Music Library: Chris Brokaw, Chris Knox, Chris Morris, Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo

Chris Brokaw - Red Cities and I Was Born, But.... Brokaw's supertalented. He was the drummer for G.G. Allin and Codeine. He played or plays guitar in Come, Consonant, and The New Year. He was a part of the Boredoms 77 Boadrum project, which incorporated 77 drummers into a Boredoms performance. He's done a bunch of solo albums, but these are the only two I have. Red Cities is an instrumental post-rock thing, and it's quite good. I Was Born, But... is a movie soundtrack, so it also has a lot of instrumental tracks, but these are not as coherent or compelling as the ones on Red Cities. The problem with listening to indie-rock soundtracks: they remind you that they were meant to accompany images that are not before your eyes at the moment.

Chris Knox - Meat. Knox is 1/2 of the kiwi lo-fi psych-rock band Tall Dwarfs (I've already reviewed a solo album by Alex Bathgate, the other member). This is a collection of tracks from some earlier albums. And it's great! It does sound a lot like Paul Westerberg's bedroom recording project Grandpaboy. And some songs end with the sound of a screaming kid, which woke me up with a jolt when I fell asleep last night with my earbuds in and iPod playing. I went running into my son's room, and didn't realize until later that he wasn't the screaming kid who woke me up.

Chris Morris - Blue Jam Series 1 Episodes 1 and 2, plus a few random parody tracks (the fake REM and Pixies songs are great!). Lots of great, dark comedy.

Chris Stamey with Yo La Tengo - V.O.T.E. A limited-release album from 2004 meant to help get out the vote for John Kerry, V.O.T.E. features Stamey, a power-pop guru from North Carolina, reworking some of his own songs and a bunch of covers (including a killer version of Television's "Venus"!) with YLT bringing the rock as his backing band.