Recording sessions went nowhere, prompting the band to take a year-long break from the studio — just in time to spend the summer opening for Pearl Jam and then to see their record label, Touch & Go, essentially fold up the tent. Despite what would seem to be discouraging circumstances, Leo and the band felt liberated.

“It all went toward putting me personally into a place where I was breathing better,” Leo tells Listen, Dammit.

Thus refreshed, the band reconvened in the studio, finished “The Brutalist Bricks” and signed to Matador, which released the album this week. It’s an energetic record that finds Leo and and the Pharmacists in fine form on 13 taut new songs.

Here are three facts we learned talking to Leo.

1. Sometimes you need a break. Leo has been on the record-tour-record treadmill since his days with Washington D.C. band Chisel, and it can be exhausting. “I think spending a year between recording sessions had an interesting effect on us as a band,” Leo says. “It took us out of the hamster-wheel cycle. All of a sudden, deadlines were gone because we had missed them all. It was really kind of liberating, there was no pressure. Without a label and without a deadline looming, it was just like, we were back in a zone we hadn’t been in a while.”

2. Big-budget tours aren’t always bad. Which is not to say the band immediately leaped at the opportunity to hit the road with Pearl Jam. “It kind of engaged me with that world that we always kind of paint with a little skepticism,” Leo says. Yet he and the Pharmacists found the entire Pearl Jam operation to be welcoming and, in its structure and business dealings, inspiring. “It was an amazing way to see how one can grow and still stay connected with some righteousness both in business things and how you interact with your fans.”

Also, it was a great opportunity for Leo to introduce his music to new listeners without feeling bound by set-list expectations. “After a show or two, we kind of realized, you know what, anybody who’s actually here to see us is probably already a fan who’s seen us a million times,” Leo says. “And anybody who’s not already a fan isn’t going to be familiar with our back catalog, so they’re not going to be clamoring to hear the songs that have ingratiated us to our crowd.”

3. And then there were four. The Pharmacists had performed and recorded as a trio during much of the past decade, but early Pharmacist James Canty returned on guitar for tours with Pearl Jam and recording sessions for “The Brutalist Bricks.” “For ‘Hearts of Oak,’ the edges of the band were very fungible. ‘Shake the Sheets and ‘Living With the Living’ were both made as a three-piece, so this is the first one that’s been made as a solid four-piece,” Leo says. “The fact is that the fourth member, who’s quote-unquote new to the band, is actually old to the band and a really old friend of mine. He was one of the people who helped make ‘Tyranny of Distance’ with me and toured with the band right up to ‘Hearts of Oak.’”

LISTEN
The Mighty Sparrow mp3

(Photo by Shawn Brackbill)

Best known for the hit single “Groove Is in the Heart,” featuring Bootsy Collins on bass and a guest rap from Q-Tip of A Tribe Called Quest, the album is solid from start to finish (quite literally, as the two strongest and housiest songs, “Good Beat” and “Deep Ending,” are the first and last tracks of the original vinyl release.)

Unlike a lot of house music from the late 80’s and early 90’s, “World Clique” doesn’t stick to the minimal formula of techno beats and disco divas. Elements of hip-hop, R&B, trance, and funk find their way into the mix as well.

Deee-Lite weren’t the first artists to bring house music to mainstream audiences — Madonna’s “Vogue” beat them to the punch by a few months — and they wouldn’t be the last. The trail they blazed would be further explored and expanded upon by Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and Groove Armada later in the decade. While somewhat conservative in comparison to those later releases, “World Clique” was the foundation without which the house revival could not have been built.

— Nicholas Coleman

No one’s saying the Shins aren’t soulful in their own way, but Mercer’s quirky indie-pop sensibility seems less mutable than Burton’s omnivorous musical appetite. Still, they make it work as Broken Bells on a self-titled debut of the same name (Columbia).

From the start, there’s no mistaking either of them: first song “The High Road” opens with noodling electronic blorps and settles into a classic Danger Mouse soul vamp: dry purposeful rhythm and deep wandering bass enlivened by flashes of electronic color.

Mercer sings over that foundation in his familiar pinched voice, going high as he leads up to the chorus and sliding into a coda where wistful piano takes over.

The pair dials in a punchier sound on “The Ghost Inside,” a brisk rhythm, bright handclaps and burbling electronics framing Mercer’s falsetto vocals. “October” would have fit on the Shins’ last record, while “Mongrel Heart” has more of a Gnarls Barkley feel with active bass and a buzzing synthesizer.

There’s a little too much of that see-saw effect as “Broken Bells” teeters back and forth between Mousy songs and Shinsy songs. The ones that work best, naturally, are the ones where Burton and Mercer find a middle ground.

(Photo by Josh Cheuse)

Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward have outdone themselves on “Volume Two” (due March 23 on Merge): the vintage-style pop songs are catchier and more daring, the production is lusher and Deschanel sings with tons more confidence. It is, in short, a keeper, and though they’re on the road right now, they won’t be forever: Ward has a promising solo career, and Deschanel is an actress or something, so catch them while you can.

She & Him performs March 18 at Cedar Street Courtyard, March 19 at Lustre Pearl and March 20 at Auditorium Shores.

Listen here to their new single, “In the Sun” (as soon as Merge fixes the link.)

(Photo by Taea Thale)

Choir of Young Believers seems to have an eye on the future with its music — essentially folk-pop songs with lush, soaring arrangements and dreamy, almost lofty vocals.

When his previous band broke up, Copenhagen rocker Jannis Noya Makrigiannis got the idea for Choir of Young Believers during a sojourn on the Greek island of Samos.

The group released its debut, “This is for the Whites of Your Eyes,” in 2008, and comes to the United States for performances that include at least 7 shows at SXSW, including an official showcase Wednesday at Galaxy Room Backyard.

Listen here to their song “Action Reaction.”

Listen, Dammit, saw them play last year in a packed tent on a sweltering night when the pounder-sized cans of Lone Star beer couldn’t stay cold enough for comfort, and it was worth every second. If it’s raw, loud and surprisingly virtuosic garage rock you crave, don’t miss them this year — it couldn’t have been any cooler hanging with the Sonics in 1965.

The Strange Boys perform March 17 at Emo’s Jr. Listen here to the title track from “Be Brave.”

The Memphis trio released its self-titled debut last October. In addition to Stevens, the record features Luther Dickinson and Rick Steff (of Lucero and Cat Power’s band). The band makes smart, solid rock with agile pop hooks and a deep undercurrent of soul — it is Memphis, after all.

Star & Micey performs Thursday, March 18, at Barbarella.

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The record is a bracing amalgam of pounding dance beats, huge candy-colored hooks and Johnny Whitney’s throat-shredding vocals — it’s like a glass-gargling derelict with a sequencer has broken into the chocolate waterfall room in Willy Wonka’s factory, intent on making the Oompa Loompas dance, goddammit.

Like they could resist: with its buoyant, relentless beat and bright synthesizer line, opener “I Started a Fire” is at once ridiculously catchy and unhinged, while “Up All Night” is hypnotic and somehow tribal in an electro-raver way.

Blaring synthesizers and Cody Votolato’s twitchy guitar frame vivid lyrics on “Cherry Soda” (“Sugar-coated cherry soda/puking on the lawn,” Whitney sings), and “Evaline” dials down the beat somewhat, relying more on a dense wall of synths and guitars on what amounts to a harrowing love song for a troubled girl.

Whitney and Votolato played together in the beloved screamo (or post-hardcore or whatever) band Blood Brothers until that group split in 2007. Over the course of a single, an EP and a previous LP, they have demonstrated most persuasively that they’re doing just fine on their own. “Hologram Jams” merely hammers that point home.

LISTEN
Up All Night (download link)
I Started a Fire (stream)

(Photo by Lindsay Hutchens)

The Brooklyn duo describes itself as “low-fi, song-driven, harmony-heavy,” which sounds about right when you add that the pair is equally at home with a hazy, ’60s California-pop sound and a rootsier, almost vintage-Americana sound. (On their excellent “Rock Island EP,” they cover Lucinda Williams’ song “There’s Something About What Happens When We Talk.”)

Courtney Kaiser and Benjamin Cartel formed the group in 2006 and have since released three EPs, a full-length and a coloring book, and toured all over the place. (In fact, they were at SXSW last year, where Listen, Dammit, saw Cartel hanging at a Winterpills showcase, and totally mistook him at first for Jason Hammel from Mates of State.)

They perform Wednesday, March 18, at 10 p.m. at Lamberts. Listen here to their song “Carroll Street Station.”

There’s a slow-burning quality to the tune as it moves from a spare guitar intro to hushed harmony vocals from Aaron Gerber and drummer Sarah Handley Winchester, a powerful low swell of electric guitars rising beneath them as they sing a refrain that’s almost sure to get lodged in your head.

The Portland, Ore., band recorded “Everyday Balloons,” its second album (which is somehow affiliated both with Team Love and Bad Panda Records), with engineer Adam Selzer, who’s worked with M. Ward, the Decemberists and Norfolk & Western. The album came out yesterday, March 2.

LISTEN
Giant Stairs mp3
(At the request of Bad Panda, we note that this song is distributed under a Creative Commons license: CC-BY-NC-SA-3.0)