Are circles really different in Russia? Or did that end with the fall of communism? Chicago's Russian Circles aren't telling, comrades. They're instrumental like that. "Harper Lewis" is from the band's Suicide Squeeze debut Station (the follow-up to 2006's Flameshovel-issued Enter), and it's cold and vast like a certain Eurasian nation-- or just their local Lake Michigan for a few months around this time each year. Drummer Dave Turncrantz sets a militant tribal groove, while newly recruited bassist Brian Cook (of These Arms Are Snakes) drops anchor with a forbidding, slightly overdriven drone. That lets guitarist Mike Sullivan plot out slow post-rock builds, clicky headphone-panning arpeggios, and thrashing metal chugs overhead. If you sketched that all on a graph, the shape might be a circle, whatever country you're coming from-- or it might look like one of those plot structure charts from English class, spread out over seven minutes. If that's considered a circle in Russia, no wonder they lost the Cold War to the 1980s version of Fred Thompson.

[from Station; due 05/06/08 on Suicide Squeeze]

When it comes to bodies, tell yours it's what's inside that counts. "No Kinda Man" is a brand new Junior Boys original taken from Body Language Six, the Canadian duo's addition to Berlin imprint Get Physical's mix series, and it gets physical by getting, like, contemplative-- though the pristine bass, dreamy washes, and distant echoes surrounding Jeremy Greenspan's elegant, pathos-ridden croon do hit with concrete (if downtempo) force. If So This Is Goodbye's breathy, radiant "In the Morning"-- Pitchfork's #13 track of 2006-- walked home expensively rum-and-Coke-buzzed in the, um, morning, then "No Kinda Man" wanders the moonlit streets, lost and staring at its own breath. "In my hands, in my skin, I'm alone," Greenspan murmurs against the frigid r&b-like backing. About four minutes in, the drums cut out, and synths threaten to explode like rockets ahead of an ominous, orbital instrumental outro. You can get a bit of a sense for what to expect from the track based on where Junior Boys put it in their mix. It's between Parisian DJ/producer Chloé's dubby, eerily minimal remix of German electronic band Rework's detached bass-pulser "Love Love Love Yeah" on one side, and former Junior boy Johnny Dark's current project Stereo Image with the melodic and, you know, dark electro-pop song "Dark Chapter" on the other. So, haunted and drained of love-- not an unsophisticated sensation, but one you feel in your gut anyway.

[from Body Language Six; due in the U.S. 03/11/08 on Get Physical]

If sexy never left, then why is everybody on Justin Timberlake's shi-i-it? That's J.T. as goofy, "Yo! MTV Raps"-ready old-school throwback introducing the first video for Gnarls Barkley's follow-up to 2006's St. Elsewhere, the forthcoming The Odd Couple. Directed by filmmaking team Happy, the clip shows the duo of Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse performing their soul-style, horns-emblazoned new song "Run", as a TV audience of dancers shake their daisy dukes in the background. Get ready for plenty of dizzying special effects, and a retro vibe that feels like it reaches as far back as Austin Powers' 1960s despite all the day-glo colors and Timberlake's "That was crazy fresh" shtick. Man, I never noticed how much that dude sort of looks like Screech. (via MTV's Subterranean blog)

[from The Odd Couple; due 04/08/08 on Downtown/Atlantic]

The Roots' rep since the early days has been tied to the live instrumentation of their hip-hop band concept. But they rhyme, too, man. So "75 Bars (Black's Reconstruction)", from upcoming 10th album Rising Down, is just what its title suggests-- rapper Black Thought spitting what probably adds up to 75 bars, reconstructing whatever you want, no hooks. With politically percussive epithet use and lines like "Smooth like that dude Sean Connery was playing," the extended rap picks up a methodical, cold-blooded force, though the specific content-- was that an Arsenio Hall joke?-- mostly isn't the kind of thing you'll be quoting to your buddies. Even if your weed's as good as Black Thought's. Nah, the interplay between ?uestlove's muted, minimal drumming and Tuba Gooding Jr.'s sousaphone bass lines is what murders on this one. The Rik Cordero-directed video takes a stark, lo-fi approach that involves a lot of time watching the shadowy, shades-wearing MC rap-- first on a van, and then in some kind of film-cliché interrogation room, where cigarette smoke hangs in the air while a bound and gagged old white dude waits to get his ass kicked. Damn, 75 bars and still enough breath left to smoke 'em if you got 'em.

[from Rising Down; due 04/29/08 Def Jam]

"O, Calendar" is a small piece of a much larger puzzle. The track appears on the Jet Age's second album, What Did You Do During the War, Daddy?, an ambitious, ambiguous song cycle about an American suicide bomber. The Washington, D.C., power-indie-pop band manage to sympathize with the character's outrage without condoning such violence, while acknowledging that the old means of protest-- marching on Washington, taking to the streets, even to some extent writing songs-- no longer work in the Bush era. Compelling in its convictions and streamlined in its storytelling, What Did You Do is just the sort of album Ted Leo ought to be making.

To its credit, "O, Calendar" may be a lynchpin track on that album, but it stands up well on its own. Beginning with Greg Bennett's pulsing bass and Eric Tischler's urgent rhythm guitar licks, the song bursts to life with Pete Nuwayser's boisterous drumming, which sounds like he's got four arms and twice as many toms. Nuwayser antagonizes Tischler's vocal melodies, relenting only when they reach the sing-along clap-along bridge. "Your arms-- languorous and lithe," Tischler sings as the other instruments fall away, "hold me close, make me feel alive." Out of its album context, "O, Calendar" sounds like an urgent expression of romantic contentment, with only a hint of darker times ahead.

Chan Marshall performs "New York, New York", from Jukebox, at the NBC Studios in beautiful downtown Burbank.

[from Jukebox; out now on Matador]

Another video from the Best New Music-designated album Devotion by Baltimore's Beach House, this one for "Heart of Chambers", and it's a lot goofier than its predecessor. I think they stole Bubbles' shopping cart. Victoria's brother Alistair Legrand directs.

[from Devotion; out now on Carpark]