A-SET
Hang Together for All Time (Stars/No Stars)
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Big Buildings’ full-length debut, after last year’s ragged-but-right This Is the Bricks EP, is a sprawling 18-song set that frequently sounds like the record Uncle Tupelo never made–or maybe the album Wilco might’ve cut between A.M. and Being There. The band also takes stabs at modern southern rock a la the Drive-By Truckers (“Block by Block”), the dystopian country of Crazy Horse (“Words Can Paint a Picture”), and the power trash of the Replacements (“Uh Oh”). There’s even a lo-fi pop snippet that’d make Bob Pollard proud (“Smash the Alarm Clock”).
Sensitive Skin/Please Be Real (Contraphonic)
VERBAL KENT
Sheehy’s second solo effort is workmanlike roots rock, good-natured but colored with melancholy. There are a few stompers where he affects a mild swagger, but Sheehy’s at his best when his protagonists are most vulnerable: “Old Maid” is a drunken lament about a barroom pickup, complete with out-of-tune honky-tonk piano and woozy tuba; “All I Want” is a jangly pop ditty addressed to a would-be girlfriend who’s on the fence (“You could be the last one I ever kiss”); and “Turn Out the Lights” is a bitter suicide note set to a jolly Tejano rhythm.
