Stuart, thanks again for hosting last night. Apologize for having to cut out so early (and take three east-enders with me) and for not bringing any information on the music that I brought.

In an attempt to rectify the latter, here's the skinny, all notes courtesy the good folks at 'allmusic.com':

New Ruins - The Sound They Make

Playing dark-hued pop music that strikes a balance between melody-driven pleasure and guitar-fueled malaise, New Ruins started as a two-man recording project featuring Elzie Sexton on vocals, guitars, and keyboards and J. Caleb Means on vocals and guitar. Sexton and Means both grew up in southern Illinois, and became friends in their early teens. Sexton and Means formed a punk rock band together when they were 14, and worked together in a variety of musical projects until they both left town to go to college. Means traveled north and attended film school, while Sexton enrolled in an art college down south; however, the two friends kept in touch, and in addition to getting together to make music during breaks from school, they began sending tapes of works in progress back and forth, collaborating through the mail. After graduating, Sexton and Means both ended up back in Illinois in the Champaign-Urbana area, where Means opened a small recording studio, Boombox Studios. When not busy with clients, Means would work on new music with Sexton, and in 2004 New Ruins were born. After a year in which the duo was strictly a studio project, New Ruins began playing occasional live gigs in the summer of 2005, and before long they added a rhythm section to fill out their sound — bassist Paul Chastain and drummer Roy Ewing. In 2006, New Ruins began recording their first full album, The Sound They Make, which was released by Hidden Agenda Records in the spring of 2007.

The Comas - Spills

The Comas formed in Chapel Hill, NC, in March 1998 as a joke country band, as a sort of counterweight to the hyped No Depression movement. Soon, however, both the "joke" and the "country" parts of the concept were eliminated, and they developed into a quirky alternative rock band. Their respectable 1999 debut effort, Wave to Make Friends, is sleepy but not lethargic indie pop with just-off-kilter male-female vocal harmonies, courtesy of co-founders (and only constant members) Andrew Herod and Nicole Gehweiler, billed by their own label as "stoner pop." Their instrumental canvas is larger and more eclectic than that of the typical indie group, using violin, organ, and creative non-rap samples in addition to the usual guitars and rhythm section. Adam Price of the Mayflies USA plays organ; the disc was engineered and co-mixed by Michael Holland of Jennyanykind. In fall 2000, the Comas issued Def Needle in Tomorrow, and they returned four years later with Conductor. The Comas signed with Vagrant in December 2005, and the band, who at this point consisted of, besides Herod and Gehweiler (both of whom also played guitar), keyboardist Matt Sumrow, bassist Jason Caperton, and drummer Nic Gonzales, released Spells in the spring of 2007.

Radio Citizen - Berlin Serengeti

"Jazzy" is almost as overused a word in club-based music as "downtempo," in part because the former is harder to pin down. Is a record jazzy because it uses horns? Because it sounds like it's sampled classic Blue Note records? Or is it just the hushed, atmospheric production draping it all? Since jazz tends to be about process as much as result, it's a misleading phrase, but sometimes a putatively downtempo act evokes the stuff well enough to make you forgive the pretense, like the Cinematic Orchestra or, more recently, Berlin 10-piece Radio Citizen. Led by multi-instrumentalist (he's credited with alto sax, regular and bass clarinet, percussion, keyboards, flute and more) and producer Niko Schabel, Radio Citizen is less a big band than a fleshed-out version of a rare-groove DJ's dream group. While there are another pair of horn players in addition to Schabel (baritone saxophonist Ian Ensslen and sax and flute player Wolfi Schlick), the low end is where Berlin Serengeti's deepest charms lie. The grooves, led by double bassists Klaus Janek and Marcel Jung, are brawny and sure-footed, especially when drummer Julian Waiblinger gets frisky: check his dynamically accented snare rolls all over "Voices" and "Black Forest," while the album's highlight, "Night II," gets most of its muscle from busy open toms and cymbal work. On six of these 16 tracks, a vocalist named Bajka takes center stage — she's reminiscent of funk-era jazz singers like Marlena Shaw, appealing in a strident, Afro-futurist sort of way. But even when she's on the mic, your attention is drawn to the rich sounds that ground her and send her aloft. (courtesy: emusic.com).

Super weekend all!