New and noteworthy

77 (Pt. 2)

Colony House

The second half of Colony House’s latest project replaces the rawer energy of the first with sounds more in keeping with the pop gradually achieving classic status during the Chapman brothers’ formative years. If “Head Over Heels” borrows its title from the Go-Go’s, it borrows its opening and recurrent riffs from Tears for Fears. On the whole, though, it’s Crowded House to whom this EP is throwing down a gauntlet. And, frankly, the Chapmans write better lyrics.

This World Ain’t Mine To Change

Fepeste

Three albums in, Eric Jett keeps making artistic strides—both with his lyrics, which weave biblical texts into conversational and sometimes cheeky self-reproaching self-examination, and the musical challenges that he has set for himself as he pushes 40. These include aiming for a sparkly, laid-back psychedelic surf awash with overdubbed vocals inspired by his love for Pet Sounds, a sound that more often than not he achieves. (Check out the wet guitars on “Doomsurfing.”) Not bad for a guy who named his act after a Watashi Wa song and whose day job since he has been old enough to hold one is distilling whiskey.

Have You Heard About the World Coming to an End?

Various

This album, much of which will be familiar to fans of Document Records compilations, begins with 1927’s “Don’t Let Satan Get You” (aka “Doan Let Satan Git You”) by the Barbour Singers (aka Barbour’s Plantation Singers) and ends with 1942’s “I’m on My Way to Heaven Anyhow” by the Royal Harmony Singers (aka the Florida Boys). The tempos and lead-singer-with-tight-backgrounds format prefigure everything from the Mills Brothers to doo-wop. The lyrics prioritize pursuing faith, hope, and love as the end draweth nigh. The Birmingham Jubilee Singers reveal that “ruckus” used to be pronounced “rue-kiss.”

Detour

Boz Scaggs

“I’ll Be Long Gone” is an original that Scaggs first recorded in 1969 in Muscle Shoals, “It’s Raining” an Irma Thomas classic from ’61, and “The Meaning of the Blues” a Bobby Troup composition first minted by Julie London. The other eight, at least two of which were composed before the 81-year-old Scaggs was even born, belong to the Great American Songbook. All of them get the intimate, late-night-jazz-trio treatment, a mood that Scaggs eases into and illuminates so naturally and subtly that he probably should’ve called the results Silkier Degrees.

Encore

It turns out that Colony House has been as influenced by U2 as any other act over the last 40 years. Take “Telephone Pole,” for instance, the number that opens 77 (Pt. 1). Were U2 to copy Colony House’s performance note for note and inflection for inflection, no one would blink. Some might even consider the results a return to form. It’s certainly easy to imagine Bono emoting “One day is a blessing. The next day is a curse. / One day I’m moving forward. The next I’m in reverse.”

But that’s where the U2 similarities end. Just two songs later, the band is making like punks, bashing out one song whose refrain goes “OK! OK! OK! OK!” and another called “Ready To Go” in which the singer has had it up to here with the ruts that he’s stuck in. Two further observations: (1) The band’s label (LastDaze) may or may not be a Keith Green homage; (2) the vulgarity in “Atomic” would’ve gotten Colony House banned from Christian bookstores and radio back in Will and Caleb Chapman’s father’s day. —A.O.