Also this issue: The Sound and Di Furia Photon Band art scholar hears colors, sees sound. -Brian Howard Heller High Water A Philly expat talks about the end of Philadelphia as he knows it. -A.D. Amorosi Fads Will Tear Us Apart NYC's Interpol swims against the next wave. -John Vettese Marianne Nowottny -Patrick Rapa Aimee Mann -Nicole Pensiero Kool Keith -Elisa Ludwig Hail Social -Hillary Rea Har Mar Superstar -Brian Howard

December 5-11, 2002

musicpicks

Ours

Frontman Jimmy Gnecco has the tortured esprit of Jeff Buckley, and his band plays like a distant, disappointed Psychedelic Furs. They cover Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" and the Velvets' "Femme Fatale." Why doesn't everyone love Ours like I do? It's better this way. Before MTV and E!, people had to slowly discover artists like Ours and its precious Jersey-native crooner. Hardly avant or oblique, their initial CD, 2000's Distorted Lullabies, is a powerhouse of propulsive operatic rock with a La Boheme-mix of emotions -- ranging from tiny tendernesses to ranting rages unto which Gnecco renders his verdict of a voice. Despite its grandeur, Lullabies went unnoticed. The new CD, Precious (Dreamworks), is smaller in sound, a tight, compact take on Lullabies-like moody epics, with a spiked urgency that's evident from the bitchiness of "Kill The Band." Gnecco still holds quiet neuroses close to his vocal vest (the David Sylvian-like "Outside"), easily erupting at a moment's notice into sandblasting screams ("Broken") and banshee howls (the athletic octave jumps of "Red Colored Stars"), all without losing the grace of elegant, elegiac crooning.

Fri., Dec. 6, 9 p.m., $25, with The Wallflowers, The TLA, 334 South St., 215-336-2000.

—A.D. Amorosi