MUSIC: The Year in Recess Music

Well, we don't really do things on a calendar year basis, so deal with it. Here are our thoughts from the fortuitous beginning of the fifth volume to its dastardly final days:

Songs from the last year that you must download:

"Almost Crimes," Broken Social Scene

"Trouble of Me," Tift Merritt

"A Praise Chorus," Jimmy Eat World

Bands we've mentioned an embarrassing number of times:

Wilco

Interpol

Charles Lin on Cat Power's music: "An introspective barrage of deafening near-silence that may not leave you feeling fine."

Garver Moore on Karate: "The band seems to have some kind of political consciousness that it expresses in lyrics that would have Zach De La Rocha spewing blood and squirming in a pool of his own offal."

Greg Bloom on Max Tundra: "Think the White Stripes as phantasmic electrical spirits in an anime funk opera composed by Prince."

Garver Moore on Groove Armada's Lovebox: "...musical ear-chocolate. The groove's the tin wrapper, the beats are the chocolate, the rock's the nougat and the funk's the prized almond in the middle."

David Walters on Dave Grohl: "Conflict management, effective leadership. Screw soil conservation - Grohl for President!"

Pithy, pithy, pithy:

Macy Parker on Jurassic Five: "We get it J5. You're talented, you're not like other rappers, so get on with it already."

Hilary Lewis on 30 Seconds to Mars: "Equally creepy are Leto's distorted vocals that soon begin to sound like the very bellows of Satan himself. Heck, the Prince of Darkness may not have been Jordan Catalano in My So-Called Life, but I'm positive that he could have put out a better album."

Greg Bloom on music's silence in the face of war: "Does anyone know of any good protest music from, say, Germany in the late 1930's?"

Macy Parker on Rhett Miller: "Miller also has a distinctive vocal sound, and for some added grittiness, a gold tooth."

David Walters to Cross Canadian Ragweed: "Barring some career-shattering hay fever epidemic, where do you see CCR in five years?"

Mike Switzer on Jennifer Love Hewitt: "With the release of her third album, Barenaked, Love has succeeded big time in making Sarah Michelle Gellar seem that much cooler."

Hilary Lewis on The Exies: "The Exies have all the elements of a successful, radio-friendly rock act. And that's just the problem."

David Walters on the Wallflowers: "Attention Jakob Dylan:...Granted you have a lot to live up to and it was easier for kids like me whose fathers wore camoflauge swim trunks to the beach, but your pops is still pummeling you in the cool category."

Best Damn Line of the Year:

Hilary Lewis on Damone: "Damone's music is so infectious, it's like a disease. The kind of disease where the symptoms are so much fun you forget you're sick."