{Curtains For You play on Thursday, June 30, at the Columbia City Theater. Presented by Team Up for Nonprofits and KEXP, benefitting Art Corps! Doors open at 8:30pm, and Kelli Schaefer opens. $20 advance tickets, $25 at the door.}

They've played sold out gigs with The Head and the Heart and The Posies, where this five-piece "retro-pop" band snagged frequent raves from bloggers among the fan-thronged crowds; made the Top 10 band list in City Arts Magazine; and got KEXP play for their dizzying debut What A Lovely Surprise To Wake Up Here. But now Curtains For You are raising the stakes artistically, releasing an album as punchy and psychically provocative as Dear 23.

Somehow trimming off their more nostalgic musical tendencies for a timeless power pop sound, and adding a new invigorating and unusually sensitive approach to lyric writing, After Nights Without Sleep sounds like its title: That bizarre buzz of being up too long, and thinking too much, and not being able to settle down yet. It is bracing morning rock filled with overflowing emotions ("thick as bacon grease left out in the plan," from "Eggs Over Toast"), somehow as sobering and intoxicating as a triple espresso-infused Irish coffee drink.

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The pastoral pleasures of Brent Amaker and the Rodeo's third album Please Stand By are hard to resist, if you love either the mod 60s Hollywood hillbilly of Lee Hazelwood, or the jittery original cow-punk of 50s Johnny Cash. Amaker's delivery is dry and wry, and the band cooks up their no-bullshit C&W with a steady sizzle and a few unexpected drunken master punches. The baroque, bourbon-lensed packaging itself is exquisite, as ribald and rococo as anything by Led Zeppelin, and the howl-rattling, full-color comic book included with every copy of the LP gives you as much back story as the libretto for any prog-rock masterpiece.

But what makes Please Stand By the fulsome full length we've all been waiting for from Brent since 2008's Howdy Do (key tracks: "Knock You Out" and "Girls Are Good") is the spit-shined quality of the new songs and their hard-earned messages.

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We don't usually do full on label hype here at Three Imaginary Girls, as we tend to be more artist or song/album focused, but two noteworthy new releases are coming up with stunning shows behind them. And so to massacre a murder of honky-tonking crows with one big blogging, let's dive into the August (live and recorded) Americana mayhem being offered by artists recently signed to up-and-raging local label Spark & Shine:

Rusty Willoughby offers up a dozen superbly written, subtle-emotive lonely journeys on his new album Cobirds Unite. It is probably the best sounding roots-oriented album I have heard in some time, and that means a lot when you have a voice as sweet and true as Willoughby's, backing vocals from Rachel Flotard, cello from Barb Antonio, a bunch of great picking and playing on various instruments by (producer) Johnny Sangster, and Tilman Herb on violin, among others. If you listen to this without ever checking out the CV of the man in charge, you won't necessarily miss anything that's great about it, as these songs seem as crisp and forlorn as any put to post since the glory days of crossover. But Willoughby has earned his solid reputation regionally ever since he fronted Pure Joy in the mid-80s, and proves on the terse and tender "Crown Of Thorns," "Where are The Knives," and the title track on Cobirds Unite that he's not just hustling faux hillbilly hoodoo.

There have been other projects for Willougby in the meantime (for the grunge years, Flop) but like those of us who jumped with The Dils to Rank & File and never minded hearing a Joe Ely bootleg opening for the Clash, a natural born punk is often just a pony boy exiled in the city. There are a lot of people making less fetching racket sort of like this every night in Ballard, but from these songs you can tell the musical workaholic chose this art-form for the ability to marry mature outlook with considered form. Thus when Rusty Willoughby plays with Black Francis on Saturday, August 21 at the Triple Door, both performers should be getting much hollering back.

 

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This Seattle-based British Invasion-meets-Beach Boys five-piece initially got my attention by being named (probably coincidentally) the same as a title by one of the very best power pop bands of all time, The Only Ones. But Matthew and Mikey Gervais (guitar/lead vocals, guitar/sax vocals, respectively), Nick Holman (bass, something called a euphonium, vocals), Peter Fedofsky (piano/vocals), and drummer Dave Lawrence share more than that in common with Peter Perrett's legendary punk era quartet. Though Curtains For You may have never heard The Only Ones, both groups are deliciously excessive in using 60s melodies to swoon and soar some really dark shit they sing about. And the backing band action is cracking tight on retro riffs and rhythms.

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