Geoff Westen’s album, “Music For My Friends”, thumps onto the scene like a dropped box of heavy disco balls – all shiny potential energy and the slight threat of chaos. It aims for that classic pop song euphoria, the kind designed to rattle car speakers and fuel late-night dance floors, an "aural assault" as Westen puts it. And it does pulse with energy, a...

There are songs that sound like a place, and then there’s Neil Potter’s "Música El Idioma Del Amor," which sounds like a specific time of day in a specific place you’ve never been. It’s a curious creation, a sonic postcard from a parallel-universe Seville where the flamenco guitarist and the local rock progressive have decided to build something new on a foundation of pure...