In my five years of covering the hip-hop scene here, this is truly the most severe dilemma that I've ever faced. Click the group name for my recent Boston Phoenix features on these acts, and click the venue name for ticket info...

M.O.P. at the Middle East

or...

Anti-Pop Consortium at Great Scott

We’ve been so busy wrapping our heads around the new Deerhunter album, which leaked about two months ago (and is still not out till late October), we almost forgot how much we liked Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel (Kranky), the gauzy debut full-length from Deerhunter frontman Bradford Cox’s solo project ATLAS SOUND, which came out way back in February.

No, Phoenix circulation manager Mike Awesome isn't gay for Cute Is What We Aim For. But he did serve time as their roadie, which is why we're now able to satiate the dreams of 16-year-old girls everywhere by providing these up-close-and-personal shots of the band taken on stage, backstage, and on the bus, taken over the weekend at their sold-out show at Middle East downstairs. 20 more shots after the jump >>>

If we had a Best Music Poll category for most-improved, Mike Fiore's FACES ON FILM would've had another notch in their belt, not to mention a pretty-much unimpeded cakewalk to the victory. As it is, he's up for best local singer-songwriter, for which we apologize because we didn't know quite where else to put 'em.

The last time we tried to shoot Viva Viva, we made an ill-fated foray into infrared photography. This time, with the addition of actual lights, you may even be able to make out more than a Sasquatch-like outline. Which is good, because we love these dudes. Forget that VV grew out of two of our favorite early-00s bands -- the Lot Six and Officer May -- or that they've got this awesome Mutt-and-Jeff thing going on.

DOWNLOAD: Hooray for Earth, "Warm Out" (mp3)

Hooray for Earth: odd band. Get 'em drunk, and they're liable to belt out a Justin Timberlake hit, or maybe one of Jacko's. Left on his own, their singer has been known to crank out Magnetic Fields covers. In their own right, HFE have carved out a unique niche that's equal parts indie breadth and metal brawn, like a second coming of Queens of the Stone Age.

Sure, it was only two songs. (Turns out they had a third ready to go, but decided against it. What, the applause wasn't loud enough? "Exactly," said Chris Brokaw.) But since this was the first time Come have performed since their 2 1/2-hour farewell gig at the MidEast's downstairs room back in -- what, 1998? -- well, this was pretty fucking rad.

Hard to believe it's been ten years since Aaron Turner started Isis -- and eight years since we wrote this. Back then, Aaron was still at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, his LP sleeves were redefining the aesthetics of metal, Isis had released all of one EP (on Escape Artist, a label then-Relapse publicist Gordon Conrad had formed specifically to put out the Isis demo), and Hydrahead was home to Cave In and Converge.

Damon & Naomi are calling their current tour “The Roaring Silence Revue,” a reference to the combination of their own subdued-but-steely folk sound and the deep-bass noise-rock of their tourmates, Japanese trio Boris. D&N are working their new Within These Walls (20/20/20), and even though their first CD after the breakup of Galaxie 500 was called More Sad Hits, this might be the saddest yet, inspired, they say, by a year of digging into Frank Sinatra and the weepiest albums of his that they could find — Only the Lonely and No One Cares

Damon & Naomi are calling their current tour “The Roaring Silence Revue,” a reference to the combination of their own subdued-but-steely folk sound and the deep-bass noise-rock of their tourmates, Japanese trio Boris. D&N are working their new Within These Walls (20/20/20), and even though their first CD after the breakup of Galaxie 500 was called More Sad Hits, this might be the saddest yet, inspired, they say, by a year of digging into Frank Sinatra and the weepiest albums of his that they could find — Only the Lonely and No One Cares

New suits, new ’staches, new songs — same old vaudevillian showmanship, same old mathematically precise eardrum molestation. At a sweaty, stinky, crushd-tin-box (sorry, we still have Radiohead on the brain) Middle East downstairs last night the Hives lived up to Howlin’ Pelle’s ridiculous tongue-in-cheek third-person boasts — as they always do, even if the shtick starts to wear thin somewhere around two-thirds of the way in.

Rumors have been circulating for a couple of years about the ska-core-est band of all time getting back together. And last week the chatter picked up again, although the band played it pretty close to the belt. Offending speculative message board posts were deleted. Everyone kept their mouths shut ... which is not an easy thing for Dicky Barrett to do, mind you.

Pet Genius: “Top 5 Songs Alluding to Bodily Functions”

1_ The Minutemen, “The Roar of the Masses Could Be Farts”

2_ Bad Brains, “Pay To Cum”

3_ The Replacements, “Gary's Got a Boner”

4_ The Melvins, “Up the Dumper”

5_ Stone Temple Pilots, “Wet My Bed”