A Music Feature that will hopefully relieve the consistent boredom of a cubicle-based existence.

Greetings! I see you have successfully made it through 2003 and are on your way to completing the first portion of 2004. Congratulations are due for paying bills, putting up with assholes on the freeways, and generally keeping those spirits up. We here at Kronski.com appreciate your humdrum existence and seek to reward you with a list of current musical selections which have made us spin around with glee.

1. The discovery of The Drive By Truckers. By now most everyone I know has heard me rave about this band from Athens, GA by way of Alabama. These guys simply play the most intelligent, passionate, literate, gutsy music every to take on the description of ‘Southern Rock’. This is music with a passion for pointing out ‘The Duality of the Southern Thing’. With three songwriters, three guitarists and years of touring together underneath their belts, these guys are bar none our favorite band pick of 2004. Start out with their latest opus ‘Decoration Day’ and move on to the double album ‘Southern Rock Opera’.

2. The proliferation of young bands debuting albums that sound frightfully similar, yet are refreshing to the over 30 set. Each week it seems to bring a group of youngsters with album in toe waiting to be discovered. A lot of these promising youngsters have one word band names, confusing styles with the garage rock revolution. Do not be fooled, many of these bands are talented, if a little misguided. Examples include Franz Ferdinand, The Veils , and The Walkmen, (2nd album, Bows and Arrows expands on their debut, from ex members of Jonathan Fire Eater)

3. Discovering one of the best albums of 1974 in 2004. Neil Young’s ‘On the Beach’ languished in vinyl purgatory for all these years. That is until late last year when Reprise decided to finally release this unheralded classic on CD. Recorded after the drunken masterpiece ‘Tonight’s the Night’, Young retreated into his head for 8 tracks of sprawling solitude. Dark, haunting blues numbers stretch on and out, providing many jaw-dropping moments. A haunting, fractured look at personal pain.

4. Box Set Mania with Scott Walker and The Cure. I’ve always loved the cure. Ever since I was ceiling gazing moped out 16 year old I’ve been able to find such tragic beauty and irony in so many of Robert Smith’s songs. It’s a testament to the consistency of output that even across four discs of outtakes almost half of them resonate with me now at age 31. Even though all of the material on ‘Join the Dots’ is enjoyable, It’s the first and third discs, featuring B sides of their earlier material and ‘Disintegration’ that warrant repeat visits.

One of the reasons for Scott Walker’s relatively low profile in the US is a lack of an appropriate anthology. The five disc import only anthology ‘Five Easy Pieces’, seeks to remedy that and serves as a “all you need” compendium of all of his essential material. Save for a few glaring omissions (The Walker Brothers lone hit, “The Sun Aint Gonna shine anymore”) the set offers such an exhaustive collection of material ranging from his four out-of-print solo releases to the better songs performed with The Walker Brothers that puts most of Walker’s essential material in one place.