Get to know these local album releases

La Guerre

Rare and Collectible Spirits

Let’s face it: The whole synth-pop-fronted-by-a-delicate-voiced-female-singer thing is a niche genre on the verge of being pummeled to death by a bunch of would-be sensitive starlets who believe that distortion makes up for quality. It’s a shame because, at one point, I had great love for Oh Land, Beach House, Lana Del Rey, Cults and Lorde. Then Top 40 swooped in, crushing everything good and pure in its greedy jaws.

Some artists remain outliers on that musical trajectory, which was once so promising. Local singer-songwriter Katlyn Conroy is one of them. When she isn’t providing backup vocals for Cowboy Indian Bear, Conroy is busy crafting thoughtful songs for her solo project, La Guerre. The latest effort is Rare and Collectible Spirits, a full-length collection of ambient songs that seep out of speakers like mist from the edge of a forest.

Spirits is synth-heavy, but Conroy isn’t patching potholes with electronic filler. There is real substance here: purposeful and reflective lyrics. Check me out like a library book/Read the summary and be done with me, Conroy sings mournfully on “Feel It.” The album title is derived from “Not People,” on which Conroy delivers her sinister thesis: a desire to collect spirits, devour them and leave a hollow person behind. She interlaces these intangible ideas with references to real places and dates, but nothing ever quite lines up; the song “Lawrence, Kansas” seems to refer more to a state of mind than to the town itself.

Spirits soars smoothly — almost too smoothly. With 15 tracks, Conroy runs the risk of sameness. Playing in the background, Spirits can sound repetitive over 35 minutes. Yet Conroy’s voice saves her. She exhibits an astounding vocal power, pushing skyward on “I Remember” and nearly to a breaking point on “Feel It.” She scales down easily to a soothing alto, but she’s still hard to ignore.

— Natalie Gallagher

Old Sound

Rain Follows the Plow

Old Sound is dead-set on making music that sounds, well, old. The three members — mandolin player and guitarist Grady Keller, bassist Greg Herrenbruck and guitarist Chad Brothers — have been playing together for more than a decade, and though they are far from retirement age, they seem to relish a musical style that predates them.

The band’s debut record, Rain Follows the Plow, opens with 20 seconds of vintage circus sounds before fading into “Shell Game,” a cryptic ballad with Keller handling the lead vocals and Herrenbruck and Brothers harmonizing on his heels. The sparse strings and echoing lyrics have a Celtic energy to them — a mood that is ripped apart two songs later, when “Two Midnights” breaks into fast-paced fingerpicking madness, aided by producer Phil Wade’s banjo.

Where Rain Follows the Plow could lumber along on old-timey, town-square-ready songs, Keller and company offer a few surprises. The hissing cicadas that fade in and out on “Little Wrecking Ball” set up the desolate melody beautifully (thoughts of Miley Cyrus are far from the mind), and Brothers’ singing falls to a hushed, rough whisper. The rain and wind chimes on “Train Station” give way to handclaps, foot stomps and Herrenbruck’s rumbling bellow.

It’s the picking style, though, that sets Rain Follows the Plow apart from a host of other folk albums. Keller’s mandolin playing is masterful — at times, he seems to be playing a different instrument entirely — and Brothers’ chords lap over one another like waves in a cheerful stream. It’s a nuanced collection of drugstore remedies: Plow assuages any headache, calms any painful maladies and stirs you out of any dusty depression. — N.G.

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Truckstop Honeymoon

The Madness of Happiness

Bluegrass-driven husband-and-wife teams are a dime a dozen in folk, but Lawrence’s Mike and Katie West, of Truckstop Honeymoon, have very few cares about what other people are doing. They’re plenty busy in their own world — and it’s a quaint, cozy one, filled with inside jokes, homemade fun and a few mean guitar riffs.

That’s what you’ll find on the duo’s latest full-length, The Madness of Happiness. The track listing practically speaks for itself, with songs like “Home Is Not a Hotel,” “Watching the Weather” and “Sunday in Ponca City.” It’s a delightfully idiosyncratic collection, and the Wests know it. The Madness of Happiness is filled with stories about what it means to love with heart and humor — something that the couple has in spades.

They isolate moments of marital drudgery and turn them into something fun and joyful, as in the album opener, “List of Chores,” in which they simultaneously warn each other: Don’t look at me like I’m just one more thing you gotta do on your list of chores/I’m the one you love, the one you adore. Later, on “Home Is Not a Hotel,” the couple note the differences between their usual roadside housing and their actual one: If you break something, no one will bill you, but no one will fix it unless you will, and will you?

Where other, less creative souls might find these subjects dull, Truckstop Honeymoon sees a deep pull of material. Truckstop Honeymoon tours often, and the Wests take their four young children along for the ride. They discuss the mania of living on the road with a troupe like that in “Couch Surfing With a Family of Six,” a tongue-in-cheek warning to any concertgoers who might be willing to offer them lodging for the night.

Separately, they are excellent singers; together, the Wests are dynamite. Mike has a comfortable, tavern-born throatiness, a perfect complement to Katie’s fiery, top-of-the-mountain voice. Between that and the array of instruments — banjo, mandolin, upright bass, glockenspiel and plenty more, all in a terrific jumble — the songs on Happiness seem designed for barroom sing-alongs and family-friendly picnics. Before you know it, the album’s 49 minutes are past, your detour listening to the tales of Truckstop Honeymoon over — until you press Play and enjoy the ride once more. — N.G.

My Oh My

Your Heart Not Mine

There are quite a few things that My Oh My does very well on its debut, Your Heart Not Mine. Lead singer A.M. Merker has a certain booze-drenched roughness to his voice, the kind that always sounds so good when paired with a rollicking piano and some driving guitar chords, of which My Oh My offers plenty. It’s an album made for warm weather and drinking with the windows open.

Christin Kuchem-Logan and Sarah Dolt are the backup singers, and sometimes their additions work — as on the powerful title track, “Your Heart Not Mine,” an anthemic show closer if there ever was one — and sometimes they’re unnecessary. On “Whiskey Pillow,” the oohs and ahhs feel out of place in an otherwise raucous tune. This is a small complaint and one that is easily forgiven; overall, the women are a perky reinforcement in songs that might otherwise be lost to wallowing and dirt kicking.

The lyrics on Your Heart Not Mine aren’t anything we haven’t heard before: drinking too much, loving too hard and trying to get life right. It’s everything you’d expect from a band that has no qualms branding itself as an Americana act. To that end, My Oh My accomplishes everything it sets out to do in creating a feel-good, alt-country album that evokes the sepia-toned summers of the 1970s, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Don’t we often wish for times past? And My Oh My hands them over with a reassuring smile. — N.G.

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CS Luxem

June Igloo

Oils

Total Oils USA

(Split release, cassette and digital)

The recordings on both sides of this cassette from Lawrencians CS Luxem and Oils are warm as sunshine. The seven quietly beautiful songs on Luxem’s side of the tape manage to pack a lot of power into simple arrangements. Opener “For Now” is a drone of instruments and voices that lead into the magical harmonies of “Goat Ghost.” Several of the other songs follow this quiet-power formula, although “Born Down Bobby” and “With the Dogs” change things up a pinch — the former with a great loping bounce, the latter with Soweto rhythms and guitar.

CS Luxem’s closing song, “Bank Robbing Son of a Bitch,” eschews everything but unaltered vocals and guitar, and leads well into the first cut of Oils’ Total Oils USA side, “The Town,” which leaves in the “check, check” opening of the recording. It’s as if the musicians wanted to provide as open a recording as possible. Oils’ side, though, isn’t nearly as interesting at first as CS Luxem’s.

It’s a shame, considering that the band is known live for stretching out and making the most of sonic textures, but the recordings here are pretty straightforward — until you hit the end of “Rain.” It’s a psychedelic fadeout that sets up the sheer wall of feedback that opens “Big Bear,” which proceeds to warp your mind and fade out in another wail of fuzz.
— Nick Spacek

Be/Non

Ran

Be/Non has always been a musical chameleon of a project. Anytime you listen to one of its releases, you’re never certain what you’ll get. The first few tracks on Ran are basic indie pop, and for the first few minutes, it seems that Ran is going to be the tamest Be/Non album to date. Ever so gradually, however, the tracks evolve.

Be/Non introduces tape loops on “No Plaster,” then briefly rocks a Black Sabbath breakdown on “Rainforest Sweep.” Then, halfway through, you’re listening to the super-Ween-y “Staring Contest With a Psychic Cow.” It’s a fun tune, coming after the psychedelic jam “More Than Enough.” But when one considers the ominous throbbing bass of “Euro (Moi Ou Toi)” and “God, When It’s Lovey Dove” that follows, “Psychic Cow” can be seen only as a harbinger of dark things to come.

Tracks for Ran were recorded between 1998 and 2006, with “More Than Enough” recorded between spring 1998 and summer 2004. That’s six years for one song. It all makes sense, though, when you listen to album closer “The Moisturizing Aquifer Resurfaced,” which is layer upon layer of synths, guitar, bass, and vocal effects. It helps if you consider Brodie Rush to be Kansas City’s Frank Zappa — he’s a man who’s never content with what he has done, and what’s coming next is always best. You just have to keep up. — N.S.

Kirsten Paludan

Up All Night

For her second album, Kirsten Paludan didn’t just drop her keys in a fishbowl and hope for the best. She carefully distributed them among her trusted colleagues and former Olympic Size bandmates, who, in turn, helped her transform her rich, lush vocals and sensuous songwriting skills into beautifully crafted nuggets, ripe with heartache and contemplation.

Tempowise, Up All Night is a well-balanced effort. On the whole, though, the selections lean heavy on the feminine side. Paludan channels a mature, controlled Tori Amos on the Wurlitzer (“Siberia”) and a throaty Kelley Hunt (“You’re Not the One”). When I played the album for my male friends, they were all reminded of Sarah McLachlan.

What sets Paludan’s work apart is the careful arrangement and attention paid to the detail in everything from the backup vocals to the pedal steel. There are surprise gems, too, like the horn parts on opening track “Born to Lose,” a piece written with Paludan’s frequent collaborator, Billy Smith. Overall, Up All Night is a polished effort from one of the region’s most underrated songwriters.

— Berry Anderson