Sara Bareilles was anxious about the release of "Kaleidoscope Heart" -- and perhaps rightly so. The album, her second with a major label, had a lot to live up to: Her last record, 2007's "Little Voice," went platinum, and its hit single, "Love Song," earned two Grammy nominations.

But the singer-songwriter's fears about "one-upping" herself were quickly dispelled earlier this month, when her new record shot to the top spot on Billboard's Top 200 in its first week of release. 

"I really just reflected on how amazing the fans were," Bareilles said of how she celebrated the accomplishment. "...That was them showing up in droves and buying the album and telling friends and friends buying the album. I'm just incredibly grateful and shocked."

Pop & Hiss sat down with Bareilles in early September near her home in Venice, where she opened up about her desire to transcend her reputation as "the 'Love Song' girl." Last week, we stopped by her rehearsal space in Burbank, where she and her all-male band were practicing before heading out on the road to kick off her fall headlining tour in Idaho. On Tuesday, she'll play a sold out show at the Orpheum Theatre downtown.

The first single off her latest record, "King of Anything," follows in the same vein as "Love Song" -- they were both written as what she calls "pep talk songs" that helped her stay true to herself when she was being judged. ("Love Song" is about the disdain she felt toward record label executives who insisted she deliver a commercial radio single; "King of Anything" is about the disdain she felt toward those who disliked some of the songs off her new album.)

"My songs are very much diary entries for me," she said. "And so a lot of times it's almost exactly what you read in the pages of my real journal. And it's me trying to encourage myself to be positive, to be confident, to be brave. I feel like if I'm feeling it, somebody else must be feeling it in the world."

Check out a performance of "King of Anything" below:

-- Amy Kaufman

Twitter.com/AmyKinLA

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Bangladesh has his sights set on “changing the game.” And he plans on doing this with a few unexpected muses.

Recently named one of six top urban producers at this year's BMI Urban Music Awards, the Atlanta-based beatmaker, whose birth name is Shondrae Crawford, has been slowly rising to prominence over the last decade by being the sonic mastermind behind songs from such artists as Ludacris, Ciara, Kelis, Missy Elliott, Usher, R. Kelly and Beyoncé -– he was responsible for the latter's most recent singles, “Diva” and “Video Phone.”

Crawford recently produced songs for Ne-Yo, Nelly and the Game -- and even a handful of beats for the new "Def Jam Rapstar" video game -– but it’s the upcoming work for a few divas that has him most excited: He is prepping to tackle projects from Beyoncé, Ke$ha and Brandy.

The producer was brought on board to work on Ke$ha’s follow-up album to “Animal” after meeting songwriter-producer Dr. Luke through a mutual friend. He said Luke, who’s penned hits for Kelly Clarkson, Pink, Britney Spears and his protégé Ke$ha, doesn’t want him to compromise his urban flair for the pop world.

Some things are eternal. Jerry Lee Lewis, the man, isn’t one of them -- miraculous as it may seem with the Ferriday Fireball delivering seminal rock ‘n’ roll with the power he put across Saturday night at the Fox Theater in Pomona, just four days ahead of his 75th birthday.

Looking across the beaming faces of fans in their teens, 20s and 30s as they lapped up music from a man who had two careers come and go before they were born, it was easy to envision future generations getting the same visceral thrill from this music long after Lewis himself was no longer around.

“I have my favorite bands, but this is the best show I’ve ever seen,” said 26-year-old Bill Burke, seeing the Killer for the first time with his wife, also 26 and both recently discharged from the Army following stints in the Middle East.  He cited O.C. post-hardcore band Thrice at the top of his list, while Karen said she’d gotten hooked on Lewis’ music and life story after seeing an impersonator’s act in Las Vegas, which spurred her to seek out the real deal. “He’s amazing,” she said after the show.

Lewis himself seemed taken Saturday with the fervent response to “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” more than half a century after he burst onto the scene with it. Onlookers proved unable to contain themselves as he leaned back in the middle of the song and let his right hand pound the piano’s high notes. If it’s no longer with the fire of youth that once drove him, he still projects a focused intensity.

Right in the middle of Eminem’s first official West Coast performance since 2005, the rapper paused to ask: “Did you miss me?”

Eminem has a knack for tapping into the drama or comedy of a moment, and the huge cheers he got in response at the Epicenter festival in Fontana on Saturday were a measure of how uncharacteristically quiet he’s been during those years, until the release of 2009’s “Relapse” and this summer’s “Recovery.”

As he paced the stage in a sweat-soaked T-shirt, it was near the end of a blazing-hot day on the blacktop at Auto Club Speedway. He was sharing a diverse bill with the rock acts Kiss, Bush and Papa Roach and with fellow hip-hop artists Big Boi and House of Pain. (Day 2 of the fest Sunday was more focused on straight ahead punk-pop, headlined by Blink-182.)

With stacks of crushed cars as décor to evoke the wreckage of Detroit, Eminem crept across the stage during a chilling “3 a.m.,” as gore splashed on the big video screen behind him, followed by “Kill You,” another song of playful bloodshed. His new album is a step away from rhymes of violence and the more cartoonish side of his persona, but during Saturday’s set he toyed with the range of his multiple selves.

Green Day completed the jump from Berkeley to Broadway earlier this year when the musical inspired by the act's blockbuster 2004 album, "American Idiot," officially opened at the St. James Theatre in April. Now, Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Amrstrong will spend time off next week from his punk rock bandmates singing and emoting on the Broadway stage, temporarily stepping in for Tony Vincent to assume the role of St. Jimmy.  

Armstrong will appear in the musical Tuesday through Oct. 3, and then will join his band on tour in South America. Vincent will return to the production Oct. 12, having to briefly leave "American Idiot" for what a press release distributed today described as a "personal family matter." Following Armstrong's short run, understudies Joshua Kobak and Andrew Call will fill in for Vincent until he returns. 

In St. Jimmy, Armstrong will take on a pivotal role in the musical. Though not the ensemble cast's lead, which belongs to John Gallagher Jr.'s Johnny, St. Jimmy is the musical's drug pusher and all-around bad dude, sending the suburban-raised Johnny into a drug-addled spiral of nowhereness and empty relationships. By taking on the role of St. Jimmy, the good news for Armstrong -- and perhaps the bad news to audience members -- is that the rock star won't have to partake in any of the show's major simulated love scenes. But look for Armstrong to tackle moments of "Know Your Enemy" and "Last Night on Earth."

On Thursday, John Cale, composer, producer, songwriter, and cellist/bassist for the Velvet Underground, will be performing his classic 1973 album "Paris 1919" at UCLA's Royce Hall. We've just received news that the concert will be featuring some guests, and the first two names to trickle out are Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service singer Ben Gibbard and singer Mark Lanegan, best know for his work with Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age.

Those not familiar with Cale's gorgeous, introspective "Paris 1919" are missing a quiet masterpiece. Recorded in Los Angeles with most of the members of the band Little Feat (along with producer Chris Thomas), the concept album, about the signing of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I (but don't let that scare you away) has become a cult classic among fans of orchestral pop.

Cale and guests will perform the album during the first set, and, according to the press release, in the second will "showcase his modern side, deconstructing classics and performing new material." We'll keep you posted on any new guest announcements.

-- Randall Roberts

There's a funny thing about Cameron Mesirow's debut full-length as Glasser: You can start "Ring" at any point you'd like to. Like "Finnegan's Wake" or the finale of "Lost,"  the last thing you hear is revealed as the first thing that happens on the record — a strange percussive element, like a gamelan chime. The effect is purposeful but also just a fun thought-experiment on how to listen to this incredibly imaginative album.

"Ring," coming out Tuesday, is nominally an electronica record, built off shards of samples and big orchestral washes in the spirit of Bjork. But it has its own deeply weird sonic geography. Mesirow's voice flits in and out of melody, often turning to uncanny harmonies and percussive yelps for punctuation, and linear ideas like verses and choruses are beside the point.

But it's also completely catchy and requires zero intellectual exertion to enjoy its sheer creative generosity. We talked to Mesirow about making records by her own rules. She plays Amoeba in Hollywood at 7 p.m. Friday. 

This project has such an idiosyncratic and personal approach to sounds and songwriting, but you’re also pretty open to working with other producers like Ariel Rechtshaid and Van Rivers & the Subliminal Kid.  Tell me a bit about how you preserved your vision while staying open to what these other musicians can offer in the studio.

The sounds and the songs are what I came to those producers with, and what they did for me that I couldn't do on my own was expand the sound and break it out of the demo scope.  This music is spacial, and I created those spaces on my own in a miniature scale, like architecture, but when the architect wants to bring his/her ideas to fruition, they need a team of people to help them build.

In Friday morning's Los Angeles Times, writer Daiana Feuer profiled the nine-person ukulele collective the Ooks of Hazzard, who transform songs from the likes of Radiohead, Sublime, Bad Company and Lynyrd Skynyrd into singalong uke ditties. Based in Venice Beach, the Ooks uploaded to YouTube their cover of MGMT's 2008 hit "Kids" the same weekend that MGMT played Coachella, and it brought the uke players worldwide attention. You can watch the clip above and feel nostalgia for both April 2010 and exactly two years ago this month, when MGMT's original was released as a single.  

The Ooks have an interesting backstory, Feuer wrote:

The ukulele's vibey magnetism guided the band members to the same Venice jam session, where they found each other earlier this year. "You ever get nine people together of all different walks and talks? It gets pretty interesting," Marshall says.

Hildebrand, Diaz, Marshall and cajón player Dave Botkin are surfers from Venice and Santa Monica. Nick Deane is a bit goth. He and Meredith MacArthur come from the theater world. When the Ooks formed, Jay Ponti was leaving on a spiritual quest. He took his soprano uke to India and traveled nomadically, playing ukulele. "He brought back the juju in time for our first show," Hildebrand says. Danny Kopel is the patriarch on accordion, and Timm Freeman, "a well-rounded Northern California biker type," plays bass uke. 

The Ooks of Hazzard perform at the Autumn Lights Festival at Pershing Square in downtown L.A. on Saturday evening.

-- Randall Roberts

Superchunk - Digging For Something from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Superchunk, the perennial heroes of purist indie rock from the hills of North Carolina, will be diving right into the belly of the beast on Oct. 19 at noon. Which beast, which belly?

The raw intestinal gorge of the hipster corridor, located approximately 2,040 nautical miles* from the prime meridian at 1816 W. Sunset Blvd., Los Angeles.

Origami Vinyl just announced that Superchunk, currently on tour in support of its first new album in nine years, "Majesty Shredding," will be performing an all-acoustic set of songs in the record store's loft, typically the province of the kind of band that Superchunk lovingly spoofs in the video above for "Digging for Something."

The video, directed by former Daily Show writer Scott Jacobson, shows Mac McCaughan forging on with Superchunk 2.0 (played by Merge labelmates the Love Language), now outfitted in an array of neon sunglasses. Meanwhile, his former band members distract themselves with second-stage careers in dentistry, ceramics and bliss-chasing. When Laura Ballance sees a flier for "Superchunk! (Feat. One Original Member)," she leads a take-back of their old band, luring away one player with... well, we won't spoil it but it's good and hurts only a little.

In order to get yourself into the show, you have to buy "Majesty Shredding," which, in a sure sign that it's not 1999, debuted at #85 on the Billboard Top 200, or the reissues of Superchunk classics "No Pocky for Kitty" and "On the Mouth." There's only 40 spots; if things go wrong, we could see a tiny Altamont on our hands ... but instead of blood, maybe just tomato sauce from Two Boots Pizza next door.

If you can't squeeze into the wee record store, there are other opportunities to see the band. One: Matador's 21st birthday party in Las Vegas next weekend. Two: Henry Fonda, also Oct. 19.

--Margaret Wappler

*That would be a totally made-up figure, yes.

"Skit I Allt," the title of Dungen's seventh LP loosely translates to "hell with it," but the literal American translation doesn't distill its true meaning.

Gustav Estjes, the wavy-haired wizard behind the Stockholm-based quartet, has toyed with audience perceptions for much of the last decade and his latest excellent effort continues his scrambling of Swedish folk, acid rock, and jazz fusion. Like a Scandinavian cognate to Madlib, Estjes ditches dull gravity for a sublime celestial groove. If his latest album title means anything, it's an attempt to finally shed any lingering expectations or preconceived notions. It's "Just Do It," for the artistically inclined.

Originally hemmed into the psych-rock genre, Dungen has increasingly incorporated orchestral sounds to produce the sort of genreless float that was once common in the early '70s, but rare in the contemporary indieocracy where bands battle to most artfully ape C86 or the Animal Collective.

Whereas most of their peers play instruments like an early period Wyld Stallyns, Dungen are virtuousos. The last time they came to town, I described it as: "the score to an Ingmar Bergman adaptation of 'The Electric Kool-Acid Test,' performed by a 'Tangerine'-era Led Zeppelin, if they really had come from the land of ice and snow -- an abstruse sort of transcendence impossible to understate or oversell. It’s unlikely that a single audience member understood any of the lyrics, but no one seemed to care. If the prevailing cliche holds that music is the universal language, then last night it was seen fluently speaking Swedish."

On Saturday night, they headline Waved Out 2, the marquee act of a very strong bill assembled by Justin "Aquarium Drunkard" Gage. In advance of the show, Estjes spoke to Pop & Hiss.

How did you end up selecting that album title and were you worried it might baffle people?

Well, the English translation doesn't really capture the full meaning of what it means in Swedish. It means don't give up on what you want out of life. Go for it. Don't let yourself have boundaries or limits. Do whatever you want. The Swedish definition is a little bit lighter.

 
After selling more than 10 million albums in the last four years, the last thing Taylor Swift needs is a raise. But Thursday night, the young country-pop hitmaker got a major promotion in her status as a singer and songwriter.

There she sat onstage at Club Nokia for the annual All for the Hall concert benefiting Nashville’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, accorded an equal place alongside such esteemed country music figures as Kris Kristofferson, Emmylou Harris and Vince Gill, as well as the event’s special guest, '70s and '80s pop-R&B kingpin Lionel Richie.

“These are the best role models I could have,” Swift, 20, told the crowd of about 2,000 who had paid up to $1,000 a seat to witness this year’s “guitar pull,” for which each musician took a turn introducing and playing a song. They casually related stories behind each song and occasionally enlisted a bit of instrumental or vocal support from the other participants.

Previous editions of the fundraiser have emphasized veterans such as Harris, Gill, Kristofferson, Dwight Yoakam and others. The addition of Swift to this year’s show translated into a large, vocal contingent of teen and preteen girls, who erupted in a chorus of squeals when master of ceremonies Gill brought her on stage.

As the shrieking subsided, Gill quipped: “Thank you, thank you! I get that a lot.”

When Hotlanta rapper-turned-movie star T.I. was arrested on drug possession charges earlier this month, there was a feeling of “haven’t we all been here before?” But also genuine surprise.

From ODB to DMX, Kanye to 'Pac, hip-hop performers have a chronic habit of getting busted for stupid stuff. Identity theft. Cruelty to animals. Wearing a bulletproof vest after being convicted of a felony. Rappers behaving badly have become one of popular culture’s most numbing constants. After all, T.I. was already on probation when L.A. County sheriff’s deputies stopped his $600,000 Mercedes Maybach on the Sunset Strip for what they said was an illegal U-turn and then detected what they said was “a strong odor of marijuana emitting from the vehicle”; earlier this year, he served a seven-month prison sentence for attempting to buy a cache of automatic weapons and silencers.

But celeb watchers began scratching their heads after deputies reported that Clifford “T.I.” Tip Harris and his new wife, Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, were also in possession of “a small amount of Ecstasy” (in addition to weed and testing positive for codeine).

Since when do gangsta rappers dabble in designer drugs?

A role as a Mekon isn't necessarily the greatest lot for a rock 'n' roller. Now into Decade No. 4, the Mekons have consistently been critically adored and commercially ignored. Multiple major-label deals have come and gone, and the luxury of quitting a day job -- or not having to make ends meet by scraping together multiple projects -- is one a Mekon has never really known. 

Worse still is the nagging knowledge that multiple acts who came of age in the punk and post-punk scenes of the late '70s and early '80s have recently found new audiences. Artists such as Mission to Burma, PiL, which counts a Mekon as a member, and Gang of Four, which once had a Mekon, have all done the reunion circuit, benefiting either from festival stages, constant reissues or newfound idolization.

And the Mekons? The act's label for the last decade and a half, Touch and Go, was recently downsized into little more than a catalog-only operation. 

"We’ve been saying we should pretend we’ve split up and then re-form," Mekon co-founder Jon Langford said this week from his Chicago home. "That seems to be the way to generate a lot of cash. You just need to take a couple years off. We’ve always been stupid enough to keep doing this. We believed our own hype, that anyone can do this and you don’t need to take any notice of the market forces." 

If the Mekons members had, they likely wouldn't have jettisoned their late '70s punk rock sound for multiple decades of genre-hopping experimentation. The Mekons were playing with synths and pre-industrial dance sounds in the '80s, and then writing country records by the end of it. They scored a book, staged a performance-art concert in which everything was on backing tapes, and often wielded a violin as if it were the lead guitar.  

When Langford, a native of Wales and a Chicago resident of 18 years, comes to the Los Angeles-area this weekend for a pair of shows -- a Saturday night appearance at Santa Monica's McCabe's and a performance Sunday at Hollywood's Amoeba Music -- he'll be doing so in more of a singer/songwriter guise. His "Old Devils," released this month by Chicago's Bloodshot Records, is a folk-rock effort that confronts aging, regret and the false romance of a life as an artist. It tackles it all with Langford's conversational, charmingly self-deprecating tone.

Think of it as the grown-up musical bookend to Nick Cave's recently issued sophomore album with his Grinderman project ("Grinderman 2"). Cave's effort is menacing -- an album devoted to late-in-life recklessness. Langford's effort is the sobering, country-tinged wake-up call. Characters are "overworked, overwhelmed, over here and over it all," and the narrator in the quiet lament "Luxury" is haunted by past mistakes. A "disposable income and weakness for drinking have disposed of me," Langford sings.

"That song," said Langford, "is like the invention of the teenager, and the myth that everything will get better and better. For me, I was growing up in the '70s and saw my friend’s hipster parents having wife-swapping parties and leopard-skin sofas and moving to Australia or South Africa for a better life. I remember those days fondly. It’s sympathetic. People were sold something, the belief that there was a better life."

It’s apropos that Sean Lennon and Charlotte Kemp Muhl would pick the Hollywood Forever Cemetery as the place to make the L.A. debut of their folk project Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger. The album in haunted by all sorts of things – Syd Barrett’s sun-scarred psych and pastoral English folk; a lyrical world of hope glimmering in corners of apocalypse; Lennon’s uncannily familiar vocal lilt and way with unexpected guitar runs.

The duo’s debut album “Acoustic Sessions” is out Oct. 26 on their own label, Chimera Music, and they play Hollywood Forever tonight. We talked via e-mail to both members about their folk lineage, if there’s any beauty in environmental decay and how close harmonies make people closer. (The opted to answer the questions collectively.)

This record draws from some really classic, vintage folk and psychedelia. How do you two feel it's a modern album as well?

Of course we're big fans of experimental 'folky' music from the '60s like Syd Barrett, Os Mutantes and White Noise, but we try our best to re-combine chords and words in ways that are, at least to our ears, a bit different. In a world where everything's been done under the sun, the best one can do is make a collage of things you like, and re-juxtapose them until they feel new. Our subject matter tends to be distinctly modern. We like to sing about synthetic DNA, while playing old accordions.

Dam Funk's hood pass remains so durable that he can wear a velvet fedora, smoke cloves, sip daiquiris and still be beloved everywhere from San Pedro to Chatsworth. Many cannot do such things, but then, most haven't collaborated with MC Eiht and Westside Connection. Nor do we properly understand how to wield a vocoder, the soundtrack to L.A. anthems since the days of Zapp and the Egyptian Lover. And indeed, Dam-Funk is the rightful heir to their throne -- a polymath able to play the keytar and the talkbox, and DJ obscure boogie jams with obscene and innate levels of funk.

Directed by Henry DeMaio, the video for "Hood Pass Intact" captures a day in the life of Damon Riddick. The conceit was simple. Follow him around with cameras as he goes through his daily routine, which involves coffee in diners, getting down at the Funkmosphere, buying vintage gear and passing out ice cream to local children.

And for those questioning why he'd wear a Pittsburgh Pirates cap in a video celebrating L.A. life, he's repping his native Pasadena.  Essentially, it proves that he's the funk Ferris Bueller. But don't expect to see him tooling around in a Ferrari 250 GT anytime soon. Dam's more of a vintage Chrysler Cordoba man -- which is to be expected from someone whose hood pass is inalienable.

-- Jeff Weiss

Download:
MP3: Dam Funk ft. MC Eiht -- "Hood Pass Intact"

Oliver Sim, Romy Madley-Croft and Jamie Smith impress and show confidence; ascendant local band Warpaint opens.

In the middle of their set Wednesday night at the Hollywood Palladium, the xx announced that this was the first tour it's been on where all members could legally drink. “Cheers,” singer-bassist Oliver Sim intoned, before taking a bird-like sip.

It was a succinct reminder that Londoners Sim, singer-guitarist Romy Madley-Croft and programmer Jamie Smith have put scant years between dreaming in their bedrooms — one imagines a collective chamber covered in vintage Depeche Mode posters — and winning prestigious British award the Mercury Prize for their impeccable self-titled 2009 debut album of minimalist synth-pop.

The show, opened by Warpaint, local rising stars whose Rough Trade debut will be released in October, also functioned as a succinct reminder of the raw potency of teenage dreams, endless fodder for bleeding hearts bent over their Casiotones. There is longing for sex, money and power, but when the xx closes its eyes, it sees intimacy.

Clad in all black, Madley-Croft stood out front on the stage, surrounded only by a few smoke-filled cones of light, singing the first few lines of “Shelter,” a song about finding closeness and the insecurity that comes when it's all too easily threatened. There was little more than a few scratches at the bass and guitar to pad Madley-Croft's conversational vocals. Her voice is one of the band's best assets — velvety but still modest, a precision instrument perfect for delivering pillow talk for goths.

The arrival this weekend of the second Epicenter festival in Fontana begs the question: Does the world really have room for yet another pop music festival?

“No, not really,” says Gary Spivack, co-president of Right Arm Entertainment, the promoter of Epicenter, which in its sophomore year has assembled an eclectic lineup of rock, hip-hop, punk and alternative acts including Eminem, KISS, blink-182, Bush, Rise Against and Bad Religion on Saturday and Sunday at the Auto Club Speedway.

“There are a lot of festivals out there and some really good ones here in Southern California,” Spivack said. “But if someone is being underserved, we want to serve underserved, and we thought, ‘Where’s the really big rock festival that also is able to include some of the really credible hip-hop artists of the day?’ ”

For Eminem, it’s only his third live performance this year -- and only West Coast appearance -- following recent rap blowouts in his native Detroit and then New York on stadium bills he shared with Jay-Z.

“If you’re going to do a show in Southern California, where people have so many options to choose from, you’ve got to swing for the fences,” says Spivack, who started Right Arm four years ago with partners Del Williams and Danny Wimmer. The three were longtime record label employees who “saw the writing on the wall,” Spivack said, in terms of the drastic downscaling so many record companies have gone through in recent years.

 

The yelling starts while they’re still tuning guitars. “Play 'High on a Mountain!' ” “We Love You Bob [Weir] and Phil [Lesh]!” From the first note, a voice rises above the applause: “Oh, yeah, they’re going way back.” The bellows are punctuated by the green and red glowsticks that dot the Greek Theatre like hippie fireflies. This is a Furthur concert circa 2010, a celebration of who has survived and the Grateful Dead.

Taking its name from the fabled bus that heaved the Merry Pranksters cross-country, Furthur is the closest approximation of the vintage lineup still roaming the country. And it doesn't lack competition. Bob Weir has his own outfit, Ratdog, the Dead itself barnstormed America last year, and the tribute band Dark Star Orchestra is so good that Furthur plucked one of its co-founders, John Kadlecik, to continue inhabiting the spirit of Jerry Garcia on the largest venue possible. Not to forget local linchpins  Cubensis.

Though the avuncular guitar god Garcia has been buried for a decade and a half, his salt-and-pepper-haired legion and their tie-dyed legatees continue to flock to anything Dead-related. If you didn’t know any better, you might’ve guessed the parking lot scene was rife with people flashing peace signs, when they were really just trying to purchase two seats for the sold-out show.

The first lyrics on “Bloody War: Songs 1924-39,” a recent collection of pre-World War II fight songs, sets the tone for the entire 15-track compilation: two soldiers lay dying on the ground, “just at the seams of the battle floor.” A singer named Zeke Morris, in a flat raspy voice and with plucked guitar accompaniment, describes the scene as though he were standing right there with them. “One held a ringlet of thin gray hair/the other a lock of brown/bidding each other a last farewell/just as the sun went down.”

It's a wrenching image presented without judgment, other than to acknowledge the soldiers’ final thoughts: “One thought of mother at home alone/feeble and old and gray/One of the sweetheart he left in town/happy and young and gay.”

Released by New York City folk label Tompkins Square, “Bloody War” is a follow-up to the Grammy-nominated “People Take Warning: Murder Ballads and Songs of Disaster,” which compiled three compact discs worth of musical death and destruction from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and rivaled an N.W.A. album in sheer body count. “Bloody War” is just as deadly, and features songs about the Civil War, the Spanish Civil War, and World War I recorded by nearly lost-to-time artists such as Jimmy Yates’ Boll Weevils, Buell Kazee, Frank Hutchison and Earl Johnson & His Clodhoppers. A portion of all proceeds from the release will be donated to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

On Abe Vigoda’s new album, “Crush,” the tropics that informed its last, “Skeleton,” have been cut down and paved over with shimmering black marble. Rarely does a band so radically reinvent its sound in such a difficult and distant direction on the cusp of a commercial breakthrough (they recently toured with Vampire Weekend). “Crush” is all-consumingly miserable, and a big swath of its fans will absolutely hate it. But it’s also one of the boldest records from L.A.’s indie-noise scene in 2010.

First, a note on those vocals. Singer Michael Vidal went all-in with a self-lacerating tenor that recalls Joy Division’s Ian Curtis, and while the move befits “Crush’s” bleak synth-scapes and gray-skies guitars, he sounds like a totally different (and witheringly bummed) person now. So if you’re prepared to forgive a lot of bleary wailing up front, “Crush” has plenty of pleasures underneath. “Dream of My Love (Chasing After You)” skulks about with ambient feedback groans, and the title track froths with the atmospherics of old-guard shoe-gazers like Ride. The disco thrum of “Repeating Angel” and “Throwing Shade” will encourage after-hours indulgences involving bad sex or self injury (and maybe both).

Whether “Crush” is Abe Vigoda’s vault into the commercial big leagues alongside Health and No Age is yet to be seen, but rarely is there this much energy and possibility in a record that should come with a Wellbutrin chaser.

— August Brown

Abe Vigoda

“Crush”

Post Present Medium

Three stars