Two new "Best Of's" that will hit the shelves in the not-too-distant future are collections from DM3 and The Windbreakers. Australia's DM3, for those of you who don't know, was perhaps THE premier power pop group of the '90s, with forceful guitars and graceful melodies meshing perfectly. Leader Dom Mariani tells me that the band's version of "Caroline, No" might possibly be included, alongside 16 of his coolest original compositions.

The Windbreakers were one of the shining lights of the '80s pop scene, with the sweet-voiced Bobby Sutliff teaming up with the gruffer-sounding Tim Lee to create some timeless music. Sutliff recently mentioned to me that the 'Breakers were back in the studio to record two new songs for the comp, which should sweeten the pot that much more. I trust that Sutliff's "That Stupid Idea," one of the most devastatingly perfect pop songs ever, will be included as well...

Ian Hunter's Rant is, unfortunately, a rather tired collection from someone who used to be pretty damned great. He may "Still Love Rock and Roll" and rail against "Morons," but he's done it all before, and done it a hell of a lot better than this..

Gadfly Records has recently resissued (with five bonus tracks) Billy Bremner's 1984 LP, Bash. Sounding similar to what the second Rockpile record might have sounded like, this is a rollicking good time, for sure. "Loud Music in Cars" is a friggin' anthem, "Goin' Steady With a Heartache" is a sweeping pop statement that Nick Lowe would have killed for and "Tired and Emotional (and Probably Drunk)" wins bonus points for its title alone.

You've gotta hand it to Eytan Mirsky---this dude's CD's have some of the funniest covers I've ever seen. On his new one, Was It Something I Said?, he looks like a mopey, jilted Arnold Horshack (being dumped by a comely, young Meryl Streep lookalike). Ah, but what about the music? It's peppy, guitar-based stuff, with Mirsky's colorless vocals often sounding not unlike Pat Dinizio's. Highlights include "Meet Some Girls" (as in "I just joined this band to...") and the jangly "All the Things to Do When She Says No" (where Eytan is backed by pop monsters The Lolas). The lyrics get a little too "Gee, love kinda sucks and I''ve been dumped yet again" and some of the melodies are a little samey, but overall, this ain't half bad...

Fireking's Live a Little, Love a Little is a beefy slab of rock/glam from Boston with big-ass choruses (try dislodging "Arkansas" from your mind once you've heard it), upfront vocals and piles of guitars making all the right moves. A splendid cover of Sweet's "Rebel Rouser" is welcomed, as is the swaggering "Canadian Clubland."

The animal known as "The Living Room Show" (an intimate gathering for a couple of dozen folks where a pop act performs acoustically for a few hours) has become more and more popular over the past year. I've attended living room perfomances by Chris von Sneidern, John Faye, The Heats and Walter Clevenger, but one that I unfortunately missed was Parthenon Huxley's gig late last year. Luckily for me (and you), P. Hux Live in Your Living Room has been released, a 21-song document of the evening that includes old favorites ("Every Minute," "California," "Simple Things"), new ones ("Jewel and Johnny" is a treasure, "Happy Heavy Metal Boy" is a hoot) and a handful of tunes from Parthenon's deeply personal Purgatory Falls CD that gain power from the acoustic setting. A nice version of "Nowheresville" (co-written by Huxley and E) is another find. An essential disc.

King Richard's Collectibles from The Asteroid No. 4 is a winning melange of styles and moods. Ranging from powerful to quiet, it most often recalls the best of various '60s pop artists and styles (The Who, mid-period Beatles, garage/psych) mixed with a jigger of Apples in Stereo. (I even hear a little XTC on numbers such as "Mercenary Man.") Unlike some retro-styled recordings, never resorting to cheap mimicry is what helps keep these tunes fresh and vibrant.

One of the best pure pop tunes of 2001 is "Big Bang," from the album of the same name by France's William Pears. Somehow accomplishing the feat of sounding mellow and forceful at the same time, it's a honey of a tune. Nothing else on the record quite scales those lofty heights, but there's still plenty of likeable stuff here.

See ya at IPO!

Nothing beats that first listen to a new album. Shrink-wrap off, jewel case open (that is, in the case of a CD. So to speak.), disc first pried from its rigid hold, volume up, headphones adjusted...the countdown to new sonic experience. The outcome varies of course, but the eternal hope of discovery is an obligatory and welcome component of the encounter. More often than not it's the driving force.

The nature of the ensuing relationship with any new album depends largely on previous experience, or lack thereof, with the artist in question. Hearing a new album by a new band is a drastically different experience than hearing a new album by a familiar - or even more pronounced - a well-loved band. The former shines with an enthusiastic naiveté, while the latter carries all the baggage of any relationship, good and bad. Both are hope-filled but one is the never-to-be-repeated first impression, ears and mind wide open, and the other is a new date with an old friend.

Albums by unfamiliar bands succumb to efforts to place them in context (Who does this sound like? With what in my experience does this compare?) while those familiar are lined up against their previous works. It is virtually impossible to hear the latter as you would the former. In a way it's a shame; that freshness of impact will never exist again. But in another way...a sort of earned justice seems to settle in the dust of recognition. The more records I hear by any band, the less I tend to feel the guiding hand of their inspirations and the more I tend to hear their unique style. But there's a different sort of contextualizing at work here: the comparison with previous works, and one step beyond, the competition with an established relationship with the band. As a few of my favorite bands of the past decade have recently released new albums, it's gotten me thinking about how I've dealt with hearing their new sounds through these very context-colored glasses.

My first acquaintance with Guided by Voices came in the form of a radio jolt about six years ago. To promote the release of Alien Lanes, the then-semi-appealing local “alternative” station added the single “Motor Away” to its playlist. Having never heard of GbV and tuning in as the song aired with no introduction, my first reaction was a curious and delighted, “Why is WFNX playing some obscure British Inva--- good lord, is this a Who rarity?” Maybe this is tainted by retrospect, but if I am exaggerating I'm not doing so by much. It was revelatory and permanently tripped my fan alarm.

My love for this band has never been fueled by any semblance of accessibility. The appeal for me has always been in the bizarre juxtapositions, the insanely fragmentary ideas, the vivid imagery, the too-numerous-to-count brilliant melodic moments haphazardly slung between layers of anthemic rock, and of course, the genius aggregate of that mayhem. Isolation Drills seems among the most accessible things they (Robert Pollard and his crew du tour) have done, marking something of a divergence from the “classic” earlier style. No, these are not the mystifying magical snippets of old, but rather traditional songs - fully realized melodies in this case propelled by frenetic punk-rock or giddy power pop or sad and honest string-laden balladry. Jangly and whole, this new GbV exudes a sincerity lacking from 1999's Do The Collapse, an album that at times drowned its worthy tunes in a too-uncharacteristic synthy sheen. While not of the traditionally untraditional GbV mold, Isolation Drills just might be the most fulfilling and most authentic representation of the band since 1996's Under the Bushes Under the Stars.

It's been easy to miss here in the U.S but Teenage Fanclub have issued their first new album since 1997's desperately beautiful Songs From Northern Britain and we die-hard followers ordered our imports and read the British press to get our fix. The new album, Howdy, doesn't seem to further their craft or add a new dimension to their sound, a trend marked by the progression since their first album - your basic distortion-muddled indie-rock, to Big Star homage, to folky West Coast harmony pop. So I guess I was a bit let down by the absence of any initially distinctive spark. But in that eternal-first-impression fantasyland, if I'd never heard them, I'm guessing I'd be pretty infatuated based on this introduction. Howdy doesn't depart from the rather Byrdsy path the Fanclub have taken the past few years, and I wouldn't typically fault a band for such a thing, but when a beloved band deepens their appeal so thoroughly with every album, consistently incorporating subtle shifts, a plateau doesn't go unnoticed. Of course, there are brilliant moments. The standout track “I Need Direction”, with its waves of harmony and pristine backing vocals, is as gorgeous as any of their best work, another chiming and electric masterpiece from the oh-so-gifted Gerry Love. From there, Love, Ray McGinley, and Norman Blake trade songs in a gentle three-way melody toss that interestingly, may fulfill a prior expectation while not challenging it in the expected way.

A good number of people probably view the new Pernice Brothers' album, The World Won't End, as the band's second release and technically I suppose that's true. But having spent the past few years spellbound by the three Scud Mountain Boys albums that came before, and Joe Pernice's two spinoff projects that came between, and concluding via continual tears and goosebumps that Pernice is in a class of his own, I tend to see the new album as the latest on a long and winding development. How he continues to build on his own stunning past astounds me. All seems more pronounced this time around; the sentiments more eloquently dire, the melodies more vibrant, the arrangements more complex, the vocals somehow more keenly pained and powerfully fragile - Pernice sing-pleading with us to recognize the beautiful agony, or the tragic loveliness. It's also the most boldly upbeat album he's offered yet, with Overcome by Happiness by comparison seeming almost like a middle-ground between his brilliantly bleak Americana past and this new buoyant pop direction. Needless to say, and backtracking a bit, my expectations for this album were very high. And somewhere on that cloud-topping peak of anticipation they were met and possibly exceeded, lending some optimistic proof to the theory that the new album/old artist listening experience is not always surpassed by expectation.