Bright Like Neon Love (Modular Recordings)

"Chic called – or was is the Michael Zager Band? – and they want their hand claps back." That was my first response to hearing Cut Copy's "Saturday," a bumptious disco track that also features Nile Rodgers-worthy guitar skittles. Playing spot-the-influence while listening to this Australian trio's debut album is a crazy-making task. On "Future," chilly Phil Oakey vocals slink over the long planks of bass Peter Hook used to regularly provide for New Order. On "Going Nowhere," the rougher lurch of the Modern Lovers' "Roadrunner" collides with the chugging gloss of ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down" – and rest assured, Cut Copy's bright-like-neon modern pop lovers probably remember the neon hot dog in the latter song's video.

Wearing your influences on your sleeve is no problem when you patch them together as creatively as group leader Dan Whitford, drummer Mitchell Scott, and multi-instrumentalist Tim Hoey manage to on these cuts. Bright Like Neon Love has definite fast-food appeal – just when you start to tire of a flashy sound effect or catchy hook, another two enter the soundscape, morphing the song you were enjoying into almost another one entirely. This quality is most apparent on the tracks mixed by Philippe Zdar of Cassius, but Whitford's whirligiging contrapuntal compositions consistently make great use of opposing textures. Shiny synth sparks slap up against the cold, hard slabs of guitar, but every once in a while ("The Twilight"), stadium rock takes over.

"The future is the time to think about the past," Whitford drones early on, and his group has certainly mastered the sound of forward motion gripped by nostalgia. Midway through the album, a three-song suite seems to turn inside out, its glorious disco orchestration and R2D2-like chirps giving way to a power-surge undercurrent with a thump so deep it makes speakers shudder. "Autobahn Music Box" is a gleaming cathedral big enough to house Brian Wilson and Daft Punk. The age-old war between dance music and rock is more of a lovefest here. Cut Copy plays Oct. 6, Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, SF. www.ticketmaster.com. (Johnny Ray Huston)

Tim Berne's Hard Cell

Feign (Screwgun)

Saxophonist and Screwgun label head Tim Berne is a model of how to survive as an independent jazz musician in our current post-jazz, post-downloading, hype-based music biz climate. Back in the late '80s, he was signed – and dropped – by Columbia Records, an honor he shares with Ornette Coleman, Henry Threadgill, and James Blood Ulmer, among others. His next label, European jazz indie JMT, folded several years later, after which he said "Enough!" and formed Screwgun. But whereas many similar ventures fizzle out, Screwgun is still chugging along, sometimes releasing just 1 CD a year. Then again, why put out 10 mediocre albums a year when you can put out 1 really good one?

Feign is another in a long streak of really good ones. Hard Cell is Berne, on alto sax, along with drummer Tom Rainey and keyboardist Craig Taborn, who sticks to acoustic piano with this group. The trio has been known to stretch out into 20-plus-minute excursions, veering from mutant math-funk-jazz into stretches of near-ambient space. Here the pieces are both more compact and more cerebral than usual, but there's the same sense of physical, rock-worthy energy and loose-tight group interplay that distinguished their past releases. Parts of Feign bring to mind Cecil Taylor's trios; other parts, Anthony Braxton's small groups from the '70s and '80s. But the Berne originals have the distinctly cyclical, hiccuping quality that's long been a trademark: They're elusive, usually atonal, and yet catchy all the same, with a deep, mathematical elegance I can feel but can't put my finger on. His bandmates, however, have internalized the music. They tear through the tricky tunes here with ferocity and finesse, and the live-to-two-track recording job (by engineer David Torn) captures it all beautifully. (Will York)

Liz Phair

Somebody's Miracle (Capitol)

Liz Phair likes to blame the backlash surrounding her fourth album, 2003's radio-oriented Liz Phair (Capitol), on the indie world's phobia of mainstream pop music. But while that was certainly the reason some listeners turned away, it's not the entire story. What she doesn't acknowledge is that plenty of her less DIY-driven fans – you know, those of us who can recite every word to both her 1993 debut, Exile in Guyville (Matador/Capitol), and, say, Hilary Duff's Metamorphosis (Buena Vista) – rejected the disc not because it was slickly produced but because it was slickly produced crap. Bring in all the top-notch producers you like, but you can't polish turds like "Rock Me." If Phair wanted support in her attempt to infiltrate the Top 40, she should've recorded songs that didn't sound like Avril Lavigne's sloppy seconds.

Fortunately, Somebody's Miracle is a step in the right direction. Working with high-profile producers like John Shanks (Duff), Phair has crafted a set of adult contemporary ballads and lite rockers that show surprising signs of life. Sure, she's still responsible for some truly asinine lyrics like "We all shine, shine, shine," but more often she reveals a sharp wit and insight that's distinctly her own. "Leap of Innocence" features her most solid storytelling since the '90s, while "Got My Own Thing" finds her hilariously mocking a clueless dude, trilling, "I'd love to help give you enough rope to hang yourself." It's a sentiment disgruntled fans probably felt about her upon hearing Liz Phair, but with Somebody's Miracle, Phair proves too smart to commit ca reer suicide. Liz Phair performs Nov. 8, Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-6000. (Jimmy Draper)

Various artists

* Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq

* Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom

* Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma), Vol. 2

(All Sublime Frequencies)

The lords at Sublime Frequencies have been releasing an onslaught of field and radio-transmission-interception recordings from all over the world, showcasing down-and-dirty folk- and Western music-influenced pop infused with traditional instruments and native tongues. We're not talking white-guy-with-a-beard-from-New-York folk. We're talking people-who-live-on-the-top-of-a-mountain-in-Niger-or-Burma-who-are-singing-their-brains-out-beating-on-a-two-string-gourd-guitar-so-their-crops-grow-better-or-to-keep-evil-away folk. Choubi Choubi! Folk and Pop Sounds from Iraq, Radio Pyongyang: Commie Funk and Agit Pop from the Hermit Kingdom (meaning North Korea), and Guitars of the Golden Triangle: Folk and Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma), Vol. 2 are the latest and have more of a Western pop-rock 'n' roll influence.

The music on Choubi Choubi! is totally nutzoid. It's compiled and edited by superhero Mark Gergis, one of the founding members of Bay Area Thai pop sensation Neung Phak. My favorite song is "Oh Mother the Handsome Man Tortures Me." The title alone is more fucked up than any produced by black metal bands, gore metal groups, or Wolf Eyes. The song sounds like pretty traditional Arabic music but with someone pumping a Casio keyboard through some water-damaged speakers on full blast, going crazy on the mini-drum pads. We're talking machine-gun stylee. There are also some super-rare tracks by Ja'afar Hassan, who does '70s socialist folk rock. Incredible.

Radio Pyongyang starts off with a real bang: "Motherland Megamix." It sounds like a Subaru commercial turned into a Broadway musical produced by Phil Spector. Mind-melting. Within 30 seconds, I started crying because there's a really sad part, but then it morphs into a cheeseball, Japanese-karaoke-and-happy-synth-drenched soap-opera soundtrack. Most of this release is taken from shortwave radio broadcasts via Hong Kong; some, from North Korean TV.

Composed of mostly garage band-style psych folk and pop with electric guitars, Guitars of the Golden Triangle's tracks sound like they were recorded with all the instruments in a gas-station bathroom, while the vocals were done in a nice, clean studio with air-conditioning and a red carpet. The thin layer of fuzz spread across the top adds an eerie flavor. I'm not sure if some of these productions were meant to be "psychedelic," but man, the way things drop in and out and the extreme volume shifts really expand your mind. "Mistake of a Small Bird" is all quiet and pretty, then this guitar solo comes in, and it's 3,000 times louder than everything, and I swear, for a second, I saw God.

I love all these releases, and fortunately Sublime Frequencies is putting them out with increasing frequency (these are numbers 23, 24, and 25). Still, it's strange when you want to hear music that is new and fresh to your ears, and you have to go to 1970s Iraqi cassette tapes to find it. (Paul Costuros)