ANTHONY FANTANO

Rock and ambient music might as well reside on opposite sides of the galaxy, so it's almost shocking when a band like Deerhunter melds the two so effectively.

Of Montreal's early releases were loaded with playful but confessional acoustic tunes, but the band soon embraced glam-rock's freakier side on albums like 'Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?' and 'Skeletal Lamping.' It was a shift fans might not have tolerated if it weren't for frontman Kevin Barnes' catchy, personality-driven songs.

While some artists hunt for more groundbreaking ideas, A Hawk and a Hacksaw finds novelty in tradition, proving that what's new depends only on who's listening.

Jesu's walls of distortion are uplifting in comparison to those of its doom-driven contemporaries. The band's 2009 album 'Infinity' has its bleak moments, but that album's single 49-minute song resolves into something inspirational and grandiose by the time it's over.

I've obsessed over a lot of bands in my time, and I'm sure I'll become infatuated with a lot more in the future.

At the end of the day, I would love for the artists that I give positive reviews to to continue coming out with music. That's ultimately what I want as a fan.

After a casual listen, it might be easy to lump Rocky Votolato in with the downtrodden likes of Conor Oberst and Elliott Smith. But his songwriting is a bit more triumphant than theirs: Votolato would rather pull himself out of a gutter than wallow in it, focusing instead on the victory before the misery.

The Soft Pack's self-titled full-length debut is straighter than black coffee, and twice as bitter: Frontman Matt Lamkin isn't afraid to fly his philosophical flag and face hard realities.

Short-sighted music fans might scoff at the revivalism of, say, Ariel Pink, but plenty of acts have built healthy careers around the art of bringing back the past.

Souljazz doesn't reinvent soul, jazz or the fusion thereof, but it plays all of the above with the passion that drove its forefathers.

Ab-Souls Outro' serves as a jazzy, spoken summation of 'Section.80's themes. Guest cohort Ab-Soul opens the song with one urgent verse after another: Flowing freely like the saxophone behind him, his words advocate veering outside life's most predictable pathways.

I'm not that famous.

The TV show 'How It's Made' brings the intricate details of assembly lines to numerous North American living rooms. But if the series were to ever branch into exposing the secrets of music production, Colin Stetson's 'New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges' would make for a mind-bending episode.

Mash-ups have gained a lot of credibility between the fall of Danger Mouse's infamous 'Grey Album' and the rise of Girl Talk's overwhelming mega-mixes. There's just something marvelous about hearing seemingly mismatched ideas work together, as two worlds collide to a heavy beat.

Less is more' may be a cliche, but that doesn't mean musicians often heed that advice. Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson, who performs and records as The Tallest Man on Earth, follows it religiously.

Some art needs to be hung on the wall and stared at inquisitively, while other pieces require a more active approach.

Cryptic messages and abstract statements are littered throughout the music of Happy Birthday, but it hasn't made the band's sun-baked pop-rock any less infectious.

For more than 10 years, Daniel Snaith has been playing mad scientist with pop and psychedelic music. As Manitoba, and more recently as Caribou, he's pushed the genres' limits with electronics and studio trickery.

The personality and songwriting of Holy Ghost! trumps the originality card any day.

Let's Wrestle would rather poke fun than point fingers, even if there's a problem that needs fixing.

For all its reverb and defiant noise, the sound of Black Tambourine barely reached past the borders of Washington, D.C., in the early '90s.

There are so many artists, so many songs, so many producers, that it's hard to keep track of whose music is worthwhile.

Electronics, samples and vocals are all fed into The Log.Os' music, and a fresh take on soul comes out. The band's songs splash around in the same gene pool as neo-soul artists like Erykah Badu, but they reach forward to pull ideas from glitch-hop producers such as Flying Lotus and Prefuse 73.

As soon as I was getting YouTube comments and hit 100 subscribers, I was thinking 'maybe there's something to this. I could keep going. I don't know how far I can really push it just reviewing random indie bands on YouTube, but it seems to have more gas in the tank.'

Every week, I'm faced with, and aware of, 10-14 different reviewable albums that, in a perfect world, I'd be able to pop a review out of. But I'm just one person who, while maintaining my sanity, can only do 5-6 reviews per week.