VVM Web Music Editor David Downs calls 2007 the year of rehab. "For LiLo, Britney, Amy, and America as a whole. It'll be remembered as the year we hit rock bottom, and the getting up wasn't going to be easy. Here's how it sounded."

Queens of the Stone Age
Era Vulgaris
"Turning on the Screw"
Because no one rocks harder while still pulling in the girls. This album has at least five epic, shredder songs that kept me awake during several 2 a.m. burns down the pitch-black California Interstate 5 through the Central Valley. This is extreme, inlander music. Butt rock with a heart.

Radiohead
In Rainbows
"House of Cards"

Partly because of the size of their balls, but mostly because the songs are as good as their balls are big. Take the glitchy "15-Step", add the technical "Faust Aurp", throw in the burly "Bodysnatchers", mellow it out with "House of Cards" and you have so much good music, the other songs are just the sweet, shiny coating on the prozac.

See the rest of Downs' picks over at SF Weekly's music blog.

Matt Castille (Muz) drumming up some Mardi Gras exultation.

Costa Mesa resident Matt Castille appeared in the Weekly's 2007 Best Of issue as Best Genius Hermit Musician. Over the weekend, Castille emerged from his lair to bestow upon me his latest sonic creation: eight tracks he recorded solo under the moniker Muz. My weekend became immeasurably more psychedelic during those 35 minutes.

All musicians always say that their newest batch of songs are their “best yet,” but often this exuberance is delusional. Before we put the CD-R in the player, Castille—who also plays in Vas Deferens Organization—observed that these new joints “may be the best thing I've ever done.” As someone who's heard nearly everything he's recorded, I believed that his statement would likely ring true.

We listened to the disc twice. I was thunderstruck by the rich, lurid panoply of brain-scrambling sounds parading across the stereo field. The man had kept this word. These new songs are more tightly composed than the two sprawling pieces on his debut LP (see my review from Alternative Press here) and more memorable and vividly detailed than his second Muz album, Banana in Portuguese.

I'm still trying to process everything going on here. I feel in the sober light of day that I am ill-equipped (i.e., my mind is not sufficiently altered) to do justice to the teeming brilliance on display. All attempts at categorizing dissolve into so much irrelevant semantics. This new Muz release is one of those heavy trips to which you're lucky if you can eke out the occasional “WOW” as it coats your neurons in gaudy rivulets of psychotropic goo. (This album is currently untitled and without a label. Will some idiosyncratic philanthropist/music-industry renegade please release it? Soon? Thanks.)

Influenced by Nurse with Wound's legendary recommendations list of progressive/psychedelic/krautrock/experimental/avant-garde artists, Castille is one of those musicians who absorbs tons of fantastic, rarefied albums and then reconstitutes the base elements of said albums to his own perverse designs (his Vas Deferens Organization band mate Eric Lumbleau is one of the world's foremost collectors; for proof, see his contributions to the invaluable blog Mutant Sounds) . If names like Art Zoyd, Intersystems, Et Cetera, Brave New World and Severed Heads mean nothing to you, don't worry: Muz will still floor you with his extravagantly exotic tone painting and creative (de)arrangements. The only problem is, after you listen to Muz, nearly everything else in the sound spectrum will seem unbearably pedestrian.

Hurry! You immediately have to read OC Weekly freelancer Ned Raggett's review of In Rainbows, which will be running in our print edition next week; we thought you'd want to get an advance peek at what he has to say, as Radiohead's new album is the most important thing in the world this week.

Also, check out my VVM colleague/Riverfront Times music editor Annie Zaleski's late-night first impressions of In Rainbows.

Finally, do yourself a favor and read this wry history of musicians giving away their music... for free by LA Weekly's Randall Roberts.

Radiohead
In Rainbows
(www.radiohead.com)

After engineering the most attention-getting release news in a long while, Radiohead could—almost—be forgiven if the album itself turned out to be less than all that. Thankfully, that's not the case. In Rainbows, the group's seventh full-length, is not as much of a break with its past as Kid A, but neither is it the familiar recapitulation of its malleable sound like Hail to the Thief. Each song stands well on its own and there's plenty of low-key surprises in the mix, from cheering children to sudden rhythm bursts and time shifts.

In some cases the quintet looks to earlier styles—"Bodysnatchers" is a stirring take on the futuristic chug of krautrock legends like Neu!, the band's semi-signature chunky guitar blasts in full effect for the only time on the album, while "Weird Fish/Arpeggi" blends a quieter but no less quick take on that with hints of Philip Glass/Steve Reich minimalism, notes overlapping in a beautiful cascade. Elsewhere they show that this the 21st century rather than the 20th. "15 Step" finds drummer Phil Selway going off on acoustic and electronic beats that could easily have been hitting the charts in recent times (they'll surely be used on mixtapes before the year is out).

In Rainbows' overall feeling, though, is one of contemplative and lyrically direct fragility, with the type of ballads that are stadium-friendly—"House of Cards" being the standout, Thom Yorke's voice echoing over a gentle melody and deep feedback squalls—without feeling like hollow wave-your-lighter demonstrations. "Nude," finally appearing in studio form after years of irregular live appearances, is the kind of late-night-in-the-jazz-bar treat for which the band has always had a fondness, while the bass-heavy lope of the barbed "All I Need" and the glazed beauty of "Reckoner"—perhaps the best tribute to the elegant sound of Talk Talk circa Laughing Stock yet recorded—both succeed wonderfully. Yorke's can't-miss singing is as lovely as ever, as are the many other sonic details the eventual double-CD release will further showcase. But for now, as an immediately enjoyable release that justifies the whirlwind of hype as well as a blueprint of the economic road many musicians may travel in the future, In Rainbows is a quiet triumph.