SOUND BITES

After Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party brought their angular riffs and post-punk energy to the mainstream about a decade ago, insatiable fans went looking for like-minded bands. That, along with sharpened songcraft and a major record deal, helped The Cribs break through with third record Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever , albeit to a lesser degree in North America. They've quietly explored their sonic horizons since (or, in the case of the hard-nosed, Steve Albini produced In the Belly of the Brazen Bull , not so quietly), and with sixth album For All My Sisters it's starting to come back around.  That said, there's a softer and more mature core to these songs, an expected result of the Jarman brothers all being in their thirties now. Not to say that the songs are dull; lead single Burning for No One has just the right amount of fire, while Mr. Wrong and City Storms (the latter of which pairs Ryan's elastic vocals with a Manics-inspired me...

THE CRIBS Come On, Be A No-One From: In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull Released: May 15 After recording and touring 2009's Ignore The Ignorant with Johnny Marr, In The Belly Of the Brazen Bull finds The Cribs scaled back to a three-piece and strapping TNT to the refined tone and sound of that previous album. Dripping with a thick sauce of '90s nostalgia and mostly devoid of the more angular and dance-oriented slant of their early work, the album packs lots of thrills for fans of crunchy power pop. Look no further than Come On, Be A No-One , a gloriously noisy pop song the likes of which Rivers Cuomo would sell a nut or two to be able to write these days.

Occasionally, I look at the list of upcoming releases on the right of this page and realize I haven't had your back as far as sampling what you're in for with these records.  So I thought, with a week passed between posts and these records sneaking up on us, that I should probably post up a few tracks.