Hypermagic Mountain (Load)

Obvious horrific bloodshed aside, I imagine the sound of an unremitting war on terror to be something like the vertiginous sonics Lightning Bolt spray, rapid-fire style, with each new recording. Brian Gibson's agile bass-slaying emerges in mortar shells, littering every quarter inch of unoccupied territory with some obese riff that explodes on contact. The silent enemy is everywhere, and Gibson takes the offensive with his weaponry. Adding to the blast, drummer Brian Chippendale's breakneck beats alternately fall with military force and scatter in jagged progressions, constantly on the move. Together they are a cacophonous duo, one without obvious timetables and yet extremely precise in their targets.

These Providence, RI, noise punks have spent four years on the Load Records front line, advancing technical violence as an explosive art. Their latest Load release (in every sense of the word) is Hypermagic Mountain, and a more fitting moniker is rarely given to a collection of songs. The pair's signature artwork is as ingrained as the music by this point – Hypermagic's lyrics and ideas and bug eyes and rainbows and mantras ("PLAY LOUD") compete for your attention with minimal white space. The music is just as dense a display. Gibson's distorted bass still drags a heavy gut on the ground, Chippendale is still the short-attention-span fiend, and together they create ebullient metal melodies that drift above cathartic coos and calls of the wild. The recording also piles on echoing protests; odd, Animal Collective-on-PCP effects; and random prog elements, keeping the songs dynamic while forcing yet more instrumentation per minute. Hypermagic Mountain is as intense a ride as the title suggests, manic momentum for manic times. (Jennifer Maerz)

Detroit Cobras

Baby (Bloodshot)

Unlike their hometown peers, the Detroit Cobras don't simply sound like the past – they pilfer its songs outright. Since 1995 the Motor City combo has been raiding its record collections, rerecording vintage soul and R&B songs instead of writing new, retro-obsessed material. And while that technically makes the group one of the music world's bottom-feeders – a, gasp, cover band – you won't find one more adept at giving rollicking, garage-rock makeovers to selections by legends like Otis Redding and Mary Wells. Much credit goes to singer Rachel Nagy. As the only remaining original member, she has the bar stool bravado and steely growl – imagine Ronnie Spector hollerin' her way through a brutal drinking bender – that have long made the band far greater than a karaoke act.

That doesn't always translate onto record, though. The Cobras' third album, Baby – which comes packaged with 2003's import-only Seven Easy Pieces EP (Rough Trade) – may be their best yet, but it often fails to fully capture the danceable, havoc-wreaking intensity of their stage show. That's mostly a testament to their truly amazing live prowess, though, as they are certainly in fine form here on renditions of songs by, among others, Bobby Womack and Isaac Hayes. In fact, the album's only misstep is the one original, the sophomoric "Hot Dog (Watch Me Eat)," proving that the Cobras should stick to the soulful, garage-rockin' interpretations they do best. Because really, why bother recording a pale knockoff when you've got the Midas touch for updating the real deal? Detroit Cobras play Nov. 5, Bottom of the Hill, SF. (415) 621-4455. (Jimmy Draper)

John Arnold

Style and Pattern (Ubiquity)

Take London rapper Ty's advice on the title track and "don't be silly now!" Any preconceptions about the inherent fallibility of sophomore albums or broken beats being best suited to coffeehouses are hereby laid to rest by John Arnold's second long-player. Full of meaty, memorable songs that explore a range of styles, Style and Pattern shows Arnold knows his funk.

Just listen to the squirming, Motor City sci-fi keyboard melody of "Geminade," or the ridiculously huge bass line and hot horn stabs of "Rise Up" – Arnold is a man who feels his music. Oddly, the Detroit native is also something of a guitar god. Not the Joe Satriani-esque, Guitar Player-reading nerdy type, but the "I've got this Fender and I'm gonna make an entire album using the damn thing" type, whose six-string virtuosity is used to trigger a variety of MIDI effects. (Those bass lines and horn stabs? If Arnold's solo live shows are any indication, they actually came from a Stratocaster.) In addition to his instrumental prowess, Arnold draws on his experience as a DJ, and tracks like the highlife-flavored "Cabin Fever" and the darkly throbbing "Jangal," which marries swelling stings with warning-cry rapping from Senegal's Pathe Jassi, stay focused on moving bodies. Barring the unnecessary inclusion of two old (but nevertheless excellent) remixes by Henrik Schwarz and Mr. Scruff of "Inside," from Arnold's first album, Style and Pattern is a tight, funky affair. John Arnold plays Nov. 5, 1751 socialclub, SF. (415) 441-1751. (Peter Nicholson)

Jens Lekman

Oh You're So Silent, Jens (Secretly Canadian)

The world in which Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman lives is remarkably beautiful – delusional, but beautiful. This compilation of his early EPs illustrates in pointillist fashion a place filled with equal parts hope, happiness, and dread, but the latter is always gently masked behind Lekman's hopelessly romantic ignorance. Maybe it's a dangerous place to live, but it makes for a most pleasant visit.

You'll walk a mile in his shoes, and he'll let you frolic playfully, but he'll soon remind you it's all make-believe – and not "maple leaves," the fatal misinterpretation he makes in the song of the same name. Yet these odes to broken hearts and hapless naïveté are so charming that you can't stay mad at him for casting illusions (and neither can his ex-girlfriends, it would seem). Everything's just a bit off-kilter – a symphony sample just slightly missing the beat, for example – and it's enough to be cute without being annoying. But Lekman's real magic is his accomplished sense of song and wordplay. He walks down a dark path on "Sky Phenomenon" and "Pocketful of Money" but lights the way with a finger-snapping rhythm and his irresistible Jonathan Richman-meets-Stephin Merritt grin. And on the hilariously sweet, Motown-hued "I Saw Her in the Antiwar Demonstration," Lekman deftly describes the anarcho-apple of his eye as coming from "the kind of punks who were born in leather jackets / The kind of punks who place themselves in brackets."

From his cordial tone and handsomely twee accent, you'd be hard-pressed to believe he's as sneaky as his stories suggest. "Oh Goddamn / I missed the last tram.... I killed the party again / I ruined it for my friends," he says with a half laugh on "Black Cab," and you tend to wonder just what he could do to ruin a party. Would he piss in your shoe when you're not looking? No, but he'd probably chuckle heartily at the thought. Oh You're So Silent, Jens comes out Nov. 22. Jens Lekman plays Sat/29, Rickshaw Stop, SF. (415) 861-2011. (Ken Taylor)

Broken Social Scene

Broken Social Scene (Arts and Crafts)

Argument: Canadians are now more Californian than Californians. Evidence: We've gone from Jerry Brown to Arnold Schwarzenegger, from the Grateful Dead and their jam-band improv ideal to, well, RatDog. OK, maybe that argument is breaking down, but you can't help thinking our system is in jeopardy when a sprawling, idealistic Canadian band like Broken Social Scene produces as strong a self-titled masterpiece as this, a small flag on its case announcing the Canadian government's "support" for it. Maybe it takes a lot of cold weather and socialized medicine to make records like this. These people have done it before: You Forgot It in People could breathe surreally over a single guitar riff and boil indefinitely.

This new one chuckles like a Buddha at those early songs and their easy genius. With 40 billion (or 17, if you read the notes) actual members and four guests to which they admit, BSS have so many tracks, layers, and instruments that it should all get confused and blown up into a big commune of noise. And it does sometimes. But instead of a million cooks in the kitchen adding spices that cancel each other out, Broken Social Scene somehow spread the musical flavors so that each one comes out on innocent cue, tingles its teeny part, and recedes back into their grand cloud of sound. The drums stick out as the exception throughout: dry and grainy, keeping the whole thing on the tense ground of modern hurry. Other highlights: all the breathy, elusive vocals; big brass occasionally stepping up for a finale; song titles like "Our Faces Split the Coast in Half." Summary: We Californians once had the sunshine dream of socialist jam revelation. Thank you, Canada, for reminding us. Broken Social Scene play Nov. 9, Grand Ballroom, SF. (415) 421-TIXS. (Ian Port)

Jamiroqui

Dynamite (Epic)

The funk tune that opens Jamiroqui's first album in four years is positively ferocious. "Feels Just Like It Should" is down and dirty, its fuzz-tone bass line devilishly synthesized from frontman Jay Kay's own guttural vocalizations and locked into drummer Derrick McKenzie's syncopated grooves. Rob Harris's torrid guitar adds to the track's menacing vibe. "I need a little sex-funk now.... I wanna lick you up and down," Kay cries out on top in a pliant, angst-spewing tenor. The British soul vocalist has been likened to Stevie Wonder, but here Prince comes more to mind.

A pronounced disco flavor permeates most of the group's fashionably retro music. "Dynamite" and other dance floor-friendly numbers let various bass players snake around simpler drum beats, over which producer Mike Spencer layers various degrees of orchestration, some reminiscent of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff's Philly soul, others more akin to the Euro disco of Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. In many ways, Kay and Spencer – the main creative forces behind Jamiroqui – have managed to recapture the uplifting substance of '70s dance music while casting aside the chaff.

The DualDisc, which includes a fascinating documentary on the making of the "Feels Just Like It Should" video, contains one ballad, the politically pointed "World That He Wants." To the chiming piano chords of Matt Johnson (who cowrote the tune with Kay) and a cushion of strings, Kay sings of the sun setting on lonely graves and of birds flying away, then returning to unleash the hounds of hell. The song's subject is George W. Bush. Jamiroqui plays Nov. 5-6, Fillmore, SF. (415) 346-6000. (Lee Hildebrand)

Posies

Every Kind of Light (Rykodisc)

In spite of frequent reunions and releases, the Posies' Jon Auer and Ken Stringfellow have essentially pursued separate projects since the band's 1998 dissolution, following their then-last studio album, Success (Pop Llama). It makes sense that the group no longer resembles the dynamic power pop band bursting at the seams on 1996's underappreciated Amazing Disgrace (DGC), and indeed, their first studio album since re-forming, Every Kind of Light, shows a more mature and reserved group notable for its stylistic diversity, if not complete fluency.

The opening track, "It's Great to Be Here Again," rides a danceable groove and melody that combine R&B with the Psychedelic Furs' "Love My Way," which Auer covered on his 2001 solo EP, 6 1/2 (Pattern 25). Elsewhere, they try on the updated chamber pop affectations of Stringfellow's solo records, resulting in the epic "Conversations." "Anything and Everything" resurrects the classic Posies sound with a moody riff.

But when they try on the cock rock hat, they come off sounding second-rate. Their earnestness and intelligence poke through on "All in a Day's Work," placing them at odds with the genre's sense of play and reductionism. Elsewhere, the politically charged blues "Could He Treat You Better?" offers some potent lyrics, such as "When he gives you freedoms / Are you finding they're too few?" Unfortunately, the faceless musical accompaniment fails to generate the gutbucket power of the best blues.

Still, it's hard to not enjoy this album, for the band sounds good, especially Matt Harris on bass. The Posies are such impeccable craftspeople that their work always pleases, even if their focus wanders from what they do best. (Alex K. Fong)