Scout Niblett

Whether comparable to scratching an itch you didn’t know you had or merely grating, Scout Niblett’s music is for ears already inured to stark blues experiments by her fellow Brit P.J. Harvey. But Niblett is more fun than her predecessor, as befits a singer who takes her first name from the vivacious child narrator of To Kill a Mockingbird. On her fourth album, the flutelike voice and monastic self-harmonies of this one-woman band are hardly in themselves a barrel of laughs, but her method of making herself a character in her own songs (“Lullaby for Scout in Ten Years”) and going on psychedelic adventures, as in the title track, is more plain old loopy than self-absorbed. And unlike Harvey, when Niblett goes from quiet to loud — an early-’90s rock convention that figures heavily in her repertoire — it feels less about primal therapy than about the sheer buzz of rocking out. Her tiny, lacy melodies erupt into huge, mantralike riffs that are, without qualification, metal.