September 2006 AstroPOP! is brought to you with musical reviews by Chris Estey.

Virgo (August 23 - September 22)
Virgo's danger lies in romance (not to mention a lifetime romanticizing danger). In hot months, Virgo may need a sweet warning from a night-clubbing angel of mercy, someone who's been hurt but not broken enough to let others slip away into the darkness. Seattle low-key favorites Transmissionary Six tour the international circuit, having hit over sixteen different countries, making fans all over the world. Yet songs like "Radar" and "Top Of Your Lungs" on their latest album Radar seem as intimate to the listener as a starkly confessional letter from a passionate ex-lover. Terri Moeller's coffee-goddess vocals and Paul Austin and Jon Hyde's tastefully weird multi-instrumentation are gaining the band a local following on KEXP. The guest appearances by Downpilot's Paul Hiraga and producer Tucker Martine (Long Winters, Decemberists) help sweeten the pot of sultry noir-folk neo-soul, and Scott Colburn helps Martine soak the textures so they glisten like black rain on silk. As Rolling Stone, Harp, and the Portland Mercury have all noted, this is subtle but astonishing work, and fans of bands like the Handsome Family, Neko Case, and the Cowboy Junkies will find it effortless to enjoy. {listen to "Radar"}

End of summer beverage for Virgo: An iced mocha with a bit of cinnamon.

Libra (September 23 - October 23)
Libra can ascend from the ashes in a way that makes one think of recaptured innocence. Innocence and experience are two sides of the same coin for Libra, who loses neither when a gamble is made. Like William Blake's own 'Songs of Innocence and Experience' the band Gosling fill their debut full-length Here Is... with a generous amount of spiritual and fleshy psychodramas, madly played to the rafters with carnival abandon. There is a literary yet uniquely experiential wisdom in vocalist-guitarist Davey Ingersoll's lyrics, beneath the cabaret-crash-arena rock swarming around his stories of power-mad narcissists and people transformed by faith in the trenches (on the songs "Mr. Skeleton Wings" and "Afraid of Nineveh," respectively). Drummer Isaac Carpenter — who sounds like the health-food heir to Keith Moon and Mark Watrous — dances from maniacal keyboard trills to chunk-fuzz 70s hard rock riffs, leaving Ingersoll to emote the best old school album since Night At The Opera or Quadrophenia. Seriously. Along with The Black Angels' Passover, The Long Winters' Putting the Days to Bed, and the new Transmissionary Six record (just fawned over above), Gosling's debut convinces that the rock full-length is far from dead as an art form. {listen to "Mr. Skeleton Wings"}

End of summer beverage for Libra: Gosling members hail from the Tri-Cities, WA, the perfect place to write odes to a real teenage wasteland. So you'd better make it a 7-11 purchased six-pack of Mickey's Big Mouth.

Scorpio (October 24 - November 21)
Speaking of wastelands, Scorpio can find herself in an emotional one during the final weeks of summer, when the high temperatures drag on and routine in the city has no relief. Thus, Scorpio might want to hop in the car with an affectingly heartsick troubadour like Damien Jurado and hit areas like "Hoquiam" or "Montesano." Doing so on his new record And Now That I'm In Your Shadow, Jurado travels through his past, both physically and in time, crafting creative non-fiction about lives not entirely his own but not necessarily distant from him either. "Shannon Rhodes," for example, actually was a sweet stoner chick he really knew in middle school. This might be Jurado's best album ever, as it opens with lines like, "Was I nothing but a landslide in your mine?" and never lets up in its emotional rancor. Chief collaborator Eric Fisher blows notes into smoke rings around the widows and orphans standing naked through all the chilly chapters of this collection. The album bio is right: Discussions of great songwriters have been lacking Jurado's name for far too long. And Now That I'm In Your Shadow has a perfectly tethered balance of strength and elegance he has never achieved in his song-portraits before, and though "Hoquiam" kipes a little from "Masters of War" in its vocal melody, it's not hard to imagine Dylan being envious of the result. {listen to "Hoquiam"}

End of summer beverage for Scorpio: A warm near-beer snuggled into a sobering AA meeting.

Sagittarius (November 22 - December 21)
Sagittarius might slide into a vortex of madness in late summer, thinking everything's cool when it's actually verging on breakdown. Every Move A Picture is a four-piece San Fran band that's all about the out-of-control mechanical will squishing to bits the fragile human spirit. Heart=Weapon is their momentum-setting debut, recorded long after Nic Harcourt had them sputter and burn on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic." The BBC's Zane Lowe has been playing their indie EP breakthrough song "Signs Of Life" in the U.K. as they hit the festival circuit there and toured with The Futureheads and Stellastar, among others. A Duran Duran guitar riff here in "Mission Bell," a Cure bass line there in the ultra-strong, should-be-a-hit "Chemical Burns," and a shuffling New Romantic drumbeat throughout carries it from 20 years ago to the clubs of today. If that club rocks the grebo warpaint off by the end of the night, that is. And a Scorpio could lose a little of that. {listen to "Chemical Burns"}

End of summer beverage for Sagittarius:New Coke with Vanilla Vodka, slowly stirred in.

Capricorn (December 22 - January 19)
Those born in this month's span are blessed with the duality of power and love. A Capricorn can heal the broken hearts of her friends or smash the heads of her enemies. The gentle fuzzy pop-dystopian maelstrom of ditties like "Downhill Chaser" and "Arcade Days" on the debut self-titled album from Umber Sleeping show this existential choice, the way that early Ultravox bridged joyful glam rock with dimming post-punk electronics. Similar to The Elephants, but replacing that band's endearing psychedelic excess with a soft bedroom gauze, Tacoma's Umber Sleeping have really learned how to use their vintage synthesizers, willing to strike mnemonic chords of delight in "Double Image" whilst bringing the mechanical drumbeats up in the mix on ready-made remixes like "Cameras and Tubas." {listen to "Arcade Days"}

End of summer beverage for Capricorn: Cherry Kool-Aid Ice Cubes.

Aquarius (January 20 - February 18)
Like the oceans in time, Aquarius the water sign can actually wait for good things, even as the darkness settles around. Aquarius knows it's a cycle, and the tides will bring back what is deep and real. Such is Mesojunarian, the long-awaited album from Mike Dumovich, which opens on a strange natural re-arrangement of "Amazing Grace" in the luscious "Wasps of Rain," settling on the psyche like a prickly hallucination. This is plucked mosaic shibboleth blues, where you're willing to follow the weathered vocalist's story anywhere, delighted by each shuffle of twilight imagery and montage of dreams and wilderness. Dumovich has almost unbearable confidence, really seducing the listener into the labyrinth of his storytelling. His visions however more abstract, are no less sensual. When his voice rises to a pine two minutes into the excellent "Satisfying Burn" he seems capable of delivering any emotion, before the song coyly orgasms into a bed of sound from guest violists Eyvind and Anne Marie. {listen to "Satisfying Burn"}

End of summer beverage for Aquarius: A big jar of iced tea with half a lime — and a whole pint of dark rum in it.

Pisces (February 19 - March 20)
Pants Yell! are not too loud, more shambolic and sweet, like Pisces can be in the romance department. (So be careful, Pisces. Other hearts may be taking things more seriously than you are.) Coming from Boston, a place notorious for muggy heat by September, the album Recent Drama is Pants Yell!'s attempt to chill-out the stressed-out with incandescent charm and sunny pop songs to stumble around in. Not to say that "Easy Way To Be Cruel" and "You Want Trouble" don't address adult concerns, but the snappy celebration of play is all over these puppy-cute basement tapes, reminiscent of classic cuddle-snuggle albums like And Don't The Kids Just Love It or your favorite Flying Nun release. The question is, as they ask in "Don't Take It," "Is the job well done?" — which they answer, "Guess we're too young." I would disagree with that, but leave the opinion to the twee experts. {listen to "It's Been Done"}

End of summer beverage for Pisces: Lemonade in the backyard. No intoxicants.

Aries (March 21 - April 19)
Aries can get mixed up in the occult pretty easily: The way a voice can mesmerize, the look in the eye of someone who can teach you something. This is not a bad impulse, as it leads one out of the structured existence and into the realm of mystery, even as one is improving on the physical plane. Be aware of your own desire to be transfixed, Aries, and it might teach you something as we near the moon's pull in autumn. Such submission to hypnotism is easy with a band like Persil, particularly on their new album Comfort Noise. The music is straight-ahead drum machine-driven techno-pop with nice little bits of guitar and keyboard splashes, but it all rests on the sultry charm of vocalist Martine. As with the rapid fire percussion bursts on "Arkadelphia" beneath the gritty garage guitar attest, anything can happen in this electronic mix, but whatever it is always grabs your ear, and the Amsterdam band proves again and again why John Peel had them in for a couple of sessions. They wowed them at SXSW when they played the festival in 2004; one can envision history repeating whenever they choose to return stateside. {listen to "Arkadelphia"}

End of summer beverage for Aries: Tequila martini, stirred in ice then poured into a chilled glass.

Taurus (April 20 - May 20)
Summer is a time for ripe and randy possibilities for you, Taurus, and your lips long to taste all the berries of experience before you. It's a sensual world, as Kate Bush once sang, and the heart can be fanatical about the passion that's behind it. Get Yr Blood Sucked Out, the new album by Viva Voce , sets up perfect cosmic psyche-pop gospel girl blues-rock. This is pretty music with teeth, a demented Go-Go dancer in white snakeskin boots, confidently strutting off on any adventure she whims, like halfway through "When Planets Collide," throwing in a fresh fist-pumping movement at the end. Vocalist and guitarist Anita Robinson and her husband drummer Kevin moved from Muscle Shoals, AL, to Portland, OR, just a while back, and the vampires both psychic and real are detailed with angelic melodies and a keen poetic eye. For fans of everyone from Redd Kross to the Monkees to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, there isn't a note or phrase here a pop or rock fan couldn't enjoy, even when playfully atonal or lyrically oblique. It's not just a rapturous blend of intoxicating influences and subversively-potent imagery that makes Get Yr Blood Sucked Out so irresistible, it's the expert way it all comes together. From languid sprawls as "Drown Them Out" and feedback-soaked bass-driven shockers as "So Many Miles" right next to each other, this album becomes a trip you never want to end. {listen to "From the Devil Himself"}

End of summer beverage for Taurus: Cherry Kool-Aid Ice Cubes. With LSD.

Gemini (May 21 - June 21)
Gemini is looking for meaning as he tries to hide behind the mask of the Other; but as Professor Zizek says, there's a short circuit in the brain that keeps the true artist from becoming an instrument of torture. And what did Christ mean by that fourth line on the cross anyways: Is God just playing a nasty prank on us? In other words, the real world is more beautiful and terrible than anything that can be mythologized. Gemini may need to wake up to that, and give a listen to the hard-line cautionary prophecy of The Thermals' new album The Body The Blood The Machine. Vocalist and guitarist Hutch Harris instructs and froths and questions clearly about birth-into-sin and faux salvation and "wearing your best suit, the one they're going to bury you in." Produced by Fugazi's Brendan Canti at Supernatural Sound Studios in Oregon City, this Portland band seems like they're possessed by something, a mission perhaps, backing the incendiary lyrics with prickly, cranky, full-on rock music with great pop melodies. It's as if John Darnell went hard rock and was raised Pentecostal. That the whole album sounds like one vicious rant against "a dirty God" that creates these "dirty bodies" is meant as a compliment. Concept albums rarely have this much power, and this one doesn't bother with anything beyond the foolishness and power of belief. No metaphors about deaf, dumb, and blind boys are necessary to make this brutal broadside highly recommended. {listen to "Pillar of Salt"}

End of summer beverage for Gemini: Communion wine stolen from the altar. Cancer (June 22 - July 22)
The doggedness of spirit sometimes makes Cancerians hard to bear. But it's the aching feeling of loneliness and dissatisfaction that drives artists like DJ KRUSH to make so many percussion-driven symphonic hip-hop masterworks, which stack up on Stepping Stones: The Self-Remixed Best. Not afraid to mine a rhythm into the center of your being, or feature rhymes spoken and sung in his own native Japanese as well as other languages, KRUSH shows the only true tongue in hip-hop is the patois of beat and soul mingling. If you've heard a ton about this workaholic mix-a-lot and wondered where to start, well, this double disc of ghost dawg dramatics should get you on the matte, broken into separate discs of "Lyricism" and "Soundscapes." This generous and stark collection of urban downtempo hits the prolific high points throughout KRUSH's amazing career, featuring the piquant and empyrean flow of Black Thought, Zap Mama, Ken Shima, and about a dozen others. For those who may already have the brunt of this on vinyl or CD, you actually ain't heard nothing yet, as DJ KRUSH slices it together fresh for ya. {listen to "Zen Approach"}

End of summer beverage for Cancer: Man, that just sounds nasty!

Leo (July 23 - August 22)
There are two things that a Leo is all about: Love for family, and compulsive working. This can be a wonderful if frazzling cycle that occasionally invites divine interruption. Seattle-based Kevin Emerson has interrupted his (divine) work as drummer with Math & Physics Club to front the boundary-breaking creative soft rock of Central Services, who release their debut, self-titled LP this month. The record is chock full of dulcet melodies and high-quality songwriting and performing, and only further authenticates the current hipster Yacht Rock craze. It's sweetly refreshing in all the right ways, and a perfect way to help you ease out of the work-a-hol-ism, if even for only an hour. Incidently, those work-crazy imaginary girls will present the Central Services CD release show at Chop Suey on Sept 7th, with Parks and Recreation, Patience Please, and Jace and Hannah. Do help us end the summer with a roar, Leos... {listen to "4 Letter Word"}

End of summer beverage for Leos: Yes, you like Pina Coladas. And getting caught in the rain.