned out in layers of reverb, crunchy fuzz and glacially-paced drums, broken up by the occasional twinkly lead guitar dancing frantically overtop like a sad elf. It’s not awful, just terribly dull, with little attention paid to structure beyond a lazy loud-soft-loud dynamic progression. The songs bleed into each other with little distinction, which makes Heavy Deavy Skull Lovers feel more like a wanky 50-minute trip where time stands unbearably still than a decent collection of experimental spacey rock. SL

BARMITZVAH BROTHERS ***
Let’s Express Our Motives Weewerk
Complete with copious liner notes, explanations and listening instructions, Barmitzvah Brothers’ 19-track odd-job concept album Let’s Express Our Motives is, in a word, exhaustive. The follow-up to 2003’s Mr. Bones’ Walk-in Closet finds the band waxing poetic about metaphysical indecisiveness (“Traffic Technician”) and restrained emotions (“Library Page”) in their tributes to various Joe jobs. While Jenny Mitchell’s frail ukulele ditties end up blending together, her “Rendering Equipment Tender” boasts the album’s most clever lyrics and a boisterous arrangement. With their respective piano- and Wurlitzer-heavy rock-outs, “Trailblazer” and “Sign Erector” sound like the most exciting jobs, but isn’t rock supposed be an escape from work? CB

VIC CHESNUTT **
North Star Deserter Constellation
Everything about this album works beautifully, except Vic Chesnutt’s songs themselves. On his 12th studio album, the Georgia songwriter shacked up in Montreal with the Constellation Records posse, who provide tasteful and eerie backing to some of Chesnutt’s best vocal performances in years, as coaxed by engineer Howard Bilerman and producer Jem Cohen. This makes it the best album by Constellation house band A Silver Mt. Zion, but sadly — as has been true for the last 10 years or so — Chesnutt’s material doesn’t live up to his early ’90s heights, leaving us with an hour of tuneless dirges. With any luck, the experience will kick-start his muse and warrant a return visit; it would be a shame to waste this opportunity. MB

FRIGHTENED RABBIT *
Sing the Greys Fat Cat
These are certainly greys, all right. This timid band of Glaswegians wield beige and banal indie-rock guitars that try to prop up flaccid melodies and arrangements that shouldn’t have made it past the basement. This isn’t even fey enough to be friendly for the cardigan crowd. The titles alone will have you instantly counting sheep: “Be Less Rude,” “Music Now” and, of course, “Yawns.” More offensive than Frightened Rabbit itself is the fact that the usually reliable Fat Cat Records has been signing more snoozers like this (Tom Brosseau, David Karsten Daniels). MB

CELEBRATION **
The Modern Tribe 4AD
Celebration’s second album is well-represented by the cluttered artwork on the cover: too many ideas, executed too hurriedly, without any sense of restraint. This reluctance to trim a note leaves the listener perpetually mired in tiring Hammond organ trills and Katrina Ford’s over-vocalizations. Her distinctive, androgynous voice demands more control than she’s willing to give it — it’s better suited to an emptier room and bandmate David Bergander’s consistently inventive drumming. Instead, Celebration pile on every available instrument, idea and band (including members of TV On The Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs) which only raises the question: did no one ever say to them “enough already”? HSP

CELEBRATION PLAY THE EL MOCAMBO (464 SPADINA AV) NOV 26.

DAVID SHRIGLEY’S WORRIED NOODLES **** Tomlab
Who is David Shrigley, and why does he deserve a tribute from 39 awesome oddballs culled from the international pop underground? He’s a Glaswegian poet who did the artwork for the latest Deerhoof album — their Shrigley collab “You Dog (a.k.a. Kidz Are So Small)” is the only non-exclusive track here — but he also once put out an LP-sized collection of songless lyrics, which have now found a musical home thanks to the likes of Franz Ferdinand, David Byrne, Trans Am, Grizzly Bear and Torontonians Final Fantasy and Hank. But the baffling, childlike lyrics barely matter when this two-CD set serves as the best mixtape of 2007. MB

FEU THÉRÈSE ****
Ça Va Cogner Constellation  
On their second album, this offshoot of Montreal psych-jammers Fly Pan Am grab a connecting flight on Lufthansa, mastering an expansive, luxuriant form of pop muzik that’s Teutonic in its mechanistic precision — and its vivid evocation of Bowie and Eno’s late-’70s Berlin period — though still francophone in its vocalization. If Ça Va Cogner sounds like a time capsule of sorts, it’s one that harkens to an era when synth-based music did indeed sound like the future, before it degenerated into retro-’80s novelty. And if Stephen de Oliveira’s sternly sung narratives project an icy veneer, it’s eventually reduced to a puddle by the title track, wherein a climactic children’s chorus fills up the tear ducts, before the glorious, stargazing instrumental “Laisse briller tes yeux dans le soleil” opens up the floodgates.
 STUART BERMAN

YEASAYER ***
All Hour Cymbals We Are Free  
For a band seemingly so fond of puns, Brooklyn ensemble Yeasayer approach their prog hymnals with palpable seriousness. The pervasive group chants and percussive builds align them with the campfire outbursts of Animal Collective and Akron/Family, but All Hour Cymbals employs these devices in more dramatic and lushly rendered gestures. Like those bands, the initially striking multi-voiced mishmash can degenerate into ineffectual gibberish (“Wait for the Summer”). More intriguing are Yeasayer’s efforts to adapt avant-folk eccentricities to an unabashedly classic-rock presentation: if you ever need a mix-disc transition from TV on the Radio to Fleetwood Mac, “2080” has you covered. SB

WORKING FOR A NUCLEAR FREE CITY ***
Businessmen & Ghosts
Deaf Dumb + Blind/Fusion III  
This season sees the arrival of Rhino Records’ The Brit Box, a four-CD overview of UK rock’s evolution from mid-’80s indie-jangle through shoegaze and Madchester to bloated late-’90s Britpop. But instead of shelling out 35 pounds for it, Manchester quartet Working For A Nuclear Free City have simply recorded their own version of this history, in the form of a debut 29-song double album that provides wayward Stone Roses fans ample opportunities to both wig out (throbbing trance-rocker “Eighty Eight”) and chill out (Doves-styled reverie “Quiet Place”). Whether you need almost two hours of the stuff depends on whether your wardrobe is still heavy on the baggy pants and Reni hats, but acoustic anomalies like “Sarah Dreams of Summer” and Caribou-styled circus-psych curios like “The Tape” show that WFANFC can shine even when the strobe lights are turned off. SB

PLURAMON ***
The Monstrous Surplus
Karaoke Kalk
Apparently sharing his countryman Ulrich Schnauss’ abiding love of My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins and all things loud and dreamy, German producer Marcus Schmickler traded in the twitchy electronica of his earlier Pluramon discs for ecstatic waves of fuzz on 2003’s Dreams Top Rock. The new disc sees him reunite with Julee Cruise on several songs, the voice of the former Twin Peaks songstress rising up through the music’s narcoleptic haze. Though Dreams Top Rock beat the shoegazer revival by a few years, The Monstrous Surplus is less than revelatory due to the sudden surplus of like-minded acts. Schmickler’s latest batch can seem like so much shoegazing by numbers, though “Fresh Aufhebeng,” a nervy, chaotic blast of backwards guitar and mutilated motorik beats, throws a much-needed spanner in the works. JA

THE CAKE SALE ****
Yep Roc/Outside
The Oxfam-benefiting Cake Sale is comprised of an expansive roster of mostly Irish musicians, including members of rock bands Bell X1 (Brian Crosby produced the album), The Frames, Emm Gryner (a Canadian!) and many more. This disc is remarkably fluid given its varied contributors: the deeply morose and delicate Damien Rice-penned “Needles” echoes with a lingering music box refrain; also noteworthy is the album opener, Dave Geraghty’s “Last Leaf” with vocals hauntingly performed, sometimes a capella, by Lisa Hannigan. The rest of the album follows suit with melody-driven originals that are  not only easy on the ears, but will improve the lives of farmers in poor and developing countries with each copy of the album you buy. If you’re a human with feelings, it should be good for your soul, too. For more on Oxfam’s vision for world trade, visit www.maketradefair.com. BS

KEN REAUME ***
Four Horses Pariah Songs
Ideal for anyone who thinks Nick Drake was a touch too sunny and upbeat, Ken Reaume’s guitar-driven ruminations certainly manage to set a mood. He makes good use of a string or two on occasion, but Reaume’s spare, squirmingly earnest compositions are otherwise pared down to the marrow. While his hushed voice stays idling in a monotone for too much of this record, especially considering how prominent it is in the mix, Four Horses still manages to be haunting. The elegiac melody of “Last Ghost” belongs on the score of a downbeat Western, and “I Had a Love” balances quavering between desperation and rueful cynicism. CR

JOSÉ GONZÁLEZ ***
In Our Nature Mute
González’s follow-up to his 2003 debut full-length Veneer signals a confident step forward for the Argentine-Swede. Bolstered, perhaps, by ensuing years of playing out and by last year’s clever mini-hit version of Kylie’s “Hand Over Your Heart,” he sounds less tentative as he gets deeper into the properties of his thin voice and resonant classical guitar. Skeletal though his setup may be, it’d be a misnomer to call González a musical minimalist — there is great space and plenty of bottom-end in his playing, giving In Our Nature an ambience that, like his obvious spiritual forerunner Nick Drake, transcends the folkie singer/songwriter tag and brings his deceptively breezy lyrical reflections into the body of the production. While he’s at it, González stays sharp on the song-interpretation front with a driving take on Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” that —?while not matching the impact of the original —?certainly reclaims it from its recent relegation as “that song from House.” KIERAN GRANT

NIFTY ***
A Sparrow! A Sparrow!
Blocks Recording Club
Flighty? A little. Nifty is Matthew Smith (or Schitt, or Schmidth — his name seems to be as elastic as his sound), one-third of local folk-noise outfit Les Mouches, who broke up not long after Owen Pallett’s Final Fantasy project became a big deal. A Sparrow! is one of the least coherent albums I’ve ever heard. “Two Figures” opens with grainy orchestral samples and anachronistic crooning: it’s both pretty and unsettling, like an abandoned ’20s dance hall. After that, Smith goes from what sounds like utensil-based percussion to bargain beats and stuttering string loops. The epic title track creates a microcosm of the larger album by trying at least five approaches during its 16-minute running time. The random experimentation doesn’t gel for me the way his previous albums did, but I still appreciate a musician who places what could be a fragment from a Guy Maddin soundtrack side-by-side with Afrobeat rhythms. CR