For the French, loving music is not enough; one must embrace it with the codependent disgust of a couple verging on a murder-suicide. The French avant-rock group Ulan Bator clearly loves the pop tradition in this way. Listening to the trio's first...

Tom Waits Mule Variations (Epitaph) The evolutionary hat trick of Tom Waits' transformation from offbeat singer-songwriter to hipster beatnik poet to howlingly dark performance artist took a grueling couple of decades. In the process Waits concoct...

The Make-Up I Want Some (K Records) Exchanging pith for pizzazz, three former members of the clever hard-core-renaissance quintet Nation of Ulysses joined with ex-Frumpies bassist Michelle Mae in 1995 to create the shtick-laden soul of the Make-Up...

Country Teasers Destroy All Human Life (Fat Possum) "Women and children first, then the faggots and the niggers," slurs Ben Wallers, the surly, sleepy-voiced vocalist-guitarist for Edinburgh, Scotland's Country Teasers. "Line them up against the w...