The first three months of 2005 have gone by, so let's assess where the year's new music market is at.

First of all, my two favorite albums of 2005 won't even be released for another month and a half or more. Troubled Hubble's Making Beds in a Burning House is out on May 17, and Motion City Soundtrack's Commit This to Memory follows on June 7. Beyond that, the new LP's from Hot Hot Heat and Gatsby's American Dream are still not officially out until later this month. Those are all great, and I'm sure I'll discuss them at greater length in the coming months.

Bloc Party's debut LP is probably the best thing to hit stores so far this year, and is one of the rare instances of the British rock press getting their hype right. Their singles have been absolutely stellar, but I don't know if they'll be able to make it in America. They're too far away from both Franz Ferdinand and the Killers to ride either's coattails, and their singer doesn't mask his accent, which the colonies tend to look down upon. However, if Hot Hot Heat starts tearing up the rock radio charts, look for these guys to follow.

Speaking of the Killers, apparently they're starting a feud with the Bravery over the latter's supposedly copping of the former's style. I don't know; the Bravery have never struck me as being all that similar to a lounge act, while the Killers, well, they are from Vegas. The Bravery's Smiths + Postal Service + Interpol act may not be the most original thing in the world, but they put a good package together and they write better pop music than the bulk of their competitors, which is all you can really ask.

Just when you find yourself thinking, "Whatever happened to the Chemical Brothers?" they put out a new album, and with this one they correct the mistakes of Come With Us. These guys are the best in the world at creating big-beat rave-ups, and they seem to have finally realized that and quit screwing around with ambient soundscapes and noise. (Illegal remix album, Flip the Switch, also available.)

I seem to be the rare specimen that likes Worlds Apart better than Source Tags & Codes. I find it a lot more listenable and a lot less deliberately obtuse; keep in mind, I'm not much of a Sonic Youth fan, either. This isn't a perfect record by any means, but I found ST&C to be mostly a pile of mush apart from "Relative Ways;" as a listener, I can understand the component parts of Worlds Apart much more readily, and it's a lot more catchy as a result. "Caterwaul," especially, brings together a number of different early and mid-90's styles that I don't recall being joined in such a way in the past.

My primary weakness as a music consumer is for breathy, plaintive, soprano vocals. In order for me to dislike a band with such a vocalist, that band must be at least as crap, on the whole, as Sixpence None the Richer. Eisley, despite apparently being another "Christian band," are not that crap. Room Noises merges the best bits of the Cardigans, the Delgados and Rilo Kiley for a bright but sadly optimistic explosion of bittersweet pop. As with most such "Christian" acts, there doesn't appear to be anything in the music to indicate any particular Christian-ness, which leads me to believe it's probably an attempt by Warner Brothers to sell records to Christians who are afraid of modern popular culture.

Zolof the Rock & Roll Destroyer came out of nowhere to grab my attention last year, and now that attention has been shifted to Cruiserweight's Sweet Weaponry. Sounding a bit like a post-Blink 182 edition of Dance Hall Crashers, they turn in a solid batch of pop-punk tunes that make terrific use of the voice as a melodic instrument to supplement the guitars. Great stuff in a genre where pretty good is an accomplishment these days.