Musical advances warm the heart

Spoon/Alkaline Trio/Massive Attack/F!@#$ed Up. In terms of quality new music releases, the beginning of each year is normally an afterthought, like any line of dialogue that Vin Diesel ever has uttered, but ’10 is off to a bang. Alkaline Trio rebounds from the leaden “Agony & Irony” with “This Addiction,” a stripped down, heart-pounding rager; Spoon continues to do more with less on the lithe, funky “Transference”; Massive Attack’s first new disc in seven years, “Heligoland” is equally brooding and beatific; F!@#$ed Up’s latest, two-disc singles comp of literate, flame spittin’ punk rock, “Couple Tracks,” is hit or miss, but when it connects it’s like a tire iron to the jaw.

KUNV-FM, 91.5. True college radio is about the only thing keeping the airwaves on life support — you get real music fans playing the stuff they love instead of some automaton of a DJ with no input on a pay-for-play playlist, which is what you’ll find at most commercial stations. And while college radio still leaves much to be desired in this city, at least KUNV makes time for programs like Neon Reverb Radio, at 9 p.m. Fridays, where you can get turned on to lots of up-and-coming, independent, left-of-center acts that you won’t hear anywhere else.

702 Skatepark. Has the Vegas all-ages scene finally begun to stabilize a bit? Don’t sneeze, it may all come crashing down, but with the emergence of the 702 Skatepark and The Farm maintaining a very solid booking schedule, there is at least the semblance of a circuit to nurture young local talent. Moreover, 702 is bringing in name acts such as Every Time I Die and The Chariot, bands that could play venues like the House of Blues and have in the past, meaning that the kids are all right. For now.

Vampire Weekend. All we’ve heard for the past six-seven years is how the sky is falling on the record industry and because of thieving downloaders, your favorite musicians will all soon be living in abandoned Maytag boxes, licking discarded Taco Bell wrappers for sustenance. Sure, record sales have declined substantially, but the damage mostly has been done on the major label level, where less than one in 10 artists makes any money from CD sales anyway. But what’s bad for the big boys has proven to be a boon in the independent ranks. How heartening was it to see a true indie act such as Vampire Weekend recently debut atop the Billboard album chart with their sophomore record, with Spoon selling more than 50,000 copies of their latest the following week. So let’s not shed too many tears for the majors. All dinosaurs were meant to die.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.