Thanks to K. Bonami for uploading "Miles Away" and "Cheated Hearts" from last night's YYY's freebie on Government Center. More photos over here.

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.

All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola.

If you've got to have bands play in the sun -- and that's how it goes at the Best Music Poll -- then OK Go are a great fit. Upbeat tempos. Creative, thought-provoking lyrics. You know: good times. They were infectuous, and the audience (a mix of young and old) seemed to be catching their fever.

From top: Charlatans UK, Aberdeen City, Aberdeen City, Nada Surf. All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola.

(Second in a series of reports from last night's Phoenix/FNX Best Music Poll blowout on Lansdowne Street.)

The Charlatans haven’t really had the chance to jump the shark — not here, and not in the UK, where their songs never managed to plug into their homeland's gigantic hype machine.

All photos (c) Carina Mastrocola

(First in a series of shitloads of photos and maybe even some words from last night's Phoenix/FNX Best Music Poll party.)

Brit Pop and Pop Punk don't have a lot in common, and Charlatans UK and The Academy Is... didn't get any closer by playing on the same street during last night's Best Msic Poll extravaganza.

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."

Once a year we pause -- in mid-spring, so you don't get it twisted with Pazz and Jop or anything -- and take a look back at the last 12 months of music. Then we get all American Idol and let you vote about it. Thing is, the Phoenix's Best Music Poll ballots are designed to cut across literally dozens of factional Boston music tribes, so if you only read the Noise and drink at the Abbey, or if you only post on the Honeypump board and go to Great Scott, you likely look at the ballot and go, "Well, fuck, I've never even HEARD of half these bands!"

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.

Last spring, when future FNX New England Product host Dave Virr wanted to celebrate the 6th anniversary of his "British Accents" show, he got members of the Halogens and Baby Strange together for a one-off, just-for-fun project: an Oasis tribute band called, appropriately enough, Faux-Way-Sis. They killed, but then something even more interesting happened: they all realized their common influences and formed an actual band, the Luxury

Honeypump message-boarders threw a hissy when Protokoll disabled the download function on their MySpace page last week, in advance of the Allston post-punk band's signing a singles deal with an undisclosed UK label. OTD, though, is all about second chances. The Protokoll dudes checked in from SXSW to share the best track from their 2005 EP (take that, MySpace!): morbid frontdude moaning like the second coming of the second coming of Bela Lugosi, while an undertow of lighter-than-Air synths leavens the mood from garish to damn near sweet.

Lawyers, architects, administrators, and family men by day, *AM Stereo pull the ol’ Bruce Banner at night and transform into a drunken, rockin’ Hulk of a band. Once labeled by a friend as “disaster rock,” the band’s sound is a testament to the members’ long-running love affair with the loose, jangly, post-punk, pre-alternative college-radio rock of the 1980s and early ’90s.

MP3 of the Week

LISTEN: UV Protection, "UV Protection Theme" (mp3)

Previously available on the Internet and on tiny plastic discs, the debut album by these avatars of electropop future has finally been re-released on . . . old-fashioned wax? Yup. It still hiccups like Devo scoring Doctor Who with an all-woman cast.