Which is not to say they’ve forsaken their roots. They’ve still got punk attitude and country hearts, but the music on Blur the Line feels, on the whole, more thoughtful and controlled. The new confidence might explain why they’ve also decided to drop the shared “Darlin’” last name, embracing instead their real identities (Jessi Zazu, Nikki Kvarnes and Lynwood Regensburg) as opposed to the characters that had served as a sort of protection for so long.

While the Darlins were at a tour stop in Florida, eMusic’s Ashley Melzer spoke with founding guitarist Nikki Kvarnes about the Blur the Line and the band’s new attitude of self-acceptance.

How long after Screws Get Loose did you start thinking about the next album?

Immediately, I guess. We’re kind of always working on stuff. We set up a chunk of time over the winter where we were just focusing on that and we weren’t touring. But yeah, that’s something we’re always kind of working on.

Did you go in with certain ideas?

It kind of all just fell into place with what was going on in our lives collectively, me and Jessi especially.

Like what?

Just time to reflect on the past couple of years. Like, actually spend some time with ourselves and dive deep into some stuff that’s really personal. This is the first time — well, not the first time, but it was a different kind of way of writing the album. Jessi would work on her songs and I would work on my songs, lyrically, and then we’d come together and go, “Well, what about changing this?” or, “What do you mean by this?” It was just a different approach than trying to write really personal songs with another songwriter.

There does seem to be a level of patience about this new record. Is this the first work you’ve done with Roger Moutenout?

He was suggested to us by our manager a while ago. We did a 7″ with him and we did a couple other recordings with him. He is just a joy to work with. He’s helped us grow a whole lot. We love the studio. We love working with him. So we were all about working on the album with him and trying something different, working with a different producer, ’cause we’re kind of a different band now too.

What has that transition been like?

It’s been really good. It’s been gradual. Adrian started playing with us right before we went into the studio for a couple months, just fleshing out the songs and trying to tighten things up, talk about all the parts that we’re doing. Also, this is a transition because [in the past] we’ve always switched instruments. It’s always kind of been up in the air who plays what role. This is the first record where Jessi and I are playing guitar, we sing our parts, Lynnwood plays drums and Adrian plays bass. It’s always been kind of a clusterfuck of “Well, what do you want to do?” and on the last album my arm was broken, so I wasn’t able to play on the album.

Is there a reason why you wanted to streamline that way?

Yeah, it’s made us a way more solid band. It’s more defined what everyone does. It gives time to focus on exactly what it is that you’re doing and giving yourself a specific sound.

In looking back at your press over the years, you’re constantly being pigeonholed as “wild women” or reckless. How do you feel about that?

I mean, I understand why, because when we first started out we were really wild and crazy. We were just so excited to be in a band, we were just going all the way, all the time. There was some focus on music, but I think the performance and engaging people was what we were concentrating on, whereas now it’s a little bit more introverted. We still really want to interact with audience members and we want it to be an experience. And, whatever, people can think whatever they want about us, but they’ll know in the future what this album is and what the band is, and that it’s not just, “Let’s get drunk and party. These are a bunch of fun, silly songs.” There’s some depth behind it and we’re exposing ourselves a little bit more instead of these characters we’ve built over the years.

Listening to the record, I almost felt a level of regret in regard to that. Do you think that’s a theme? Like the song “Optimist” seems to have that as a crux of it.

Jessi wrote that, but no, no, not regret. It’s less regret and maybe just more awareness of how people perceive you. It’s not a song about regret at all. It’s about being an optimist and you realize that maybe not everyone’s as optimistic about what you’re endeavors are or, I don’t know, getting a hard time because you’re doing what you want to be doing. This is really broad — I’m being vague about it because I don’t want to describe a song that she wrote, because I’m sure she has way more to say about it than I do.

Well, which of your songs on the album do you think captures that theme of identity most for you?

Each one of the songs are reflections of who we are and sides of ourselves. “In the Wilderness,” that’s this idea of people being wild, but it’s deeper than that. It’s more about struggling to want to be in a mysterious place, or the depths of your subconscious and how hard it is to grasp imagination for this generation. I want people to know there’s this other side of me that’s very in touch with, I don’t know, the animalistic nature of man and woman and the facades that everyone puts up. That’s kind of a representation of the album: the man and woman and the black and white and the opposites of everything, and creating a balance between the two.

Right, I think there’s a part of the album that’s a voice for the misfits, people on the fringe. Or maybe just people who are comfortable with sexuality and vulnerability.

Absolutely, because there has to be a balance. You can’t just be this overly confident person throwing all your ideas out there and being like, “This is the way things are.” You have to be humble and you have to be vulnerable in order to grow and to be optimistic and able to just expose yourself as a whole human being.

Were you worried about the way the cover of the album art would be received at all?

Oh, no. I mean, there’s a reason why we put it out there. We feel like that represents what this album is and who we are and to break down that whole like idea of people pigeonholing us, to just be like, “This is us. This is a part of us and this is us all together and this is what the band is now.”

What do you want a listener to take away, to hear in the difference from Screws Get Loose to Blur the Line?

Maybe just kind of identifying with themselves, being like, “Whoa, I feel that way about myself, and I didn’t even really know I felt that way about myself.” There’s a lot of self-realization in this album on both sides, me and Jessi. The songs we wrote are like, “This is OK. I’m going to show my beauty, all my ugliness and all my fears and all my strengths,” and maybe just for someone to realize that it’s okay to be fucked up, but also be really strong and intelligent, simultaneously. I guess, just self-acceptance.

Not just resting on creepy

“Run from the light” is the sort instruction you’d expect from Chelsea Wolfe. She’s made a career at the spooky edges of drone, metal and folk, and her sound is the stuff of cobwebby hallways, dark forests hiding cursed lovers. The narrative pieces are never direct, but her music exudes a haunting feeling of doom and romance.

The difference with Pain is Beauty is that Wolfe isn’t interested in resting on “creepy.” Building her sound from layers of droning synths, crisp percussion and hypnotic strings, Wolfe harnesses a dark glamour, not too far removed from the sort of misty, doom-laden orchestral power rock of ’80s fantasy films like Ladyhawke or Labyrinth. The Warden” threads an ethereal melody over the industrial drive of programmed beats, juxtaposing expansive beauty with violence and gloom.

There is nothing campy about Wolfe’s conviction, however, and she is more concerned with the weight of the heart than the tingle of the spine. On “The Waves Have Come,” Wolfe howls and harmonizes with reckless abandon. Clocking in at eight minutes, the song is a slow build suite that grows with foggy purpose until it reaches an overwhelming tipping point: “Never to return to me,” Wolfe sings over and over in reverbed layers that die out. It is maybe the most vulnerable and powerful moment in Wolfe’s career.

Clashing pop melodies and squalling feedback, DIY energy with ambitious songwriting

They might come off like the bad boys under the bleachers or the kids skipping class to race cars, but Vacation’s music isn’t some silly pop-punk come on. On Candy Waves, the Cincinnati-based trio cleverly clash pop melodies and squalling feedback, DIY energy with ambitious songwriting. The best moments are the details: Repeated listens may reveal a piano lick coasting in the mix (“Candy Waves”), feedback whines bridging to the chorus (“Cellophone”), a jaunt of tambourine (“SFA”). The lyrics may revel in simple stuff — sunshiny days, making fun of horny politicians — but the combination of punk power and sneaky verve show a band digging past the surface.

Exploring pure hope and pained confused in equal measure

“Undine, make me more naïve,” sings Laura Marling a little more than halfway into her fourth studio album. In the old folklore, Undine was a water nymph that gave up immortality for the love of a man; her act of devotion was met with unfaithfulness and her love’s betrayal with a curse. On Marling’s expansive Once I Was An Eagle, this duality of blind trust and blind wrath mark out the twin poles of a journey that explores pure hope and pained confusion in equal measure.

With Ethan Johns again along for production duties, Marling and her band venture deep into the brambles of love. The first several tracks flow together, drawing the listener into a familiar landscape of open chords, haunting cello, and stripped down percussion. The driving folk-rocker “Master Hunter,” meanwhile, borrows Dylan’s classic sneering kiss-off “It ain’t me, babe” — a pose that melts with the following song, the devastating “Little Love Caster.” Over muted flamenco guitar trills and spellbinding strings, Marling sings “I can’t seem to say I’d like you to stay,” a line that reads as much a tender confessional as casual cruelty.

“Love’s not easy,” Marling concludes on album closer, “Saved These Words.” If it’s a final verdict on Marling’s feelings on the subject, it’s a cautiously hopeful one. After struggling with trust (“I Was an Eagle”), the vagaries of timing (“Take the Night Off”), and regret (“You Know”), she settles on faith. “When you’re ready, into my arms come,” she sings, risks be damned.

Working with adventurous influences to brute, yet majestic ends

A cabin on the side of an active volcano is a captivating image. There, pastoral peace shares space with violent bombast; the world is a fury, a wonder. As a metaphor it’s an exceptional fit for Akron/Family’s music; as a real place, it served as the location from the writing of their last release, 2011′s ecstatic S/T II: The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT. Some two years later the band has come down from the mountain and crawled down into the doom basement (studio) of Seattle producer Randall Dunn. The new songs take aim at familiar targets (harmony, frenzy), but find the band working with an adventurous set of influences to brute, yet majestic ends.

The album flips between prog-psych freak-outs, monastic slow jams, Afro-pop rhythm and noise-addled soul. Reverb drenched vocals, swells of minor-keyed strings, futzed electronics, complex drum rhythms smack against handclaps, jangly guitars and lightly spaced tambourine, and horns. The tracks skid from one time signature or influence to another, but feel of a whole — like some take on American roots by way of a post-industrial Africa invaded by Eastern shamans. On paper, it sounds haphazard, incomplete. But Akron/Family build these disparate parts into something explosive or holy or both, time and again on Sub Verses. There’s no mythic volcano to stamp the narrative; there’s only a radical harmony, divergent strands threading together.

The pure conviction and power in their music converts listeners immediately

Ester Mae Smith and sisters Angela Taylor and Della Daniels have been singing together since childhood, but the way their voices blend sounds much older: singing a cappella at Mt. Mariah Baptist Church in Como, Mississippi, the women harness a stripped-down sincerity. In their voices, God is taken off the pedestal and put in arms’ reach.

“Now let us all go back to that old landmark,” the women sing on the first track of Get an Understanding…, an invitation by a gospel trio molded in the land of the blues. “God is able,” the women insist, in a swaying call-and-response: “He’s so good to me.” Their personal touch makes easy friends with old songs like “Meet Me at the River Jordan,” which reflect a long history of struggle and faith blooming into powerful music. “I had my chance, I made my choice and it’s nobody’s fault but mine,” they call out on the old spiritual; the line is about making a conscious decision to follow god, but when it comes to the Como Mamas we aren’t given as much of a choice: The pure conviction and power in their music converts us immediately.

The heart is fickle, but music, like hope, never fades

Cribbing a line from the Man in Black, Phosphorescent’s Matthew Houck sings of those that “say love is a burning thing.” Whatever that feeling was that Cash knew so well, Houck has never felt it. For him, love’s been “fading,” “fickle,” “a cage [that] calls.” These are old bruises. Houck’s laid them bare in past recordings, playing the gutted bluesman, shambling ghost and beer-soaked crooner. Never has the music played such a majestic counter-point, though. Houck may sing how sick of love he is on “Song for Zula,” but the music betrays him.

Muchacho blooms in these incongruities. Two takes on the sun’s ascent bookend the record with yogic serenity (“Sun Arise! (An Invocation, An Introduction)” and “Sun’s Arising (A Koan, An Exit),” respectively). They’re a primer to the fuzzy emotional place where Houck finds himself. His trademark warble starts out shrouded in soft electronic beats and yearning violins (“Song for Zula”). Then he plays to old strengths, letting lonesome lap steel cozy up to the piano and make room for a swells of horns (“Terror in the Canyons (The Wounded Master)”). There’s a hint of that old spiritual hunger, “so holy and wasted like a prayer in the wind” (“A New Anhedonia”). But even when our ragged guide is facing up to mistakes, the music meets him with tenderness (“Down to Go”).

“I been fucked up and I been a fool,” he sings on standout track, “Muchacho’s Tune.” “Like the shepherd to the lamb, like the wave unto the sand, I fixed myself up and come and be with you.” It’s a promise made knowing full well the heart is fickle, but music, like hope, never fades.

Thoughtful and provocative, with easy-flowing melodies and big hooks

After spending most of her 20s touring like mad and cranking out ragged, playful indie pop, Thao Nguyen settled down in San Francisco for a year’s respite. The break from the typical tour-to-studio-to-tour grind gave her time to explore the city, work with nonprofits (like the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, through which she met track one’s dedicatee, Valeria Bolden) and take a more measured tack toward her writing process. The result is palpable. We The Common is a thoughtful, provocative build on all the band’s strengths of easy-flowing melodies, big hooks and inventive arrangements.

Like all of Nguyen’s work, the record boasts angular guitar lines, percussive crescendos and husky vocals. This time though, producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Explosions in the Sky and Bill Callahan) pulls new threads to the surface: distorted shouts, banjo rolls, swaggering horns, punchy bass lines. The textures range from bustling and complex (“City”) to markedly restrained (“Clouds for Brains”). Title track, “We the Common,” plays at both ends, rolling a droning banjo into a jolly chorus celebration of how “we the common do cry.” “Holy Roller” is an almost jazzy send-up of folk-pop. “Kindness be Conceived,” a duet with Joanna Newsom, puts the two voices with acoustic accompaniment and stops.

“Slowly, we all lay down,” she sings on the album closer, “Age of Ice,” a sweet release after 30 minutes of restless invention. Thao may be mellowing into her new homebase, but she’ll never lose her sense of adventure.

Tenderness and brassy swagger from the rockabilly queen

In 2011, Wanda Jackson had a place in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 29 studio albums to her credit and undoubtedly very little to prove. Even so, the dazzling first lady of rockabilly snagged a date with Jack White, teaming up with him for The Party Ain’t Over, her aptly titled release for his Third Man Records. Just over a year later, Jackson’s back with a new album, Unfinished Business, and a new man at the controls, Americana singer/songwriter Justin Townes Earle. Some people just don’t slow down.

The pair delivers a record that favors tenderness and brassy swagger over production tricks or stunt-casting song selections. It’s a different party than White’s, who exploited the whimsy in having Jackson get radical – cooing a Jimmy Rodgers tune, sure, but also frisking up to Amy Winehouse’s “You Know I’m No Good.” He put Jackson in the middle of calypso beats and scratchy guitars and soaked her vocal in reverb. Earle takes a different tack, laying off of the contrast and focusing on the delivery. Unfinished Business has a welcome session feel, like Jackson’s end of the contract required her to simply do what she does best: show up, put voice to old frustrations, and flirt with new exploits.

To that end, Earle gives Jackson space to ramble. Shuffling drums, honkytonk piano, and strutting riffs act as support beams to songs built on the bedrock of Jackson’s voice. The songs succeed in spades. “Tore Down,” an old Freddie King rag, is a gut-punch of blues. “Am I Even a Memory?” pits Jackson with Earle in a country duet of lonesome hearts. The girl-group pop of “Pushover” is a saucy rebuff of a wannabe flame. Jackson even takes on the gospel with Townes Van Zandt’s “Two Hands.” “I ain’t gonna think about trouble anymore,” she swears on the track, leading us along a clapping beat and joyful harmony only to confess the return of “an old weakness coming on strong” on the next number (“Old Weakness”).

Jackson’s wheelhouse is her knack for putting the last word on these old troubles of the spirit. Her conviction doesn’t require fancy footwork, only sure words. “What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome?” she asks on the Earle penned tune and while there’s certainly no answer, listeners can at least take heart that even Wanda Jackson has unfinished business now and then.

Four tracks of lush sonic exploration

Few records have expressly meditated on the searing pain of loving the dying like The Antlers’ Hospice, which refocused a desperate situation into a singular whole. The story played out over a push-and-pull between straightforward melodies and the creep and crash of experimental texture. The Brooklyn trio’s follow-up, Burst Apart, didn’t replicate the thematic inertia of its forbearer. Instead, the band devoted intricate, electronic post-rock toward more pop-addled tunes. If the album was meant as an answer to the anguish of Hospice, it’s a murky one, prioritizing emotive distance over direct comment. Hospice was a gash; Burst Apart, a band-aid.

Undersea takes that detachment one step further. Clocking in at just over 22 minutes, the EP is four tracks of lush sonic exploration. It’s a dreamscape of slide guitars, bending horns, drowsy vocals and glitchy samples. Album opener “Drift Dive” offers a lazy, percussive groove. “Endless Ladder” hints at oceanic depths, with a billow of keys and robotic whines. Fizzy electronics and percussion cozy up to jazzy horn swells on “Crest.” Closer “Zelda” traps the listener between dreams, swimming through deadpan vocals, trancy synths, muted horns and the rock steady crackle of a snare. The songs flirt with psychedelic blooms, noir-tinged jazz and woozy pop. Whether it marks a permanent shift or a momentary whim is hard to divine.

Thus, when Andy Kaulkin, President of the ANTI- record label, proposed she seek out a few songs for a new album, there was a deep well from which to draw. I Like to Keep Myself in Pain represents two years of work, asking old friends and collaborators to write songs she could infuse with her own country-soul spin. The album features tracks by Freakwater‘s Catherine Irwin, M. Ward, the Magnetic Fields‘ Stephin Merritt, Robyn Hitchcock, Robbie Fulks, The Handsome Family and the late Vic Chesnutt, among others. It’s a masterfully curated work that lets Hogan show off incomparable vocal skill over the melodic groove of a crack band including Booker T. Jones, James Gadson (Beck), Scott Ligon (NRBQ), and Gabe Roth (the Dap-Kings).

eMusic’s Ashley Melzer called up Hogan to talk about collaboration, interpretation and the benefits of keeping yourself in pain.

Reading over the concept for this album and then the list of collaborators you worked with, it’s remarkable. Did you ever feel like you were just dreaming?

It’s pretty amazing, yeah. It’s like waiting to ride the roller coaster and then the lap bar comes down and you’re like, “Well, all right. Here we go.” You just have to throw up your hands and make the best of it. It’s been quite a ride, for sure.

So how did this originally come about? I read something about you charming [ANTI- Label President] Andy Kaulkin at backstage events.

Andy and I…I’ve known him for a long time just because of Neko’s association with ANTI-; Andy comes to a lot of those shows. Then, when he would be in Chicago, he’d come see bands that I was in and hang out. I’ve had so many conversations, like hours-long conversations, with Andy about all different kinds of music. I love to watch him watch music. He gets so into it; his whole body is possessed by it. I’ve always loved the ANTI- record label and if you look at their roster and their output, you can tell that it’s a label motivated by their love of music, directed and informed by their love of music.

So, yeah, Andy came and asked if I would do a record for ANTI- and I thought he was joking, but he was serious. He’s very thoughtful, too, so before he even asked me, he had thought of this approach. I had played with all these people for so many years, so I should, I think as he said, “Call in some favors,” which is not how I think of it at all. I don’t think of these people as owing me anything. That’s why when they did send me songs, I wanted to call my record I’m Not Worthy. It was like a tidal wave of musical love.

It doesn’t seem that different from how you’ve worked before. You’ve always leaned toward singing other people’s songs.

Oh yeah. I’m an interpreter. Definitely. Asking people to write for me, though…the whole thing was fraught with terror. I was scared to write the fan letter. If it was me, I’d have been scared to get it, scared to send the song. I was scared to hear the song. That kind of gets back to the title of my record, I Like to Keep Myself in Pain.

I hadn’t thought of it that way.

To me that title just kind of means, you gotta just keep doing it. You gotta keep hanging your ass out there. You gotta keep going for it, keep taking a chance at failure. The subtext of that song is that it keeps me alive. It’s so tempting to stay in your house and not do anything and stay safe, but I just keep hanging my ass out there like an orangutan in the wind, for better or for worse. How vivid. Sorry everybody.

I’m glad you pointed that out, because the only song on the record you did write, “Golden,” is about that, about how you have to stick with it to make it. How nice to put that on an album of this caliber.

It’s crazy, ’cause yeah, I wrote that for Neko but it is just kind of a nice wish for everybody. Nobody’s more standing there in disbelief than me in that studio with Booker T.

The rumor is you sent out 40-some-odd requests. Did you send them all at once? Or person by person?

I sent a whole bunch of emails. I kind of just took two days to sit in front of my computer and write down what I wanted to say. Before I could lose my nerve, I just kind of boom — just sent them out there. I think I sat on my couch and panted a lot because it was scary.

Vic Chesnutt I didn’t ask for another month or so because I was too afraid. I’d known him for a long time, but I was just too in awe. Then we sang on the same bill on Mountain Stage. I had just seen him and so I finally wrote to Vic. He’s one of the first people that sent me a song, and what a song it is.

Did anyone send you something that you were taken aback by? Or you weren’t sure what you were going to do with it?

Well, people have asked, “What about people whose songs you didn’t put on the record?” But anybody that I wrote to is in the same position — I mean, I contribute to a lot of people’s projects whether live or on record, and I always say that I’m there to serve the song and what the song needs. I can go record with somebody for two days and when I hear the record all that’s on there is an “ooooh.” It’s just whatever the project needs. I always say, “Use some, none or all.” It’s not going to hurt my feelings because it’s not about me or us, it’s about the music and the songs. I pretty much believe that everybody I wrote to, and included in this project would understand that sometimes it just isn’t the right song for the right thing.

I’d also say for this record, it’s like you can go to the dog shelter and think you know what kind of dog you’re going to get, but the dog just picks you. It’s kind of like that. I want to get all the songs out of the shelter eventually and record them, if that makes any crazy sense. Anyhow, I would hope that anybody that I wrote to I was confident that they approached music in the same way — that the song is the most important piece and it kind of tells you what to do. The songs, I just tried them all on and that’s what I do with any cover song, any song I’m going to try to interpret. I just try to wear it around like clothes and see what fits and roll up the sleeves and fix it how I want it. These are just the ones that ended up working for that week and that time and this record. There’ll be another ANTI- record and so maybe we’ll see what happens.

That’s interesting, because I was curious, when you ask for a song, do you ask for anything more then just lyrics or a demo? Do you talk to the songwriter about their intentions?

Well, I wanted to give people freedom, but I also know that when I do write songs, I do best with parameters. If you start with a whole blank page, it’s like, “Well now what do I do?” You need to have like, “This song needs to have this in it or these elements or we’re shooting for this mood.” When we first were soliciting folks, we thought we were going to do a record that was more kind of uptown sounding — like with strings, Dionne Warwick style. I talk sometimes about that period in music where everything suddenly had a harpsichord — ’64-’72, the Lurch period in music with the Addams’ Family, Dark Shadows influence, when everybody had a puffy shirt. I like that kind of baroque, gothic pop. I sort of said that in the letter and it went to people that know me, people I’ve worked with in one-way or another, so they know the sort of stuff I like. But I was open to anything. I got all kinds. I think John Wesley Harding and Chris Von Sneidern wrote me some song about Technicolor pants and all kinds of things. I’m open, I mean, like I said, I like to keep myself in pain, I like to keep myself open. I don’t ever say no without checking it out.

I didn’t realize writer Jack Pendarvis [who wrote the lyrics for "We Can't Have Nice Things"] was also a songwriter. Why did you write to him?

I’ve known Jack since I was with Jody Grind. We used to play Mobile and his band Zydeco Elvis would open for us. He played accordion. He actually wrote me a song like in 1992. We used to do it live. It was called “Blue Magic.” I love that song. I think he’s a great writer. I love his writing. So when I was sending letters, I sent it to people who might just write lyrics or might just write music. I thought it would be cool to mix up some lyrics with something somebody that just does instrumental music wrote. In that case it worked out with Andrew Bird. I sent him some of Jack’s lyrics and Jack, speaking of country weepers, he thought based on the lyrics that it was going to sound more like a George Jones song. Bird took it uptown. I love how it turned out and I love putting people that I love together like that.

I read you were in a children’s band with John Langford. Did that inform your song with him?

I’ve known Langford…He produced my first Bloodshot record. Actually, when Langford heard my version he said, “Oh, it sounds like the Bay City Rollers.” I was like, “What are you talking about?” I had all these mixing notes for all the other songs, but the only note I had for his song just said, “Make it smell like beer,” because he has gusto. He could call me up and say, “Hogan, meet me down at 63rd and Kedzie because we’re going to play on the street corner,” and I wouldn’t even have to ask what songs, I would just say, “All right, I’ll be there,” because he has that attitude like I have: Let’s just do it. That kind of informs my treatment of his song. Make it smell like beer — sing like pirates and smell like beer. I like the gusto of that one.

I love working with him in Wee Hairy Beasties. I love that band except when you get in a kids’ band, you forget that a lot of times your sound check is going to be at six in the morning, not six at night because you do these early children’s shows. There were some painful mornings for The Wee Hairy Beasties, but I hope we make another record someday because I love it. I had fun writing songs with them too.

It’s neat the way the whole record is, in a way, a map of your history. Was it also a way for you to employ all these tools you’ve acquired through the years?

Oh, for sure. I haven’t made a solo record in a long time but I’ve been ridiculously busy doing all different kinds of music and working in all different capacities and getting thrown into these crazy situations and singing with Neko and doing things with her and working more writing vocal arrangements — getting free reign from Neko to do that has been really cool. Now, I get called in on stuff where it’s not just, “Hey sing this part, it goes like this,” it’s “Do what you do,” so I get to invent stuff. So yeah, I used everything, all my listening skills, my singing skills, interpersonal skills, bartending skills. The only thing I didn’t do was paint a house that week, but I could have.

The Sisters tiptoe toward R&B and electronic music

After spending three records exploring the expanses of disco and pop, the Scissor Sisters are changing their tune, moving the cabaret dramatics that have long informed their music and live show toward a less nostalgic sound. On Magic Hour, instead of wearing ’70s influences on their sparkly sleeves, the Sisters tiptoe toward R&B and electronic music. The shift is in part thanks to co-producers, German electronic producer Alex “Boys Noize” Ridha and Scottish DJ/producer Calvin Harris, whose past work accounts for some of the album’s genre-hopping and synth-heavy breaks.

There’s also a lineup of unexpected guests: Pharrell Williams and Diplo make songwriting appearances with “Inevitable” and “Year of Living Dangerously,” respectively; hip-hop bombshell Azealia Banks takes a verse on “Shady Love,” an unabashed play for radio charts; and John Legend provides the album’s most obvious hook, “Baby Come Home,” a soul tune amped up with a stomping beat and funky piano riffs.

The band’s appetite for adventure makes for a dizzying array of styles. Anthemic single, “Only the Horses,” lays a sugary pop melody over trancey dancefloor pop. The diversity is arresting but, lest anyone fear the Sisters have abandoned their roots, Ana Matronic’s percussive, Latin flared, drag-ready, “Let’s Have a Kiki” is there to calm. It’s as bitchy and playful as anything they’ve released and, better yet, makes as good an excuse for vogue-ing as any song in recent memory.

Delivering little daggers with a defiant lack of gloom

Norah Jones has always had a certain cool maturity. She’s spent the 10 years since her debut wooing audiences into submission with her soft, soulful vocals and gentle piano trills. So you can imagine the shock when she threatens to kill someone on “Miriam,” a track from her new record Little Broken Hearts.

“I’m going to say your name until you die,” she sings with a sort of malevolent patience, “I’m going to smile when I take your life.” The song is a slow burn, buried deep on an album full of these little aberrant moments. To be sure, Little Broken Hearts is a break-up record. Guided by producer Brian Burton (better known as Danger Mouse), Jones and her band occupy a middle ground between indie and jazz — like Feist, without the falsetto or the singsong intimacy.

The music is well-suited to Jones’s lyrics, which are as cutting as they are confessional. “You don’t have to tell the truth, because if you do I’ll tell it too,” she advises on “Say Goodbye”; “How does it feel to be the one shut out?” she asks with a strange satisfaction on the upbeat single “Happy Pills.” For all the emotional torment these little daggers imply, Jones delivers them with a defiant lack of gloom. The record succeeds because it explores desperate (and maybe violent) emotions while keeping Jones’s signature unflappability intact. These songs are the complaints of a jilted ex, as delivered by a commanding leading lady.

A delightful, atypical run at heart-worn territory

Typical breakup records run the gamut of soul-crushingly sad to fuming. A songwriter weeps over an acoustic guitar or rages through a riff and we all come away identifying with the jilted. Sees the Light, the sophomore effort from La Sera, aka Katy Goodman (Vivian Girls, All Saints Day), is a delightful, atypical run at that heart-worn territory. Goodman spins out 10 garage-pop tunes that dismiss heartbreak in favor of charming melodies and hazy guitars. “I love my life without you,” she sings in the first seconds of album opener “Love That’s Gone”; “I don’t want you to be my man,” she clarifies a few tracks later on “It’s Over Now.” Goodman’s skill at cutting to the quick makes for a round of hook-happy songs: Fat chance forgetting the buzzy flurry of “Break My Heart” or the tongue-in-cheek whimsy of “Real Boy.” There’s a lightness to her touch, a sort of best-of-luck subversion that would rather indulge in sunny California vibes than emotional havoc. Breaking up, it seems, ain’t so hard to do for punk chicks with pop dreams.

These days, the two rent a 150-year-old farmhouse that sits just across the way from their construction venture. Erecting the cabin is slow work. In that way, it’s an apt mirror of their other job: building an audience for their striking indie folk tunes. Their songs are an artful assembly of elegant melodies, bowed strings, crisp guitar, and close boy/girl harmonies. The music resonates the pastoral ease and DIY resolve of their off-stage life.

With a new album, The Clearing, out on Dead Oceans, eMusic’s Ashley Melzer touched base with Moore and Tacular to talk influences, friendships, and the song that makes them cringe.

The Carter Family, “Keep on the Sunny Side”

Beth Tacular: I think my mom used to sing this to me or something.

I chose this because The Carter Family released some of the very first recorded Southern music. Given that you both live in the woods in North Carolina I wondered if you consider yourselves a Southern band? How much is it an influence?

Phil Moore: I really don’t know the Carter Family that well. I know their music sounds like this, and I’ve actually heard this song several times, but I don’t pay attention to them. I’m from Iowa so I’m not Southern at all and I don’t feel like we’re a very Southern band. Do you think we’re a Southern band?

Tacular: No. There’s probably something…I guess the constant harmonies throughout the song? I don’t know. You definitely moved down here because of the music scene here, but it wasn’t for the bluegrass music.

Moore: Or the old-time music. It was more Archers of Loaf and Merge Records.

Tacular: Polvo.

Moore: Much less Carter Family. This kind of music, I haven’t really even discovered very much. That whole style of old-time music I guess I would probably would never have found if I hadn’t moved down here fromIowa. I feel like it influences our music kind of very little, honestly.

Tacular: I think because we started out playing really acoustic instruments and were just trying to be really simple and simplify the instruments we use – we just had a bass drum and an accordion and violin and classical guitar – I think people looked at it and thought because of the sound and the timbre of these instruments, it reminded them of old-time or of folk music. I guess it was more folky then, but I think the structures of the songs and the kinds of music we listened to in our lives were all over the place and more diverse. Phil was in a band right before Bowerbirds that was doing more, how would you describe that music?

Moore: It was experimental. Everything had to be a little weirder than it probably even needed to be. It was louder with sonic weirdness always happening and never really settling into anything. The Carter Family probably wouldn’t have approved at all.

Tacular: But then when you started doing the songs for Bowerbirds it was in sort of the same vein of that, but then you just wanted to play like prettier songs on the acoustic guitar with vocal harmonies.

Moore: Basically I wanted to be like the Carter Family except I had no idea who the Carter Family was.

Bon Iver, “Holocene”

Moore: Oh yeah. Buddy boy, Justin. I love this song. There’s something about this, like every song on this album. But this song, all the instrument choices that he’s using – slide guitar and vibraphone and that really pretty Nashville guitar and his voice – everything is just really warm and creates this really warm space that’s kind of infectious, I think. People have to love this. It’s funny, I was talking to an acquaintance the other day and he was saying how he hates indie rock because it has all these clangs and bells and stuff like that. He was like, “I don’t like music unless it has a rude rippin’ electric guitar solo in there” or whatever. He’s like 35 and probably liked Van Halen or whatnot – which I like too, but I said, “Oh you should listen to Bon Iver, because it’s like totally placid the whole time, everything is like really tranquil, soothing.” I told him he’d love it. I don’t know if he took me seriously though, because he knew I looked like a total indie-rock nerd.

Tacular: He didn’t listen to anything you said.

Moore: He was like, “Oh alright, buddy, that’s cool.”

You can’t be trusted.

Moore: No.

Tacular: Justin actually watched our cat when we were writing the first [Bowerbirds] songs.

Moore: Oh! That’s right.

Tacular: He had just moved here, also. We were living in this abandoned schoolhouse that we were squatting in and Phil had a job bird watching. When we were living there, a feral cat attacked our cat and then it kept going out and getting sick. Anyway, we brought it back and asked Justin to watch him, so he did. He’s a nice friend.

Moore: And that was when he was sick for quite a while, he was bedridden for a little while and so Moosh – that’s the name of our cat, Moosh – and him like totally bro-ed down and hung out every day.

Tacular: Snuggled a lot.

Moore: Yeah, snuggled a lot, which is perfect because that’s all Moosh ever wanted to do too.

Tacular: It worked out perfectly.

So you’re saying “Holocene” is about Moosh?

Tacular: Yeah, it’s probably influenced by Moosh.

Moore: There are a lot of things I think were very influenced – Moosh influenced a lot of Bon Iver’s music, because that was before even the first record, or that was during his first writing of his first record.

Tacular: Right before. Yeah, that’s probably the perfect inspiration. He inspired us and then he inspired Justin. We should get a picture of him and make a family tree of everyone that Moosh inspired.

It’s cool to keep in touch with Justin. I feel like he and Phil were both breaking up with their bands at the same time – [Justin with] DeYarmond Edison and then Phil broke up with Ticonderoga because one of the members was being problematic at the time. They were both trying to figure out what they wanted to do musically. We had recorded our first EP and like a year later after we put that out, Justin went to the cabin. We became friends after he moved here. He and Phil were talking – he was actually going to join that band,Ticonderoga. They were going to restart. It was going to be Phil, Mark [Paulson] (who’s in our band) and Justin. The Bon Iver songs were going to be a part of it and they were all going to write together. Then he came back with an entire album and it was like, that’s what he should do. I think he realized that’s what he was going to do and it was beautiful and really cool. Then we got to open for him on tour, which was one of the most fun tours we’ve ever been on.

Moore: If you want to just play the rest of the Bon Iver record, that’s fine too.

Tacular: We got to hear it when we were at April Base actually. The vinyl came in the mail and Brian Joseph was secretly listening to it and then he played it for us and we got to sneak preview it. It wasn’t out until…

Moore: June 21st, my birthday.

Tacular: That’s right. So that was really neat. We actually stole it. We stole it from the computer and put it on ours and kept it really secret.

Moore: We didn’t tell Brian.

Tacular: We didn’t tell anybody because you’re really not supposed to do that. We didn’t want to leak it. We made sure not to leak it, but it got leaked another way.

Alice Coltrane, “Journey In Satchidananda”

Moore: I love this. We play this actually. When we’re sitting around and we’re like, “Man, what should we play? I don’t know. Lets set a vibe.” Then it’s like: Alice Coltrane.

Tacular: This is what we put on when we’re making dinner.

Moore: Or when we have people over.

Tacular: All the pictures of her, she looks so magnificent. She’s always sitting in a crazy chair and has all kinds of stuff �

Moore: Drapery, clothes…

Tacular: It’s really awesome.

Moore: Why did you pick this song?

I get the feeling this kind of music is an inspiration somehow.

Moore: I don’t know how [you did], but definitely. Our music is definitely way more square than this. There are verses and choruses and the musicians play what they play on the album. There are no jam moments at all in any of our stuff, but definitely John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins and Alice Coltrane and Charles Mingus and all those jazz moguls, we’ve been listening to for a long time.

Tacular: We watch a lot of jazz documentaries and our drummer studied jazz in college – our new drummer.

Moore: Though we’re always like, “Play it like rock!”

But I feel there’s often a vibe to your songs and there are a lot of interesting switches or time-signature changes.

Moore: Yeah, there are time-signature changes or skipped measures and those are totally not planned at all. In the writing process, those are improv-ed I guess. It’s like, “Oh no, it sounds way better if I just go straight to here, from here,” and that’ll be a measure of three, or usually more a measure of two in a sea of fours. That’s definitely done from a feeling, I think, versus from a technical standpoint.

Tacular: It’s probably also because we listen to other world music, like African music and Latin music, etc. I think part of it, for this song anyway, is that it’s not really that rhythmic, but has this soundscape of just beautiful bells and harp. That’s actually something that we thought about a lot on the new album is creating soundscapes. “What is the sound that this song should have?” There are slightly different sounds throughout the album on the different songs.

Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al”

Moore: I feel like I can say this, because Paul Simon is old enough to take criticism from the Bowerbirds: This is one of my favorite albums of all time, but this is my least favorite song on this album, by far. I love every other song on this album, but this song…

Tacular: He loves it. He obsessively talks about Paul Simon.

Moore: This song makes me cringe. I hate this song.

I don’t know if I’m really happy or really sad that I picked it. I think happy.

Moore: Seriously, every other song – it’s funny, because my dad and I and one of my dad’s good friends were driving together on this family trip to a ranch in California called Rancho Siempre Verde, the Always Green Ranch, right outside of San Francisco. We were driving home after a whole day spent on the coast. It’s one of my most vivid moments as a child: driving home as the sun was setting – it was civil twilight, you know. Driving through the foothills and listening to this album for the first time. And I just remember being totally mesmerized, except I hated this song. Even back then, I did not like this song.

Tacular: I hated it as a child too. That’s probably why we’re together.

Rihanna, “Rude Boy”

Moore: Oh is this Rihanna? Yeah, yeah. The beat is awesome on this and Rihanna is awesome. Is this a newer one?

It’s not so new. It’s been a couple years.

Tacular: I’ve heard it before. We were going to do a cover of “Umbrella” on tour back in the day.

Moore: “Umbrella” was like…

Tacular: The best song ever.

Moore: When we were on tour with Bon Iver, “Umbrella” was like the song that you would get out of your car…

Tacular: And you’d be singing it constantly.

Moore: There was no escape. I love this stuff. I mean, I’m actually working on another project right now that has more that kind of beat and that like measure of syncopated snare drum sounding thing.

Tacular: We really love drum ‘n’ bass and dubstep and hip-hop – love that music and love to go dancing. I used to be a raver a long time ago. I took Phil to a rave. I guess, my last one.

Do you really have to get secret directions to raves?

Tacular: Some of them, yeah. I lived in London for a little bit and that was right around 2000 and London was sort of the drum ‘n’ bass center of the world. It was awesome because there were all these “free parties.” You had to know about them by word of mouth. You would call the day of the party and find out where it was. There was this one that I went to on New Year’s Eve 2000. It was in the factory area ofLondon in an abandoned factory building. There were 13 floors and they had 13 sound systems, each with several DJs so the music went all night. It was different than the ones I’ve been to in theUS where they were in clubs. They didn’t really have any lights and you could go on each floor and there was different music. You could go on the roof and see downtown London.

Moore: They had generators, right? For each DJ booth? That gives you an idea of how loud the music was.

Tacular: You couldn’t hear the generators. It was just super loud. People had come in before and put graffiti on the walls of cops, so you thought there were cops there when you first arrived. It was neat because the scene in there was really diverse in terms of what people were dressing and looking like. There were hippie-type people and punks and kids and dogs and…I felt bad for the dogs because of how loud it was. I just really, really thought that was super fun.

Moore: I was into that sort of thing, but more like Aphex Twin or Tricky or Portishead or music like that back in the day.

Tacular: I think that stuff informs our thinking about rhythm.

Moore: We love to dance, basically, is what it comes down to.

Tacular: We like all kinds of music. Then we decided we’re doing Bowerbirds. Once you start touring…we toured for three years straight where we were just playing this quiet, pretty music that’s kind of melancholy or whatever. It’s fun to do that some of the time, but sometimes it’s just like you’re in a van all day and then you get out and you’re like, “Now I don’t want to play quiet music, I just want to dance or something,” your body’s like “Ahhh!”

Black humor and brooding grooves

There’s the bend of slack-keyed guitar, a rumbling bass line, a steady beat on the toms and then it’s “hate at first sight” and “a shrug and a kiss,” in a psychedelic swoon called “Darling Divine.” The track is a proper opener for Royal Baths’ sophomore effort, an album of both black humor and brooding grooves. Jeremy Cox and Jigmaer Baer, the core of the band, have gone from Bay Area garage-kids to Brooklyn-based sulkers. The band’s sound, a bluesy, Velvet Underground-esque snarl, is anchored by leering vocal melodies. Baer’s deadpan baritone and Cox’s disquieting falsetto meet and trade come-ons over throbbing rhythms and shoegaze murk. “I am a black sheep and Jesus knows,” they sing on the chorus to “Black Sheep,” “I have learned to laugh at the black in my soul.” The flirty gloominess of the lyric is typical of their heavily reverbed repartee. However grim the music’s timbre, the Royal Baths capture the mumble and moan of big city troubles without deflating their wit.

Tapping into the deep well of Americana

With Nothing Here Seems Strange, Buxton joins the ranks of folk/rock outfits that prove the deep well of Americana still has a few untapped springs. Nothing Here is swelling with boy/girl harmonies, sweeping strings and a shortwave radio texture that swaths lead singer Sergio Trevino’s voice to moody effect. Flare for ambience isn’t the band’s only trick, though. For every finger-picked guitar or lilting melody, there’s a counter balance: a wailing lead riff (“Down in the Valley”), a shuffling beat (“Lynchburg Ferry”), a breakout jam session (“Broke from Bread”). Whatever elegance they conjure is cluttered with distortion and verve more befitting garage rockers than a group of poetically-minded Texans. Their focus as tunesmiths results in a thankful lack of attitude. No smack of nostalgia overcomes the pastoral wilt of “Riverbed.” No indie pretension infects the throwback charm of “Boy of Nine.” The songs hang on artful construction and beguiling vocal delivery. A seemingly throwaway chorus like, “You were down and you were out and you were so torn up inside that you begged me not to look you in the eye,” attains a certain clumsy intimacy thanks to Trevino’s earnest vocal. The woozy pull of strings on “Body Count,” the album’s closer, is an alluring counterpoint to the gloomy narrative. “Nothing here seems strange,” sings Trevino on the track, “cause there’s always been an evil and there’s always been a people that never change.” Grabbing the album title from the lyric is an apt crack at wisdom, mingling instrumental wit, bewitching vocals and complex textures is an even better one.

Hitting a sweet spot with off-the-cuff emotional honesty

Shuffle through the back catalog of Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter Ingrid Michaelson and you’re bound to feel a bout of déjà vu. Flashbacks to the lovestruck halls of Grey’s Anatomy’s Mercy Hospital, voices of American Idol participants past, and that commercial you can’t remember but can’t stop humming are bound to appear. There’s no question: Michaelson excels at licensing. There’s also no doubt she wipes the floor with any pop melody that springs to mind. The secret to her charm may be her way with off-the-cuff emotional honesty. A casual observation like the way “we hate the rain when it fills up our shoes,” but “love when it washes our cars” is paralleled with thoughts of love filling up the room or leaving us to “curse the stars” (“How We Love”). Other songwriters wring their hands over how to craft the perfect enigmatic turn of phrase, but Michaelson simply burrows into glimmering simplicity: “It’s cold outside, but I’m just fine. You are mine to keep warm,” she sings in “Keep Warm.” Pithy lyrics that are often adorable and always ear-catching are nothing new (see: “The Way I Am” from her debut). What is new is the range of texture and ambition. Anthemic opener “Fire” features a glut of strings; the saucy “Black and Blue” hangs on the steady slap of the percussion; pop/rock single “Ghost” is a bittersweet swell of vocals, keys and strings. Each track features an orchestral frill or vocal lilt that adds a layer of complexity. Human Again may not depend on the sweet shrift that’s so characterized her repertoire so far, but it hits a sweet spot nonetheless.

Marrying authenticity with rational honesty

Take a moment to acknowledge the obvious: A relative newcomer and slim, white rapper has released his first proper LP on Eminem’s Shady imprint. Now, get over it. Obviously, any white boy attempting to navigate said terrain better bring his A-Game. Luckily, with Radioactive, not only does Yelawolf assert himself as a confident and competent rapper, he also offers up a complex personal narrative colored by masculine posturing (“Hard White,” “Let’s Roll”), good intentions (“Good Girl”), nostalgia (“Radio”) and abandonment issues (“The Last Song,” directed at the father he never knew).

Beyond merely amassing a batch of radio-baiting songs, Yelawolf’s lyrics reflect the culture clash of class issues. Other rappers go rogue in the face of that rift, hyper-sexualizing their lyrics and playing into their outsider status. Yelawolf’s approach marries authenticity with rational honesty. “They don’t want me to lie, but they don’t wanna hear the truth,” he sings in the hook for “Everything I Love the Most,” a song as much about living up to societal expectations as jovially rebelling against them. Minutes later in a verse on “Radio,” he cuts to the quick, defending rap narratives with the pithy wisdom that, “If Eric Clapton can sing about cocaine and there’s no harm, then [he] can write about guns and rap about girls and sing about money and cars.” This isn’t a record about girls or gangster cars, though. It’s about growing up “white trash,” hustling his way to the top, and never forgetting the struggle. “Sometimes the truth is dark, but the darkness sparks the truest art,” he rhymes on “Radio.” Offering such pithy wisdom is smart; imbedding it in a record stacked with single-ready tracks is clever and unexpectedly meaningful for listeners who take the time listen for more than explosive word flow — not shabby for a slim newcomer (but, surely in part thanks to the slim, Shady veteran helping guide the ship).

Portland folkie sings a lovely batch of children's songs

For seven albums now, Laura Veirs has played the role of ethereal folk-nik to the Portland indie set with aplomb and pitch-perfect vocals. With her finger-picked melodies and ruminating lyrics — usually snuggled in guitar chimes, horn filigrees and whatever her superproducer/husband Tucker Martine brings to the table — she’s often threaded the needle of being pastoral without being merely boring. On her latest, Tumble Bee, Veirs tries her hand at children’s music. The tunes are a mix of traditional reels (“The Fox,” “All the Pretty Horses”), standards from folkies like Ruth Crawford Seeger and Woody Guthrie, and contemporary gems (notably, the title track by long-time collaborator Karl Blau). Smartly, Veirs and Martine reign in the flair on these songs, banking instead on the sweet economy or physical propulsion of the arrangements. “Jump Down Spin Around,” a song first made famous by Harry Belafonte, explodes thanks to a particularly excited performance by Veirs and her chorus of friends. The traditional “All the Pretty Little Horses” is thoughtfully lulling. Guest spots from talented chaps like Bela Fleck (who plays on “King Kong Kitchie Kitchie Ki-Me-O”) and the Decemberists’ Colin Meloy (who trades verses on “Soldier’s Joy”) add communal charm to an already lovely batch of tunes.

The Sisters tiptoe toward R&B and electronic music

After spending three records exploring the expanses of disco and pop, the Scissor Sisters are changing their tune, moving the cabaret dramatics that have long informed their music and live show toward a less nostalgic sound. On Magic Hour, instead of wearing ’70s influences on their sparkly sleeves, the Sisters tiptoe toward R&B and electronic music. The shift is in part thanks to co-producers, German electronic producer Alex “Boys Noize” Ridha and Scottish DJ/producer Calvin Harris, whose past work accounts for some of the album’s genre-hopping and synth-heavy breaks.

There’s also a lineup of unexpected guests: Pharrell Williams and Diplo make songwriting appearances with “Inevitable” and “Year of Living Dangerously,” respectively; hip-hop bombshell Azealia Banks takes a verse on “Shady Love,” an unabashed play for radio charts; and John Legend provides the album’s most obvious hook, “Baby Come Home,” a soul tune amped up with a stomping beat and funky piano riffs.

The band’s appetite for adventure makes for a dizzying array of styles. Anthemic single, “Only the Horses,” lays a sugary pop melody over trancey dancefloor pop. The diversity is arresting but, lest anyone fear the Sisters have abandoned their roots, Ana Matronic’s percussive, Latin flared, drag-ready, “Let’s Have a Kiki” is there to calm. It’s as bitchy and playful as anything they’ve released and, better yet, makes as good an excuse for vogue-ing as any song in recent memory.