It's just a compilation of 7"s, comp tracks, and B-sides. It's a CD I'd never buy, but then again eight of the seventeen tracks on the disc are covers and I do love bad covers. Following, I squirm in embarrassed delight over the band's cover of New Order's Regret, not to mention what they do to Motley Crue. Aside from the sketchy (at best) covers and some out-takes appropriately relegated to b-sides, it was nice to hear the songs from the first 7" again (why I never picked up one or fifty of them when I lived in Kansas City will haunt me forever – I could have retired off of them).

No wonder I hadn't gotten then new Matt Pond PA from Polyvinyl, the band jumped ship to Altitude. A few weeks ago I got the Winter Songs filler EP and was marginally entertained by the covers (particularly their hit upon Lindsey Buckingham's Holiday Road), but this is actually the album I was hoping to have gotten there. Emblems is twelve solid indie pop songs of the well-arranged chamber-pop persuasion. These are more lush than my only other reference point, 2002's The Nature of Maps, but still light and bouncy with the right balance of acoustic and electric instruments. The production is great, and for once a Matt Pond PA release isn't relegated to background music.

I'm supposed to like this band. I know that. I've seen the band live. I've taken photos of them. I like DCFC songs when people put them on mix CDs for me. And when I search my iTunes it appears I even own a Death Cab album, but all of that aside, I've never gotten behind this band the way my peers have. Aside from the opening track, The New Year, I'm afraid that this album turns into background music for me pretty damn quickly. Should I keep trying or give up at this point?

Jeremy Enigk led Sunny Day Real Estate then left because God told him to. Later God told him to return to the band to compile a discography CD. Okay so that's freaky, but I had heard some solo stuff on a comp of some sort and so when I saw this in Cory's CD wallet, a ripping I went. This CD is heavenly. It’s the perfect blending of otherworldly The Black Heart Procession-styled arrangements and atmospheres, with direct Nick Drake-esque lifting pop. Added bonus: Enigk's anguished screams put Conor Oberst's to shame. Why didn't someone make me listen to this sooner?

A long time ago Wheat wrote a song called Summer. It remains one of my top thirty or so songs of all time. I saw them live right before this new album came out, and while they didn't play Summer, they did play a catchy ditty called I Met a Girl. Well that song is on here, as well as thirteen other similar songs. While I like the album, I do feel a little dirty about it. Everything is just so polished and planned and calculated. It's like I'm listening to Toad The Wet Sprocket, Matthew Penn, Matthew Sweet or whomever is the currently alternapop band that has my mom scurrying to the library to find. It's a fine album, and that lead off track is great, but maybe it's just a bit too glossy for me.

See Death Cab for Cutie above. While Modest Mouse is much more angular and aggressive than DCFC, I've embraced them both with equal amounts of disinterest. While The Moon and Antarctica never becomes background music (there are jarring compositions sprinkled throughout the album to ensure there is no dozing), the album doesn't seem to contain many of the brilliantly enticing bits that often end up on mix tapes/cds given to me.

I booked Brandtson at a club a million years ago and they were very nice guys. I mean they're happy little Midwestern Christians on Deep Elm so you know they have to be polite. I also remembered that they were pretty good at what they did. That's why I nabbed this – to see if my recollections were correct. They weren't. Well kinda. By 2000 the band had lost most of its heaviness and dark material and this is pretty standard emo-pop fair for the MTV2 generation. The aptly titled Trying to Figure Each Other Out is merely "fine" with a only few bright spots (the screeching guitar that comes into Bricks and Windows for example) but it's unlikely I'll revisit this EP.

It's obvious why Stuart David left Belle & Sebastian to concentrate on Looper: this was a band with a future, where Belle and Sebastian was just a band with a past. I'm not sure why I never owned this record, as it's really a gem of downtempo beats, wonderful spoken narratives, vocal samples, and bouncing bits of melody provided by flute, classic synths, electric pianos, melodicas, horns or whatever seemed to be handy. It's jazzy, it's funky, its poppy, and, now, all mine.

If the admission that I nabbed The Get Up Kids was damaging to my cred, this is worse: I've never owned any Slowdive. In fact, unless Slowdive were played between bands at a club, I don't think I've ever even heard Slowdive. To make it worse, I have name-dropped them. Yep. I will be going to hipster hell. The good news is I knew exactly what this sounded like. And the next late night that I need wonderfully thick and swirling chill out music, and I can't find my copy of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, I'll put this on. Maybe that's not fair, but I've always thought the superstars of this genre are interchangeable. Whether Slowdive, My Bloody Valentine, Lush, Swervedriver, Cocteau Twins, The Jesus and Mary Chain, or Pale Saints, they all serve the same need. So Souvlaki is nothing more than just another great shoegazing album in my iTunes.