Photo: Rita Lombardi.

Bonkers party snaps by Mike McKay at Brilliant Mistake.

MSTRKFT
October 12 at Paper/Bill's Bar

For those of you who thought Paper was faded permanently into early-2006, MSTRKRFT (or at least a recognizable fraction thereof) descended on Landsdowne Street to restore the night to its glory-days program of sell-out crowd and stellar atmosphere.

No downloads yet from Stephen "Cave In" Brodsky's solo/band album The Octave Museum -- which HydraHead, at least, is treating as an album title, not a band name -- but songs are streaming at their MySpace page. It's the best thing he's done since Static Intellect, which never came out so we don't know why we keep bringing it up, except that it's real good.

In case the Elle spread didn't change your mind about the midget, maybe you'll take our word for it: Mac Big Digits reviewed the Streets gig for the fishwrap, and we'll add our two cents to his opinion. She was pretty good, completely endearing, fucking adorable.

In lieu of the leaked track from a couple weeks back, she played a new song we still haven't tracked down yet.

Photos: 1-6, Dashboard Confessional at City Hall Plaza (c) K. Bonami, except Carrabba (c) Byron Smith
Photos: 7-10, Paper/Excuse at Bill's, (c) Matt Teuten

Loose ends from last Thursday's emostravaganza, with the free FNX/Snapple-abbetted Dashboard gig on Government Center, followed closely by the afterparty: the debut of the Phoenix's monthly Excuse shindig at Bill's, in this case hosted by the girls and boys of Paper.

Top: She's the Car. Bottom: Therefore I Am

DOWNLOAD: Therefore I Am, “I Get Nervous In Cars” (mp3)
DOWNLOAD: She’s the Car, “Vibeke” (mp3)

We take an interest in scenes of all flavors, and right now the one that’s got the most juice in Boston is the teenpunk underground that’s grown up around venues like the ICC Church and bands like Vanna and the Receiving End of Sirens.

Photo by Mike Byrne

DOWNLOAD: The Blue Bloods, "Dying Day"

Vintage Boston street-punk is alive and well . . . in Belgium, of all places, where the I Scream label has been snapping up local faves from Slapshot and the Ducky Boys to Darkbuster and blue-collar hardcore dudes the Blue Bloods. Name-dropped by Rancid, they've come back from a lengthy self-imposed hiatus to see their 2004 album Death of a Salesman get a belated US release, and they're playing their first show in over a year on Friday at Bill's Bar as part of the New England Product/ThePhoenix.

DOWNLOAD: Hooray for Earth, "Simple Plan" (mp3)

The band formerly known as Raymond makes a huge leap forward: new name, dirty-as-shit guitars, bubbletechno synths, and anthemic moping. Quite possibly the missing link between Magnetic Fields and Andrew W.K., though left to their own devices, they call it something completely different: "Blur, Nirvana, and Enya breaking things at a video arcade in hell."

Tickets to this thing go on sale this Thursday. Watch this space for pre-sale links.

Now let's talk about the Best Music Poll ballot for a second. For reasons that are lost to history, the one category where OTD really holds an sway in the nominations are in the metal categories. And so first of all, we'd like to apologize to Doomriders, who made the local metal album of the year (perhaps the national metal album of the year), and did not get nominated for a damn thing in this year's BMP.

The latest denizens of Boston's powerbook-pop underground to join the mysterious Compound 440r collective, the Westward Trail are not without precedent in these parts. Their pre-owned synthpop tones play nicely with We Are Cassette, and in a budget crunch they could probably go halfsies on a guitar player with Mobius Band or Certainly, Sir.

We refuse to believe anything published today, anywhere. Which means we're not convinced that Ben Sisto is killing off Honeypump (and its board), although there's a press release to that effect up now. The fact that we're all throwing a show tonight called "Second Chances" does not mean that we have any inside-baseball on whether he's serious or not.