Jesse Malin, Queens-based singer/songwriter has a new album out, “Love It To Life,” and a new band, The St. Marks Social, by his side, just in time for a UK Tour beginning December 2. The new record’s single, “Burning the Bowery” embodies Malin’s classic rock roots, power chord-driven modulations, uplifting nature, and the Southern rock-twangs of his vocals. Standout track, “Disco Ghetto” is danceable and far from rundown. Joining Jesse Malin and his band on the tour across the pond will be A Million Years. These four Brooklynites’ debut full-length album, “Mischief Maker,” caught Jesse Malin’s ear with their tense harmonies, crisp guitars, and flowing vocals. Notable tracks include bubbly “By Yourself,” sultry “Suspicious,” and explosive “California Smile.” Jesse Malin and The St. Marks Social, and A Million Years play off each other gracefully, and the two will certainly leave the UK with a great impression of New York music. www.jessemalin.com www.myspace.com/amillionyearsmusic – Meijin Bruttomesso

Lo-Fi for choice well before the music became lo-fi with the advent of mp3s, under the pen name East River Pipe, F.M. Cornog has made six albums, all recorded and mixed entirely on a cheap multi-track mini-studio, with a bare minimum of outboard gear. These biting, ruminative micro-masterpieces, reminiscent of the more introspective works of Pavement and Robyn Hitchcock, have won Cornog much critical praise, but never fame and fortune. He has painted his America as a neon-lit wasteland filled with deluded losers, cheats, junkies, ultra-capitalist businessmen, freeway-roaming dreamers, and the tragically fated. "We Live in Rented Rooms", the new album scheduled for release in February 2011, continues Cornog’s journey into America’s dark-lands. It is a world that he has documented in minuscule detail since he first started recording in the early nineties, and one that he knows far too well. As a younger man, Cornog’s appetite for self-destruction was Dionysian. Alcohol, depression, and drugs landed him in the Hoboken train station, until Barbara Powers heard some of his songs, took him in, and provided him with the TASCAM mini-studio that would prove to be his new drug of choice.

In late September, Hurricane Bells released the Down Comes The Rain EP. Schiltz (also longtime front man for Longwave) wrote, recorded, played, and produced the EP entirely himself, this time with backing vocals from Hurricane Bells touring mainstay Ashen Keilyn (of Scout). Hurricane Bells are currently on the road in support of KT Tunstall through December 1st, when they will wrap up the tour with a hometown show at Terminal 5 in New York, NY. The band currently has a bunch of contests happening, including one offering a free pair of tickets to each show daily via Twitter and their Facebook page.

Like baseball and hot dogs or Hulk Hogan and steroids, some things are meant for each other. Brooklyn party rappers Das Racist and alt-hopper Homeboy Sandman prove their pairing is as natural as Texas and tacos on the jovial “I’m Up on That”, a three minute romp of free associative word play over jazzy production. “So Wesley Willis, but we’ll kill it on the charts,” quips Sandman, a comparison more apt than it sounds. Like prime Ghostface “I’m Up on That” manages to channel abstract imagery into a meaningful recording that even a casual listener can appreciate. Check out the song here. – Nick Haycock

Das Racist – Homeboy Sandman