Author: Stephen Deusner

Although they live and work in Brooklyn, Mark Heyner and Josh Kolenik had to get out of the city to record as Small Black. Last year, the duo holed up at Kolenik’s uncle’s house on Long Island, recording a handful of fuzzed-around-the-edges pop songs away from the diversions of the city. More recently, the band, by now a quartet instead of a duo, trekked to the shores of southern Delaware, set up a makeshift studio in a beach-front house, and began recording songs for their full-length debut, tentatively planned for release this fall.

“Brooklyn’s good for us to get things started,” Kolenik says, “but to really think about stuff critically, we can’t have that many distractions. We need a place to get away and have quiet and space to work.”

Small Black’s music reflects both the busy borough and the serene sojourn: The lo-fi songs on their debut EP combine delicate melodies with the subdued clatter of rickety synths and scavenged drum machines, like early-’80s new wave playing on a busted-up radio. They sound at once pastoral and urban, inviting and disarming, dreamy but damaged.

That sound places them squarely in a group of bands that are being lumped together, rightly or not, as “glo-fi” or “chillwave” — two interchangeable labels generated on blogs and arousing the same skepticism as electroclash or hipster metal. So far, it’s less a new musical genre than a permutation of a scene, one defined not by geography, proximity, and the free exchange of ideas but by synchronicity, serendipity, and technology. According to Kolenik, it’s a scene that “exists on the Internet. It’s not in a city, and it’s not connected to any reality, which is weird. Everybody’s pretty far apart. It’s not like we’re playing shows together and bouncing ideas off each other. It’s happening through modems.”

In fact, aside from a small Brooklyn contingent, most of these bands are geographically disparate and initially worked in a bubble: Washed Out hails from Georgia; Picture Plane from Denver; Delorean from Barcelona. Sequestered on Long Island, Small Black recorded with little knowledge that anyone anywhere was doing anything similar with these influences and instruments. “In our first review, we got compared to all these bands, and I had not heard of a single one of them,” Kolenik says. “So we checked them out, and I thought, these bands are really good. I’m fine with this.”

With vocals and instrumental parts that sound live instead of sampled, Small Black come across less like a DJ than a live band, making the most of their limited recording conditions. With its tripping drum-machine beat and gauzy production, “Pleasant Experience” sounds like the soundtrack for John Hughes’ lost mumblecore film, while “Bad Lover” turns its relentless mechanical rhythms and glaring synths into bubblegum industrial. The stand-out track, not just on the EP but in this loose scene, is “Despicable Dogs,” whose opening bass thumps warily form a heartbreak beat for Kolenik’s dreamy chorus.

The EP garnered kudos from Pitchfork, Stereogum, and other Internet outlets — a response the musicians never expected from their self-recorded, self-produced, and self-released debut. In fact, Kolenik and Heyner had formed a small label, CassClub Records, and had taught themselves the ins and outs of manufacturing, publicity, and distribution — all on a very local level. Kolenik says the experience was invaluable: “It was fun to figure it all out. It felt good to do it and not wait around for someone else’s help. We could do it again if we needed.”

They probably won’t need to resort to that, however. Following the success of their EP, Small Black signed with Jagjaguwar, an imprint of the venerable indie label Secretly Canadian and home to such diverse acts as Okkervil River, Bon Iver, and Dinosaur Jr. “In general, they put out great records, and their bands have long careers,” Kolenik says. “They’re not flash-in-the-pan artists, and that’s the kind of label we wanted to be associated with.”

Rather than rush ahead with a proper full-length, Small Black are re-releasing their EP through Jagjaguwar with two new tracks: the relatively upbeat B-side “King of Animals” and the windblown suite “Baby Bird Pt. 2.”

“We really wanted to get a release out quickly with proper PR and proper distribution,” Kolenik says, “so that people could actually buy it.”

As Small Black launch their first nationwide tour and finish up their full-length, these early songs are changing subtly but crucially from the studio to the stage, especially with the addition of longtime friends Juan Pieczanski and Jeff Curtin, who form a tight rhythm section.

“We knew we didn’t want to be a laptop band if we could get away with it, because it’s more interesting to watch a band play a song and get through the parts,” Kolenik says. “Every night we play something, we find a new wrinkle, a new detail, a new sample that fits. We’re definitely itching to play some new stuff, but we’re still very excited about touring on this material.”

And they’re taking all the labels and expectations in stride. “I guess we aspire to be as chill as possible now,” Kolenik says with a laugh.

Exene Cervenka may have been born in Illinois and raised in Florida, but she will always be identified with Los Angeles. That’s where she co-founded X, one of the city’s best and most legendary punk bands, which in the late 1970s and early ’80s took strains of country and rockabilly and revved them.

Theirs was a complex view of the city, eschewing Sunset Strip glitz-rock and Laurel Canyon folk for wrong-side-of-the-tracks punk and portraying L.A. as seedy, hostile, dangerous — with a tension so combustible it was perpetually antagonistic. Generous and heartfelt despite the setting, X’s music has proved so durable that the band is still touring behind its early albums 30 years later.

Until recently, however, Cervenka was only a spiritual presence in Los Angeles. Earlier in the 2000s, she moved to a remote farm in rural Missouri, which may not be the obvious setting for punk’s grand dame, but she wanted to leave L.A. “I wanted to get out to the country and be somewhere beautiful,” she says. “I had a big farmhouse with a barn, all that stuff. It was fun but very isolating.”

The setting proved to be conducive to writing songs and creating art: “I like to create in a vacuum, so for me it was perfect,” Cervenka says. “Other people would have gone crazy.”  

Her sojourn into the Midwest lasted four years, after which Cervenka returned to Los Angeles. “The people here are more important to me than Missouri,” she explains. “As much as I love Missouri and had a really good experience being there, I finally decided to come back.”

That homecoming was part of a year of extreme ups and downs for the singer-songwriter. In October, she released Somewhere Gone, her first solo album in 13 years and her fifth overall. The songs are low-key, mostly acoustic, and genially countrified, like X stripped down to its essential parts. Cervenka’s lyrics convey her isolation, even when she’s singing about traveling, playing, loving, or just living. Some songs are heartbroken (“Why does my everything sleep in someone else’s light?”), others randy and ambiguous (“You do that insane thing to me!”), still others playful and unguarded in their imagery (“Catching raindrops in the parking lot/steam rising from the asphalt”). 

The rambling sound, which often places Cervenka’s vocals over nothing but an acoustic guitar or spare violins, gives the album a spontaneity, as if these were no-pressure demos recorded during a laid-back session. “I didn’t want to make a band record,” she explains. “I wanted to make an intimate, simple, plain folk record, because that’s the way the songs seemed to be translating best.”

Her compositions determine their own fates, Cervenka says. “Songs are like little miracles, because when you’re finished, it’s almost like you’ve given birth to something. It’s an amazing process, but then you have to figure out what to do with these little miracles to make them reach their potential. That’s the tricky part.” 

Ultimately, Somewhere Gone is also an album about inspiration, which is fitting for an artist working in so many media at once. Cervenka is well known for her folk-art-inspired collages and found-art sculptures created from old prints and materials. She likens them to a kind of recycling: “Especially with old photographs and stuff like that,” she says. “People get rid of their family heirlooms in thrift stores or auctions, which is where I find stuff. And I like to give it new life, give it new respect.”

In 2009, she opened two art shows — a solo exhibition titled “Celestial Ash: Assemblages from Los Angeles” at the Craft and Folk Museum in L.A. and a joint exhibition, “We’re Not the Jet Set,” with Wayne White at Western Project in Culver City. She currently has a piece in “Never Can Say Goodbye,” a show organized by New York art collective No Longer Empty and set up in an abandoned Tower Records store on Broadway.  

While the music and the visuals come from similar places, she says, they don’t really intersect: “They replace each other at intervals. I’m so happy that I can do two or three different things, because if I were just doing songs, maybe I would take that ability for granted or not do it as much. But I can go back and forth between two different things, so I never get tired of one.” 

If 2009 was a year of big highs for Cervenka, the big low came in the spring, when she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. That news, she says, was not out of the blue. “I was expecting the diagnosis,” she says, “because I had been sick for a long time with weird things, so I just figured there was something weird wrong with me.”

Nevertheless, it came as a shock to her friends, who she says have been unfailingly supportive and ultimately turned that low into a high.

“It’s going to be a pain in the ass someday, but right now it’s been very positive because I learned a lot about people. I’m getting lots of advice, lots of recommendations, and it feels like the cumulative reward for working all these years, just to know that there are all these people out there. I always knew they were there but didn’t know to what extent they were capable of feeling for a girl in a band.”

I used to be darker, then I got lighter, then I got darker again,”
sings Bill Callahan on “Jim Cain,” the first track on his 13th album,
Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle. A shimmery, downcast
rumination with strings right out of a lost Jimmy Webb hit, the song is
ostensibly about author and fellow Maryland native James M. Cain, who
wrote the noir landmarks Double Indemnity and The Postman
Always Rings Twice but who died alcoholic and unknown.

It’s hard to hear those lines and not think of Callahan’s own rocky
career, and the parallels must be slyly intentional. With an eye for
such tragic ironies as Cain’s ignoble fate, Callahan has written toward
various shades of darkness and light, from pitch black to only slightly
dim.

As always, it’s difficult to determine just where Eagle falls
on that spectrum. Some have alleged that these nine songs document his
break-up with folk singer Joanna Newsom, although Callahan is far too
slippery to write so directly. Instead, he dons a variety of guises and
inhabits a procession of voices, including Cain but mostly more
anonymous characters with only a passing resemblance to himself.

His richly stoical voice evokes the gnaw of regret, failing faith,
and mortal fear, yet he infuses his words with a wry, occasionally
sardonic humor: “I used to be sorta blind, now I can sorta see,”
Callahan sings on “Rococo Zephyr,” and those two qualifying sortas
sting like a self-deprecating punch line.

Eagle is, technically, only the second Bill Callahan album.
He first used his Christian name on 2007’s lackluster Woke Up on a
Whaleheart, after years of recording under a pseudonym. In the late
1980s, Callahan began making very lo-fi, mostly instrumental recordings
as Smog, and the stage name suggested a nebulous and treacherous aspect
to his music, as if there were no boundaries to the darkness he would
eventually sing about.

But the primitive sound quality was not so much an aesthetic choice
as a byproduct of limited circumstances: When he signed to Drag City,
his sound improved as his popularity and budget increased, revealing
driving ambitions. On such albums as The Doctor Came at Dawn in
1996 and Dongs of Sevotion in 2000, he married his songwriterly
compositions and grim observations to subdued electric folk-rock that
seemed to grow out of ’80s and ’90s underground rock.

In 2001, he adjusted his pseudonym slightly, changing Smog to
(Smog), which both bracketed and absented him from his music. The
punctuation lasted only two albums before it was dropped; two albums
after that, Callahan retired Smog altogether and began using his own
name. That might suggest that he has finally lowered the scrim between
himself and his audience, but he remains as elusive as ever on
Eagle, doling out revelations and admission very carefully.

“Last night I thought I felt your touch, gentle and warm,” he sings
on “Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” adding, “The hair stood on my arm.” It sounds
like a straightforward confession, especially with the physical
details, but as the song progresses, Callahan takes on the persona of a
horse that “couldn’t shake my rider down.”

The shift in nomenclature parallels a gradual evolution toward a
folksier sound that might seem to place Callahan squarely in the
Americana movement, and yet he is a man apart, with no real interest in
Neil Young-derived classic rock (like Jason Molina) or in a
history-book vision of America (like Jay Farrar). He has ambitions far
beyond his lo-fi beginnings, and he has little in common with freak
folkies like Devendra Banhart. Callahan’s closest peers might be Will
Oldham (of Palace and Bonnie “Prince” Billy fame), whose music
similarly maps out good and evil, and Mark Kozelek (formerly of Red
House Painters and currently of Sun Kil Moon), who likewise sings in a
variety of voices ranging from the notorious to the unknown.

Recorded in Plano, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, Eagle
incorporates numerous ’70s country elements, most notably the airy
sound courtesy of producer John Congleton and the dramatic string
arrangements by Brian Beattie. The album begins relatively
traditionally, with the melodically direct “Jim Cain” and the catchy
“Eid Ma Clack Shaw,” but it grows odder and itchier as it proceeds.
After a simple intro picked on a pair of acoustic guitars, “My Friend”
repeatedly pledges love and fidelity, but the music grows so tightly
wound that darker currents become visible. It’s one of Callahan’s
prickliest performances.

By the penultimate “Invocation to Ratiocination,” he seems to have
fallen away altogether. The song is nearly three minutes of wordless
female vocalizing over ambient cricket noises, but the title is
telling: It’s a respite before the 10-minute finale “Faith/Void,” which
ponders God, death, and inner peace. “It’s time to put God away,”
Callahan sings repeatedly, not shaking his fist at the heavens but
arguing calmly for “the end of faith” as the guitars spiral like quiet
fireworks.

It’s a fitting culmination to an album that questions faith —
in God, in other people, in music — with every note, and yet it’s
that persistent uncertainty that makes Sometimes I Wish We Were an
Eagle Callahan’s best album in years, possibly ever.

The path from punk-based rock artsiness to acoustic string-band
rootsiness is not as long as it appears. Just as alt-country bands
blended country and punk in the ’90s, the current decade has seen
musicians trade their electric guitars for mandolins and banjos, their
Modest Mouse CDs for Appalachian folk records. The Avett Brothers
— currently at the head of the string-band movement — were
punks before they went Americana and, in some ways, still are. The
members of Chatham County Line were originally Neil Young acolytes, and
the musicians in Hoots & Hellmouth were in studious indie-rock
bands in West Chester, Pennsylvania, before they picked up acoustic
instruments, started stomping on the floorboards, and began writing
lively folk-gospel numbers.

This development heralds a return to pre-rock influences and the
quest for a very different music-making environment, one untouched by
commercial concerns. “This was music before there was a music industry
and before music was considered a product,” says Sean Hoots of his
band’s influences. “These people in the mountains were playing to
express themselves, whether it was a blues or a colorful Irish reel. To
me it all speaks to something much deeper than anything else I’ve
listened to.”

Hoots turned to traditional music partly out of frustration, but the
discovery proved revelatory. He and Andrew “Hellmouth” Gray had spent
years playing in rock bands around West Chester, a college community
outside of Philadelphia, but felt overwhelmed by commercial and
creative disappointments. After their bands split, the two began
playing acoustic open-mic nights, first as separate acts and later as a
duo.

Initially, they never intended to form a permanent band or follow
any particular course — certainly not the one they’re currently
on. “It had humble, non-ambitious beginnings,” Hoots says. “There was
never any attempt to put these songs together, form a band, make a
record, have a manager and a booking agent, go on tour. That was the
last thing we wanted, both of us having come out of bands that were
doing all of that in the rock world. We were both burnt out on pushing
and giving it our all on that front.” Instead, they let the group take
shape casually, recording on their own timetable and signing to MAD
Dragon Records, the student-run label at Temple University in
Philadelphia.

Adding two new members — Rob Berliner on mandolin and Tom
Celfo on bass — Hoots & Hellmouth toured relentlessly,
developing a reputation for sweaty, spirited live shows that showcase
their breakneck arrangements, intricate song structures, and excitable
lyrics. But the band’s defining trait may be the traces of gospel that
inform their sound, most notably in Hoots’ big, blustery
force-of-nature voice, which is part Joe Cocker, part Marjoe Gortner.
It’s hard to imagine such an instrument confined to an indie act, but
it burst forth fully formed on the band’s eponymous full-length debut
in 2007 and sounds even more forceful on their rambunctious follow-up,
The Holy Open Secret.

Despite the band’s considerable experience in the studio,
Secret had a long birthing period. After writing most of the
songs, the band booked time at a Philadelphia studio and recorded most
of the album. Then they went on tour. Playing the new material for live
audiences developed the songs in different ways, such that the band
grew increasingly dissatisfied with the recordings.

“Those songs were utilizing the studio space to create more of an
atmosphere and more of a cinematic soundscape,” Hoots says. “That’s
what we went in thinking we would do, just to be artsy about Americana.
But it ended up that we were favoring the live versions of the songs
that we were doing every night and doing with a lot more gusto and a
bit more raw, ragged vibe.”

So they decided to re-record with Philly producer Bill Moriarty, who
has helmed albums by Dr. Dog, Man Man, and Josh Ritter.

“We wanted to keep an eye on keeping things representative of the
live show, because that’s what our reputation has become,” Hoots says.
“We’ve played these songs so many times prior to recording this time
around, and I think we all had that ingrained sense of how they came
off live. We just tapped into that and rode with it.”

The result is a well-rounded album that intersperses rowdy rave-ups
such as “You and All of Us” and “Known for Possession” with quieter,
more delicate numbers such as “Ne’er Do Well” and “Three Penny Charm.”
However, just as they are mastering this particular style, Hoots &
Hellmouth plan to expand on it on their next record, to move forward
with perhaps a greater sense of mission.

“The people we all admire are the ones who have defined their own
path album to album,” Hoots says. “There’s absolutely no preconception
that we are a bluegrass or a folk band or even an acoustic band. I
think the next step for us is going to be away from that but still
maintaining the spirit and the overall idea of who we are.”

In the late 1980s, a teenage Will Oldham moved from Kentucky to Los
Angeles to start an acting career, and he landed a series of small
roles, most notably as a preacher in John Sayles’ Matewan and as
“Chip” in a television movie about Jessica McClure. After growing
disillusioned with the film industry, he eventually switched to music,
recording his first album as Palace Brothers in 1993. Since then, his
music — a liberal take on American traditions — has grown
more ambitious and refined, even as his screen names have changed
repeatedly. As if trying out new roles, he also has recorded under
iterations of the Palace name, then made a few releases under his own
name, and finally settled on Bonnie “Prince” Billy.

Yet, Oldham’s film aspirations have proved subtly crucial to his
songs, not because his music has any kind of cinematic sweep but
because he comes across as an actor deeply invested in the dramatic and
narrative potential of his songs. He sings in character, seemingly
avoiding overt autobiography in his lyrics, and that sense of
role-playing has prevented him from being fully embraced by the
alt-country crowd, which tends to prize identifiable authenticity.

 Today, Oldham continues to appear infrequently in films,
including Old Joy, Junebug, and, strangely enough, R. Kelly’s
Trapped in the Closet. And yet, if he is an actor musically,
Oldham is also an auteur possessed of a very specific narrative flair
and beholden to no particular scene or school. His tales of existential
woe and redemption, set against a musical backdrop that treats folk and
rock as avant-garde styles, take place in a world separated into
extremes of good and evil.

On his most celebrated album, 1999’s I See a Darkness, Oldham
details the lure of transgression and sin; 10 years later, he (or, more
correctly, his character) seems to have pulled himself out of that
despair on 2008’s hauntingly, cautiously joyful Lie Down in the
Light, which celebrates the simple pleasures of kind-hearted women
and loyal friends. There are few gray areas or ambiguities in the world
Oldham has created, only the differences between ideals and
actions.

 As his themes have developed, so has Oldham’s music, which
advances a peculiar amalgam of Appalachian folk, old-time country, pop,
rock, jazz, and blues. Other artists have explored these genre
territories contemporaneously with Oldham, yet few have done so as
doggedly. Like Prince or Guided By Voices’ Robert Pollard, Oldham
doesn’t let industry trends hinder his prolific output: He puts out a
full-length every year or so, interspersed with a steady stream of EPs,
collaborations, and live releases.

These one-off excursions — the gleaming old Nashville sound of
Sings Greatest Palace Music, the murky reimaginings of his
covers album with Tortoise, the tortured duets with Matt Sweeney, the
avant-loneliness of his work with Scandinavian producer Valgeir
Sigurðsson — may seem like digressions, but each release
expands the scope of his music and each subsequent release considers
those lessons anew.

 In this regard, this year’s Beware — which is his
seventh album as Bonnie “Prince” Billy and his 12th overall —
sounds like both a musical and thematic sequel to Lie Down,
another installment in the implied ongoing narrative of his catalog.
After writing these songs as artist-in-residence at Marin Headlands
National Seashore, Oldham recorded Beware with the touring band
he formed for Lie Down.

They specialize in a shambling, folksy sound that is as rustic as a
kudzu-covered trestle, yet never quaint or nostalgic. Longtime cohort
Emmett Kelly’s guitar lends these songs a spiky texture, but it’s
Jennifer Hutt’s violin that stands out, slow-dancing through “I Won’t
Ask Again” and stepping a bit livelier on the rollicking “You Don’t
Love Me.” On the opening “Beware Your Only Friend” and “Life’s Work,”
she and Azita Youssefi sing backup like the voices in Oldham’s
head.

 Like Lie Down, Beware benefits from every avenue Oldham
has previously explored, and as a pair these albums use that expanded
palette to paint a more complex moral chiaroscuro. The extremes of
light and darkness don’t simply inform these songs but define them;
lying down in the light, his character still sees a darkness. As such,
every happy scene is threatened by some lurking danger. As Oldham sings
on “Death Final”: “Summer has me holding baby high in the air/Oblivious
the pack of dogs go running over there.” What begins as a casually
joyous event — playing with your child outdoors — becomes
fraught with peril and the need for rescue.

 “I take this load on,” Oldham sings on “Life’s Work,” over
scratchy guitar and a saxophone that rises zombie-like out of the mix.
“It is my life’s work to bring you into the light from out the
dark.”

There is no crossroads, no single moment when you make a choice to
live a good or a sinful life. In his world, it is a constant struggle,
which makes the character’s life particularly difficult but makes
Oldham’s long career particularly fascinating.

Bonnie “Prince” Billy

Minglewood Hall

Tuesday, June 9th

Doors open at 7 p.m.; tickets are $15 in advance,

$18 day of show

Of Montreal

Throughout this decade, Athens, Georgia’s Of Montreal has
transmogrified from a mere indie-pop band into a kind of
all-encompassing brand. Music has become but one aspect — the
driving one, but still — of a much larger multimedia project, a
development that reached a culmination with last year’s Skeletal
Lamping, the group’s 11th album in as many years.

That’s no sell-out accusation but a simple acknowledgement that, as
Of Montreal’s guiding presence, Kevin Barnes has become not simply an
accomplished musician but a canny businessman: the indie world’s
Barnum. He shows a distinct understanding of the importance of growing
the Of Montreal brand so that it never becomes stale or predictable,
while ensuring that it continues to represent certain reliable core
commodities: superlatively hyperactive pop, outrageously pansexual
lyrics, increasingly extravagant stage shows, and artfully elaborate
packaging.

Of Montreal unleashed Skeletal Lamping in many forms. There
were, of course, CD and LP versions, with intricate die-cut packaging,
making them ownable artworks. Then there was the album as tote bag,
paper lantern, wall decals — everyday objects designed by Barnes’
wife and brother and sold with download codes. Rather than simply
buying intangible computer files, listeners bought tactile products
that became physical manifestations of the music. Of Montreal’s aim was
to transcend the music-listening experience to occupy a slightly more
central role in listeners’ lives. They could read by the light of Of
Montreal, carry stuff in Of Montreal, and even stare at Of Montreal on
their walls.

This aspect of Of Montreal is as crucial as it is playful. It allows
the band to move beyond the declining CD Age. As labels and acts
struggle to figure out how to make money and remain relevant and as
music becomes more digital and less physical, Barnes & Co. are
ensuring their music retains as much physicality as ever, just in new
and more functional forms. While the album as object d’art probably
won’t become the pervasive business model, it remains an ambitious
undertaking by a group determined to shape its own destiny.

Extending beyond album packaging, the Of Montreal brand encompasses
outrageous live shows. The group always has been a traveling carnival,
mounting ever more elaborate shows with each tour. In the past, Barnes
entered the stage via an enormous giraffe vagina, and he notoriously
stripped nude for one set in Las Vegas. The Skeletal Lamping
tour, however, may be their most extravagant to date: The group created
an enormous diorama in which performance artists play out abstract
psychodramas while the band jams and Barnes vamps. With this
stage-within-a-stage, Of Montreal are turning the traditional rock show
inside out, adding layers of meta-postmodernism and guerrilla-theater
spectacle while first and foremost giving audiences an entertaining
experience.

Of course, Of Montreal’s branding endeavor has been and will be
successful only insofar as the music behind the objects and the tours
can sell itself. The group’s uniquely haywire pop typically is at the
very least interesting, its quasi-psychedelic passages jostling with
Princely falsetto come-ons, Zombies hooks, glam stomps, electronic
beats, and kitchen-sink production. Barnes writes and records the
albums himself, with little to no input from the other members of the
group, and he has become more exacting and eccentric over the past few
years. On 2007’s career-making Hissing Fauna, Are You the
Destroyer?, most of which he recorded in Norway during the months
leading up to the birth of his daughter, Barnes mused on marital
problems, prescription drugs, and his own geographic and emotional
isolation — all rare glimpses into his personal life and even
rarer stabs at relatively straightforward song structures.

By contrast, Skeletal Lamping (whose title comes from a
Hissing Fauna song) sounds initially scattershot and
aggressively shapeshifting. It’s modular music, each track constructed
from many different fitted parts. Songs move mercurially, changing
fluidly and abruptly among unrelated passages. The catchiest passages
typically play only once, declining to repeat as a traditional hook,
and the songs flow into each other with no space between to
differentiate them.

A musical patchwork, the album is devoted to outrageous
self-definition: Barnes insistently presents himself as a nympho with
numerous disguises, a lover like Prince, a sexosaurus like R. Kelly, a
freak like Rick James. “We can do it softcore, if you want, but you
should know I take it both ways,” he explains on “For Our Elegant
Caste.” But that may be too modest: Barnes makes clear he takes and
gives it all ways. Musically and sexually, no idea is too far-out to
try.

Some critics and listeners decried Skeletal Lamping as
a retreat from the personal exegesis of its predecessor, an album that
in retrospect seems so intense as to be unsustainable. But reviews were
bound to be mixed. The album seems specifically intended to be slightly
confounding on first listen and exuberantly absorbing on fifth.
Ultimately, it is a party album: If Barnes battled his demons on
Hissing Fauna, Skeletal Lamping assures us he beat them
and wants to celebrate. Each permutation of the album — whether
as lantern, LP, or live show — is a victory lap.

Of Montreal, with Fire Zuave and Sugar & Gold

Minglewood Hall

Sunday, April 26th

Doors open at 7 p.m.; tickets $20

The name Ra Ra Riot wasn’t supposed to stick. When the band first got together during a semester at Syracuse University, they needed a moniker to put on posters around campus. A friend thought up Ra Ra Riot but had no band at the time. According to bass player Mathieu Santos, they intended only to borrow it but ended up keeping it. “We thought it sounded pretty cool,” he says. “It had the rah rah effect, like a group sing-along, and the riot aspect, which made you think of a rowdy house party.”

Those four syllables suggest an onomatopoeic description of the band’s music, which features dramatic strings, inventive hooks, and insistent tempos. Drawing from power and chamber pop as well as from indie rock, Ra Ra Riot obviously draw from bands like Phoenix and Death Cab for Cutie (with whom they are touring), and they obviously share similarities with younger, Internet-hyped groups like Cold War Kids (with whom they’re also touring) and Tokyo Police Club (with whom they’ve toured in the past), but the songs on the band’s full-length debut, The Rhumb Line (named for the path a ship takes to maintain constant compass direction), are complex and excitable enough to distinguish Ra Ra Riot from their peers.

“When we formed the band, we didn’t have any objectives of what we wanted the music to sound like,” Santos says. “We just knew that it was supposed to sound fun and energetic.”

Not only did they not have any ideas about the direction they wanted to take, most of the band members didn’t even know each other before their first rehearsal. Guitarist Milo Bonacci sent blind e-mails to other students, some of whom he knew from the Syracuse scene and others he knew from classes. The string section — cellist Alexandra Lawn and violinist Rebecca Zeller — had no non-classical experience whatsoever.

“No one had any expectations,” Santos says. “Working that way made it easier to just go for it and not have any preconceived ideas of what you want it to sound like.”

As a result, the music sounds organic and democratic. Bonacci’s guitar adds texture and takes lead only when necessary, and the two-woman string section sounds, surprisingly, as essential as the rhythm section, their parts integral to the songs rather than added after the fact.

Despite having no expectations and what was supposed to be only a temporary name, Ra Ra Riot embarked on their first tour (solely to test the waters, according to Santos), played the CMJ fest in New York City, and self-released an EP a few months after forming. They signed with Seattle-based Barsuk Records (Death Cab’s former label) and set about making their debut album. In the meantime, the group was feverishly championed online but has managed to avoid the pejorative “blog rock” label and the often concurrent backlash.

“Once we started to get the idea that we might be able to do something with this,” Santos recalls, “we were focused on setting it up so that we would have more of a career. We’ve been more focused on touring as much as possible to build up a strong fan base.”

Beneath Ra Ra Riot’s spirited pop music lies a tragedy that almost ended the band. In June 2007, drummer Jon Pike mysteriously drowned after a show in Providence, Rhode Island. It was, of course, a blow to the band: Pike was not only one of the six who introduced themselves at that first rehearsal, he was a guiding presence in the band, co-writing much of The Rhumb Line and adding the ra ra to the riot with his propulsive drumming.

“When it first happened, obviously we didn’t think of the band at all for several weeks, because everyone was in complete shock,” Santos says. “We were still so young as a band at that point. At the same time, there was a universal realization among all of us that continuing was the only thing that made sense. To have the band stop would be another part of Jon that would be gone too.”

Fortunately, this tragedy has not sapped The Rhumb Line (which Pike had helped to record) of its exuberance and joy. Unlike the catalogs of Jeff Buckley or Elliott Smith — two other musicians who died young — Ra Ra Riot’s songs do not take on extra import in light of Pike’s death. Even a song like “Dying Is Fine” — one of the band’s earliest compositions — reads like a young man’s ruminations on mortality rather than a product of direct experience with death, thanks to lyrics borrowed from e.e. cummings as well as to its insistent, intuitive hook. These are serious songs about self-doubt and self-reckoning, but their celebratory spirit has already proven durable.

Ra Ra Riot

With Death Cab for Cutie and Cold War Kids

Orpheum Theatre

Saturday, April 11th

Showtime is 7:30 p.m.; tickets, $30

Nashville-born, New York-based Justin Townes Earle lays it all out in “Mama’s Eyes,” a slow, lilting number from his new album Midnight at the Movies. “I’ve got my mama’s eyes, her long thin frame and her smile,” he sings plaintively, “and I still see wrong from right.” But he knows he’ll always be more closely associated with his dad. “I ain’t foolin’ no one,” he sings on another verse. “I am my father’s son.”

The father in question is Steve Earle, the country singer who’s made a long career of zigging left — musically, politically, narcotically, you name it — when Nashville was zagging right. Following in those footsteps would be daunting for any young artist, especially if you’re also the namesake of Steve’s hero, Townes Van Zandt, the troubled singer-songwriter who turned his addictions and afflictions into elegant, heartfelt country songs. But Earle neither encourages nor discourages all the interview questions and the curiosity into his family life. “My father’s my father,” he says. “He’s my blood and he came before me. I’m glad people still ask about him because it means that he’s still a valid presence in the music industry.”

Born in 1982, Earle was raised by his mother while his father toured, but his career already seems to follow his dad’s. As a young rabble-rouser in Nashville, Earle performed in local groups like the Swindlers and the Distributors, who mixed bluegrass, country, and punk. He briefly played in his father’s touring band but was fired for a debilitating drug habit. After reportedly overdosing a fifth time, Justin managed to clean himself up (without jail time) and come out the other end of addiction stronger and clearer-headed. Post-recovery, both Earles write tough-minded songs about frayed relationships and their own dumb mistakes, indulging an incisive lyrical approach that often comes across like plainspoken poetry.

The musical similarities end there. Almost as if consciously rebelling against his father’s rough-and-tumble country-rock, Earle favors a sound that he describes as “old-timey” and plays primarily on acoustic instruments. His 2007 solo debut full-length, The Good Life, combines Western swing rhythms, vintage C&W flourishes, and some Appalachian folk guitar-picking with very few rock sounds. Midnight at the Movies expands that sound in intriguing directions.

“I tend to make pretty schizophrenic records,” Earle says. “On The Good Life, I did several different genres but stuck mainly to old-timey methods. But I wanted to put a little bit more modern edge on this one.”

The title track recalls Ryan Adams circa Heartbreaker, setting a sad-sack romantic scene full of strangers who have nothing better to do than watch other people at the movies. “Poor Fool” is a honky-tonk two-stepper reminiscent of his Bloodshot labelmate Wayne Hancock, and “Halfway to Jackson” is a blues number whose snare-rim beat and breathless harmonica make it sound like a train song. Earle even takes on the Replacements’ oft-covered “Can’t Hardly Wait,” matching the forlornness of Paul Westerberg’s vocals while translating that signature start-stop riff from electric guitar to mandolin.

“That was [producer] R.S. Fields’ idea,” Earle says. “I was actually against putting a cover on the record, but he explained it to me. That’s the one song on the record where people can’t dissect me personally. The worst anyone can say is that I did a bad cover of a Replacements song.”

Touring as a duo, Earle and multi-instrumentalist Corey Younts take those lessons to heart. “We base our performance on Porter Wagoner at the Grand Ole Opry,” he explains. “We slick our hair back and dress nice. We tell stories and goof around and make sure people have a good time. It’s a very outgoing show.”

It’s also one with a very conscious provenance: “Guys like George Jones could write a great song, then walk out on stage looking good as a motherfucker with his top button buttoned and a tie on. He knew how to work a microphone. It was the whole package. Today, you have to figure out how to make each song come across. People aren’t going to listen otherwise. There’s too much out there to take people’s attention away if you don’t make an impact.”

For Earle, the legacy he was born into is neither a help nor a hindrance. It just is. Asked if he ever felt like he had to get out of his father’s shadow, he replies, “Well, I never saw the shadow. The only time anything has been hard on me because I was Steve Earle’s son is because I made it hard on me.”

In other words, the question of father and son is only incidental to the music both men make. Earle, like his father, is nothing if not his own man. “Nobody owes me nothing,” he says, “not even Steve Earle.”

Justin Townes Earle

With Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit

Hi-Tone Café

Tuesday, March 24th

Doors open at 9 p.m.; admission $15