After retiring from professional punk rock in 1998 to fulfill his life-long dream of joining Boston’s fire department, ex-Dropkick Murphys frontman Michael McColgan put together Street Dogs in 2002 to help him vent his creative urges. Now with the band is set to release their fourth album, State of Grace, McColgan has had to take a leave of absence from the BFD in order to keep up with the demand for Street Dogs live dates (they’re playing all summer on the Warped Tour).

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It’s almost impossible to not love a record this ambitious, an album that offers strange new worlds of discovery from first note to last. On first listen, it’s self-evident that Montreal’s Islands bring something unique to the table.

Having crafty string players in the band definitely helps, but Islands’ true strength lies in the quirky yet accomplished songwriting of Nick Thornburn. Case in point: it took several listens caught up in the beauty of “Pieces of You” before I began to suspect it might have less to do with fragmented memories and more to do with human remains.

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Last October, Toronto hardcore stalwarts Fucked Up held a three day celebration of righteous volume at Sneaky Dees, Kathedral and the Horseshoe. I know it’s a little late to report about it now, except for the fact that a DVD has just been released documenting all three nights.

Unlike live punk videos from days of yore, which were usually feaured one shaky camera angle and barely distinguishable audio, the Fucked Up Weekend DVD was shot with multiple time-synced camcorders, and the sound was recorded directly from the mixing boards, giving the finished product an ironically almost professional quality.

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Brooklyn’s Y-Love is a bit of an anomaly in contemporary hip-hop circles; a devout and studious Hassidic Jew, he mixes his gritty socio-political commentary with scripture and prophecy, which he delivers in Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic and Latin as well as English.

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Reading between the lines of All Music Guide’s review of Bridges and Powerlines self-titled debut EP, you might get the impression that the New York indie band is destined to become the next big radio-friendly rock band á la The Killers. Fortunately for those with discerning musical palates, B&P don’t deliver on that implied promise with their follow-up full length, Ghost Types, and you won’t be forced to endure any ham-fisted attempts at wordplay like “I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier” listening to the eleven well-crafted tunes on this record.

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I’m hoping that one day we can all look back on Millencolin’s new disc, Machine 15, as a transition record, the album where the Swedish pop-punk band really came into its own with a sly mix of punk rock attitude and mid-60s pop sensibility.

Simply stating that “Detox” is the standout track on the record is overstating the obvious to say the least. With it’s nods to the British Invasion sounds of yesteryear, it’s easily the most sophisticated bit of songcraft to come from these guys yet. Emphasis on yet. I’m really hoping for more of this in the future.

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For some reason, I find myself strangly drawn to scruffy looking singers in old timey hats recently, so I guess Freddie Stevenson couldn’t have picked a better time to release All My Strange Companions, the London-based Scottish-American’s second album.

Then again, it’s hard not to sit up and take notice of a record that opens with a couplet like “J.K. Rowling’s been following me around/I’ve even thought of moving to another town.”

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It’s been a long road for Toronto’s Easy Way Out. They started out as an instrumental rock trio that couldn’t find a reliable vocalist, only to suddenly find they had two.

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Last summer, the members of Toronto’s Bellevue decided to do something constructive with a long weekend; they hauled ass to a cabin on the north shore of Lake Huron and spent three solid days recording the tracks that would become The Road to Recovery. The band’s sophomoric effort follows up 2007’s Lost in Space with a solid dozen hook-laden guitar-oriented pop tunes centred around Brent Hough’s distinctive baritone.

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Asian-American hip-hop dynamo Lyrics Born is dropping a new full length this week, and if you need something to shake your rump to you could do a whole lot worse.

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