On first listen, Danny Cohen's second official solo album, We're All Gunna Die, sounds fragile, barely holding together the papery guitar and warbly bass with the narcoleptic drums, but as with a rickety roller-coaster, once you have faith that it's not going to fall apart, it's all the more fun. The obvious star is Cohen's voice, which is all over the place, populating his world with grotesque hippies and inbred surfer-scholars and bringing them to life with croons, drawls, and sarcasm. Conventional folk rhythms such as the melancholy "Caffiene [sic] and Sunlight" let you focus on the strangeness of the scene – "Skies of hyacinth / Leaves of a Van Gough tint / Catch the wind / Branches are bent" – without worrying about where the music is going. Lyrics and music are far from detached, however. Cohen's ability to marry sound with content shows most brightly on "Cousin Guy," in which the protagonist listens to Bob Dylan in his room to escape his parents; the song sounds like a lost track from Blonde on Blonde. Cohen loosens the conventions of pop in a fashion similar to Pavement's atonal instrumentation and displays something akin to Tom Waits's schizophrenic sass and silliness in the service of telling a story, but his maturity lends itself to a far more varied diagetic space. In "World of Holograms" he posits the emptiness of the images we call history, and the history of the album unfolds in a similar fashion with empty holograms of characters and places replaced from song to song. Finding beauty in the despicable, Cohen is an unlikely bard who's just odd enough to be brilliant. (Keith Axline)

Extra Action Marching Band
Extra Action Marching Band Live on Stubnitz (self-released)

It's hard to imagine when, where, and especially why you might need to own a CD of marching band music. No one ever scans the radio dial for it. But think about it: You're under the gun at work, deadlines loom, the pressure is killing you. Wouldn't a little halftime music help break things up, give you the time to get a snack, crack open another beer, then go back and hunker down to business? Or you're watching the big game and that guy from Third Eye Blind is about to sing. Just hit mute and crank up the good stuff. That's what you'll get from Extra Action Marching Band Live on Stubnitz, a self-released CD-R from 27 of the approximately 20 to 40 people who participate in the Extra Action Marching Band. This, their second live release, was recorded at a show on the Motorship Stubnitz – once part of a proud fleet of Polish fishing ships, now a performance and art space floating on a river in East Germany. On the CD-R you'll hear many of the same Extra Action classics you've heard at local antiwar and pro-bicycle marches, like the pounding "Mangina," the jaunty "Fat Sexy Guy Dance," and the regal "Back That Azz Up." Touchdown! (Deborah Giattina)

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