Music in Brief

Similar problems plague Centuries Before Love And War, the debut from Stars Of Track And Field, which gets the big, Snow Patrol-y latter-day Britpop sound down pat (though Stars hails from Portland) but doesn't really do anything novel with it. And if any sound needs a twist to be interesting, it's Britpop. "Movies Of Antartica" is probably blasting out of an Urban Outfitters dressing-room speaker right now… B-

Australia's Love Of Diagrams has a familiar ring, too. Its 21st-century post-punk sound—all crisp rhythms, insistent bass, neurotic vocals, and guitars that start off high and bright, then fade into distortion—is a few years too late to sound entirely fresh, but the group's self-titled, Matador-released EP confirms that freshness doesn't always matter. The four tracks here bode well for the full-length to come… B+

Two kinds of retro come into play on 8-Bit Operators: The Music Of Kraftwerk Performed On Vintage 8-Bit Video Game Systems (Astralwerks), which taps into a surprisingly vibrant bitpop scene for a tribute to Kraftwerk's venerable electronic performers. The only trouble: Most of the musicians here are so good at simulating Kraftwerk that it's too easy to forget the primitive instruments they're working with. The most compelling tracks let familiar video-game sounds slip into the mix, but there aren't enough of those. Still, for novelty value alone, it gets a B.