The set was a healthy combination of old and new. The highlights for me were Teen Dream jams “Used to Be” and “Walk In the Park,” and the [barely] oldies-but-goodies “Gila” and “Heart of Chambers.” In any case, the songs felt a lot bassier and more fitting for the live setting than I remembered. This time around, the crowd was swaying, dancing, and doing everything a seated venue prevents.

Real Estate offer a generous and dreamy set. The songs sound as vibrant as ever. The set consists of all things a Real Estate fan would expect of a live show from the New Jersey band; lulling, beachy, guitar rifts (rendering up love infested, warm summer nights) and endearing vocals from lead singer and guitarist Martin Courtney.

Three songs into The Drums’ sold out Bowery Ballroom set Wednesday night, one female concertgoer behind me observed that watching the band on stage “[is] like an anthropological study.” This, more or less, perfectly sums up these New Wave revivalists. At points you have to wonder if their music has been locked away in a time capsule for years, the band’s members cryogenically frozen until it was determined they should be let out to unleash 80′s pop on a 21st century audience ready to re-embrace the past.

Last night, Baltimore’s Ottobar was host to Deacon’s first set without the rest of the Animal Collective. There was a lot of tension in the air, a lot of anticipation, and a lot of big Charm City names in attendance–from DJ Dog Dick to Dan Deacon. No one was quite sure what to expect from Deacon, who has proven himself to be quite prolific in the past, but released next-to-nothing in the past year. Recently he has gained a lot of publicity, both negative and positive, in his efforts to fund a trip to Mali to play 2010′s Festival in the Desert, an opportunity he wants to use to create a book and a CD that will raise awareness about the beauty of Mali and the need for an end to slavery.

It was a particularly chilly December night as the xx entered the Newbury Comics store on Newbury Street in the Back Bay district of Boston. Once I had gotten past their low key entrance, free of any amount of attitude or entitlement that I had expected from anyone of their status, I waited patiently as the store cleared out. After about twenty minutes of prep, Sim, Croft and Smith made their way back into the cramped corner of the store where they began to rehearse.

Slash: Paper Under the Knife is 3 stories of astounding obsessive-compulsive art that comes from 52 artists, based out of 16 different countries. All the works are made from the seemingly simple act of producing incisions on paper products, or as featured artist Rob Ryan puts it, “Paper cutting is stripped down as much as possible. There is no tone, no variation of color, no pencil mark, no brush strokes.” Despite the constructed simplicity, the works are radically and remarkably different from one another.

Atlas Sound is the name Bradford Cox has used since he started playing music, the band from which his most lauded project was spawned. Logos haunts itself so well that it will make you forget that deer hunting exists. Cox gets some help from Noah Lennox, aka Panda Bear of Animal Collective, and Lætitia Sadier of Stereolab. The pieces blend together and burn like a pit of fire in Cox’s sunken chest.

Real Estate is a band that could bear the brand of “surf,” even though they’re from the Garden State. An aquatic vibe pervades the music. Their lyrics and song titles make a lot of references to beaches, lakes, pools and rivers. Their sound is a necromancer conjuring the slide and pop of The Beach Boys from out of the cosmos. Their vocals swim (and sometimes drown) is an ocean of reverb.