If television’s most glamorous teen drama, “The OC,” should instill anything clever into the minds of its viewers, it is to trust the musical taste of indie rock-loving character Seth Cohen.

It took one episode of “The OC” to shoot Death Cab for Cutie up and out of the underground music tunnel. The band even decided to leave the smaller Barsuk Records for Atlantic. It may have been a risky move, but it didn’t seem to have a negative effect on the outcome of the band’s latest release, “Plans.”

Death Cab’s signature acoustic guitar and piano-driven ballads, along with its slow-building and intimate melodies, are all intact. What is noticeably different, however, is the reoccurring theme of death. “I Will Follow You Into the Dark” captures front man Ben Gibbard with his guard down as he makes a lifelong promise to a soulmate, while in “What Sarah Said,” he watches a loved one slip away. The piano-laced softness of the track is calming, even when Gibbard is singing of hospital rooms that “reeked of piss and 409.”

Although many of the tracks rely on solemn images and slow-moving melodies, Death Cab has it perfected. The album’s more upbeat tracks, such as “Soul Meets Body,” lack the intricacy the others deliver. If “The OC” is smart, it’ll incorporate “Plans” into its upcoming episodes. The melodrama is, after all, the perfect background to the agonizing struggles of Orange County’s most beautiful people.

-Katie Piepel

June hits the ground running with its debut album, “If You Speak Any Faster.”

Catchy riffs, fast beats and a twin-vocal attack combine to make yet another decent pop-punk album.

This disc could easily be tossed into the pile of soundalike emo bands, but for fans of the genre, June could be delivering exactly what those fans love to hear. For everyone else, there isn’t much originality here.

June’s songs sound far too much like everything else. Most of the songs are about breakups of the past and feature tight rhythms and honest, yet often whiny, vocals.

June shows signs of following in the footsteps of many Victory Records bands like Hawthorne Heights and Taking Back Sunday. June has already established quite a following, and it has received a warm reception among emo kids. That is quite an accomplishment considering the band has only been together a few years.

For a debut album, “If You Speak Any Faster” shows great promise. It just lacks the originality to make it appeal to anyone other than fans of the genre.

– Dan McClanahan

Lorene Drive is helping make wearing track jackets and girl jeans, and playing nu-metal riffs with a blend of screaming and singing seem like the most fabulous thing since Herbie the Love Bug.

Lorene Drive’s lyrics are undeniably emo, but the delivery and the heavy-metal guitar riffs make up for it. There seems to be an abundance of string bends and complicated notes throughout the album from both of the band’s axmen.

These aren’t just normal three-and-a-half-minute verse-chorus-verse songs that anyone could learn, regardless of how much musical talent they possess.

The music starts and stops and changes tempos and time signatures fast enough to keep everyone paying attention.

Lorene Drive’s strongest point is the drumming. Kris Comeax relentlessly and confidently pounds his drums and never misses a time change or cymbal crash. Comeaux’s ability to switch from playing fast to playing in half-time and go right back without missing a beat is admirable and will get some respect from people who don’t even play drums or listen to emo-punk-metal.

The guys from Lorene Drive sound like they are actually having fun just rocking out. They don’t give the impression that they are just wasting time trying to be clever or make their music fit in with a certain genre or social scene. Every song is absolutely solid, musically and rhythmically.

– Dan Hopper

Pelican “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw” (Hydrahead)

Compare to: Isis, Neurosis, Mastodon

Imagine being present at the dawn of evolution. Witnessing the simplest forms of life crawling out of the sea, gradually developing into lumbering behemoths and, just as gradually, wasting away into a nothing, only so other creatures can develop and assert their dominance. This is the feeling one gets when listening to the second album from Chicago-based instrumental quartet Pelican, “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw.”

Over the course of the album, the band’s lengthy compositions develop in such a fashion that a listener’s brain can’t help but drift off into images of nature at its most primal level. Tracks such as “Autumn into Summer” and “March to the Sea” truly evoke what their titles suggest – the changing of seasons or the delicate balance between between life on land and the sometimes tranquil, sometimes turbulent oceans, all without the benefit of vocals or lyrics.

On “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw,” Pelican excels at painting breathtaking vistas with music, as to recreate the ebb and flow of vast bodies of water, the slow crawl of frozen glaciers or the thunderous stride of enormous beasts. Bridging the gap between the heaviness of doom metal and the atmospherics of indie rock, Pelican’s sound doesn’t just present listeners with a musical environment – it completely immerses them in it. With “The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw,” Pelican has taken the next step in the evolution of heavy music.

-Joshua Haun

Green Day “Dookie” (Reprise)

Original Release Date: Feb. 1, 1994

Of, arguably, three of the most influential punk-rock albums that would be released in 1994, Green Day’s “Dookie” might stand out as the best. Although Rancid’s “Let’s Go” and The Offspring’s “Smash” were both rocking tape decks worldwide, there is something about the San Francisco Bay Area’s power-pop trio that puts it above the rest.

After a few, now-legendary indie releases, Green Day’s major label debut “Dookie” was the album that saw the band reach platinum heights and a whole wave of converted fans playing air guitar in front of their bedroom mirrors.

Songs like “Basket Case,” “Longview” and “When I Come Around” became – and have remained – some of the most crucial anthems for dead-end suburban kids everywhere.

It was just aggressive enough to turn the parents off but safe enough to let the kids listen to it; it was raw enough to retain some credibility but catchy enough to incite giant sing-a-longs and prolonged headbangs.

From the opening chords of “Burnout” to the end of the hilariously unsettling bonus track “I Was Alone,” the band captured the feelings of the generational youth and delivered vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong’s tongue-in-cheek cynicism and the band’s Ramones-influenced punk rock.

This is one of those pop-punk albums that’s OK to like, and one that will be treasured for decades to come.

– Dante Sacomani