HIDDEN GEMS
Elbow | Asleep in the Back
You may have heard of Elbow. Their fourth release, 2008’s The Seldom Seen Kid, won the Mercury Music Prize. But if you did not explore their back catalog, shame on you. Now is the time to rectify that. Asleep in the Back, their 2001 debut, which was shortlisted for the award, is a haunting collection of dreamy ambient pop, broken up with the occasional noisy guitar blast. Songs like “Powder Blue,” which explores love between heroin addicts, and “Scattered Blacks and Whites” which is a beautiful odyssey through childhood, are far from sunny, but the power behind the music and lyrics is captivating and spellbinding. “Newborn” contains one of my favorite opening lyrics of all time. “I’ll be the corpse in your bathtub.” Need I say more?
by allison levin

The Up | Killer Up!
The Up used to live with the MC5 in the White Panther Party commune in Ann Arbor, MI, but unlike their legendary housemates, The Up never gained popularity outside the Midwest. In their six-year existence they never even put out an album. But in 1995, John Sinclair released Killer Up! a compilation of all The Up’s recordings, and it turns out they rock in that Detroit-circa-1970 way, which is to say, HARD. Though neither technically deft nor as good as MC5 or the Stooges, The Up play songs like “Just Like An Aborigine” with a real proto-punk explosiveness. Perfect album to play when you need a burst of energy.
by Erin Sheehy
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