If you asked most people in this town to name the best act ever to come out of Buffalo, they’d most likely name the Goo Goo Dolls or Ani DiFranco. However, if you asked someone who is actually in a band, they’d be much more apt to mention Mark Norris and Girlpope. After years of stellar live shows and a few fine CDs (most notably 1997’s rock-solid Whole Scene Going), in 2004 the band members went their separate ways. Norris, Artvoice’s former managing editor, was the band’s prime mover but has kept a relatively low profile in the last couple years, occasionally playing acoustic sets and infrequent electric shows with his new project, the versatile Backpeddlers. This period of woodshedding was apparently a good thing, as it has resulted in the last great album of 2006, local or otherwise, Stranded Between Stations. It is a record full of regret, failure, recrimination and self-doubt, though it is not a “bummer” record. With the exception of the bouncy “Battleship,” nothing on this disc sounds anything like the pop-punk of Girlpope. Not to diminish the legacy of that fine band, but the emotional and textural growth in Norris’ songwriting is a welcome addition, and the Backpeddlers have emerged as a distinct, fully formed unit rather than the sum of their many influences. There is a thread of hope, albeit a slender one, that runs throughout the album, with attendant flashes of optimism and redemption. Mark Norris and the Backpeddlers celebrate the release of Stranded Between Stations along with Tracy Morrow and the Magi Chippi and DJ Donny Shaft.

Anybody with a penchant for indie rock will be happy to hear about the Tralf Music Hall’s show tonight, both for the line-up as well as the fact that the show will be the first in the venue’s “Indie Rock Thursdays” concert series. This new series, which will feature predominantly local acts, kicks off with Pilot Speed (formerly Pilate), a critically acclaimed Toronto band poised to break into the American music scene. Named “Best Unsigned Band” at Canada’s 2002 North-by-Northeast music conference and nominated for numerous other awards, Pilot Speed is hot off their September 2006 release of Into the West (Wind Up Records), and ready to rock. Also playing are the Missing Planes, La Cacahouette, Love Parade and Lemuria, all of which are local bands also quickly gaining critical acclaim of their own. Next week (Thursday, December 28) brings performances by London vs. New York, Swath and more.

Come get a taste of Buffalo’s underground electronic/rock/experimental pop scene at the Buffalo UnderSound! concert. Sure to be unconventional and exciting, the concert features music by GreggreG, Cages, Jack Topht & the Vegetables and perhaps some special guests. GreggreG & Friends mix sounds and samples, sometimes for hours on end, and do so by using a drum machine, vocalish chants, keyboards, and tone modules. The solo project Cages focuses on losing/pushing boundaries but brings the sound together by incorporating an obsession with tapes, field recordings, pipe dreams and vocals as musical glue. And to sort of combine those two worlds comes Jack Topht & the Vegetables. The Vegetables is a punk outfit in the form of one woman named Lindsey Lemberski (pictured), who produces keyboard bass lines with her right hand as she kicks snare combos with the rest of her limbs. Jack Topht improvises and builds on whatevershe throws his way, and what they produce is a stream of cranked-up, free, American rock and roll. This evening of electronic/rock/experimental pop music should certainly open some eyes to the local subterranean music scene.

Artist Jane Hammond’s multiplicitous, mixed-media body of work can hardly be described in a brief synopsis such as this. Her oil paintings, for which she is probably best known, have reportedly sold out at every show she’s had since her first, in 1989. She has since worked in numerous other media, a notable example of which is a sculpture called Fallen, acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in the fall of this year. Fallen, which looks like a collage of autumn leaves, was first displayed in 2005 along with a text that read, “Each unique handmade leaf is inscribed by the artist with the name of a US soldier killed in Iraq. The exhibition begins with 1,511 leaves.” Hammond’s most recent works are photographic, a sampling of which just premiered at the Center for Photography at Woodstock. An exhibition of her black and white, collaged vintage photographs, now visiting the Nina Freudenheim Gallery, hints at autobiography with titles like Mom’s Birthday and Mahdia (Tunisian Men Honor My Mother and Her Poppies). The series is both cheerful and eerily surreal. An artist’s reception on Saturday launches the exhibition, which will remain on view through January 26.