• 10 Ft Ganja Plant - Presents. This is old-school reggae/dub... but it's not Bob Marley - your aunt won't be singing along while she sips her margarita. This is mostly instrumental, and where there are lyrics, they're often incidental and buried in the mix. This is late night, get a buzz on music (as maybe the group's name implies?), and I like it. ∅∅∅
• Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian - Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian. I've been playing the hell out of this - I love it. It's introspective, detailed, instrumental guitar/bass/drums jazz. Very accessible, but still very interesting. The kind of thing that makes a guitar player choose between getting better or giving up forever. ∅∅∅∅∅
• Bill Frisell - Have A Little Faith. This starts off with a version of Aaron Copland's "Billy The Kid" ballet, and since I'm not crazy about Copland, this section falls flat for me. But the other half is a bunch of contemporary tunes that I like a lot better. Frisell is such an great guitar player that he even makes a 10 minute version of Madonna's "Live To Tell" interesting. Don Byron's in the band on this one, and gives the songs a bit of an edge now and then. ∅∅∅
• Floratone - Floratone. Another Bill Frisell project. This one immediately reminded me of the band Califone, enough to make me wonder if "Floratone" is actually a play on "Califone". Here's the band's description of their sound:
  

  The Floratone sound is, in the words of Townsend, “futuristic roots music,” at turns jazz-vibed, swamp-funky, intensely rocking, ambiently grooved. The music drips with grit, lopes with a sweet lyricism, bursts with surprising turns, sinks in with FX’d beauty.

  That's pretty much how I'd describe Califone's "King Heron Blues". ∅∅∅

• John Scofield - This Meets That. Another giant of jazz guitar. But while Frisell's vibe (on the records above, at least) is mostly intimate and atmospheric, Scofield is electric and funky. Most of the songs on this are rocking and extroverted, with horns and deep grooves; a couple of slower songs here (including a duo with Frisell) and there balance it out. ∅∅∅
• Adrian Belew - Side 4. This is a live recording of the tour that I gushed over, back in August. And, happily, it's every bit as good as the show I saw - I wasn't just imagining it. They make a mighty sound for a trio: Belew's guitar filling up every bit of space between Julie Slick's thundering bass and Eric Slick's amazing drumming; and Belew's vocals sound great. The song choice is perfect for the lineup - lots of heavy, fast, tricky rocking things, no acoustic stuff or ballads - and they rock the hell out of them all. I listen to this, I listen to that record from Battles, I wonder why Belew isn't an indie rock superstar. ∅∅∅∅∅
• Kevin Drew - Spirit If... . Drew's part of the nucleus of Broken Social Scene, so it's no accident that this sounds pretty much like a BSS record. It's got that same twisted orchestra-pop sound, the same lyrical flavor as BSS, and the title says "Broken Social Scene Presents: Kevin Drew". So, I just pretend it's a BSS record that iTunes mislabeled. Good stuff, either way. Highlight song: "TBTF" (Too Beautiful to Fuck). ∅∅∅
• Andrew Bird's Bowl Of Fire - Oh! The Grandeur. This is an early one, before his turn towards indie-pop. It's him in a small combo (drums, guitar, violin, banjo?, bass), doing songs that sound like 20's- and 30's-style small-group swing jazz (he did play with the Squirrel But Zippers for a while, after all); the recording even has that compressed in-your-face feel of an old 78, but without the scratches and pops. Bird's lyrics are as sardonic as ever, and you can hear bits of melody and structure in these songs that point to where he was going to go with his subsequent records. But, it sticks so much to that old-school vibe that for me, it's more of a curiosity than something I'd recommend to someone who's new to Bird. I still like it, though. ∅∅∅∅

And, a hat tip to Apostropher for putting songs from Frisell, Scofield and 10ft Ganja Plant on that mix, way back when.