LOST TRACKS Good CDs We Overlooked Last Year

This time out, Lake Trout eschews the eclecticism of its previous release, instead channeling the likes of Radiohead and Mogwai -- to fine effect. (Palm/rx Records)

NOT THEM, YOU

Lake Trout

"It's not the game that I thought it would be," Woody Ranere sings on "Riddle," and he could be speaking for Lake Trout's fans, a long-suffering lot who've watched the group morph from a jam band with hip influences to an alternative rock band with a secret patchouli-scented past.

But such fungibility is par for most bands from Baltimore, which has never really bestowed a definitive sound or attitude on its musical ambassadors. So it's not entirely weird that Lake Trout looked to British groups such as Radiohead and Mogwai on this follow-up to 2002's "Another One Lost," which was a nexus of Flaming Lips-style weirdness, indie-rock sensibility and epic dance-music flourishes.

This time around, Lake Trout has dialed back the everything-we-love-all-at-once aesthetic in favor of relatively straightforward tunes, with the only cost being that Mike Lowry's rangy drumming sounds cramped by the strictures of three-minute songs. Ranere's similarity to Radiohead's Thom Yorke as a singer can get a little old, but the group's ability to change from a rock band into an orchestra at the drop of a breakbeat more than compensates.

Lake Trout really shimmers when Ranere steps away from the microphone: Delicate instrumentals like the title track swell and ebb, suggesting that those long-ago days when the group appeared on a Phish tribute record weren't for naught.

-- Andrew Beaujon

LIVE FROM IRAQ

Various Artists

Made in Iraq by five U.S. Army soldiers understandably angry at the world, "Live From Iraq" lays out a gritty, no-hope reality that's as much news from the streets as anything by Public Enemy, N.W.A., Tupac Shakur or the Game. The bandleader is Sgt. Neal Saunders, or "Big Neal," of Killeen, Tex., whose point of view is hardly pro-war but can be summed up in this lyric, from "Testament From a Soldier": "We do more than kill in your name, we slaughter 'em -- so every day you can hug your son and daughter again."

"Live From Iraq" can be hard to listen to, frankly, opening with what sounds like an old soul singer being strangled in the distance, then shifting from incomprehensibly slow to incomprehensibly fast. None of the five rappers has any interest in snappy pop or comic relief. They relentlessly trash politicians and protesters -- and sharpen their teeth for soldier-name-dropping hitmakers like Destiny's Child. "I've seen soldiers firsthand," they rap. "It's not what y'all selling me."

For low-ranked soldiers who had to pull strings to ship studio equipment to Camp War Eagle in Baghdad, the CD is shockingly polished and musically diverse -- the flute loop underneath "The Anthem," the R&B chorus in "Dirty" and the piano riff in "Reality Check" undercut the starkness of the lyrics. These 15 songs will never become hits -- they're available only via mail order from http://4th25.com/ -- but "Live From Iraq" may well survive as a travelogue of a crucial time and place that most Americans have never experienced.

-- Steve Knopper