Dan Hicks & The Hot Licks
Tangled Tales
(Surfdog)

Dan Hicks drummed with the acid rock band The Charlatans. That was the last time anyone pigeonholed him. Tangled Tales is musical jambalaya—spicy and full of ingredients. You'll hear Django Reinhardt licks one moment, Hawaiian guitar the next, plus everything from jug band and country-swing to cowboy jazz and bluegrass. Not even Dylan would recognize what Hicks does to "Subterranean Homesick Blues." "Blues My Naughty Baby" sounds like jump jazz from the 1940s, and the title track is what you'd get if you threw the Andrews Sisters, Cab Calloway, and bennies in a blender. Quirkiness and dry wit infuse this album. Hicks appears at the Iron Horse on April 5.  —Rob Weir

A Day To Remember
Homesick
(Victory)

I'm pretty sure there's a rule in the Code of Metal that says handclaps and breakdowns don't belong in the same song. Apparently A Day To Remember isn't familiar with the code, as Homesick constantly abuses it. Their third album is a jumbled mess of pop, rock, emo and metal. Admittedly, "Another Song About the Weekend" and "Have Faith in Me" are solid, catchy emo-rock songs. Most of the other tracks embarrass with ridiculously heavy breakdowns and laughable, menacing mosh-calls like "You won't make it out alive." The requisite acoustic track features a new metal mismatch: gang-vocal la-la-las. The band should succumb to their mainstream rock tendencies and stop cramming in screams and chugs for street cred.  —Becky Everett

Tim Eriksen
Every Sound Below
(Appleseed Recordings)

Singers like Tim Eriksen who choose an Appalachian dirge that stirs up as much emotion as "O Death" for an opening track have nothing to hide in their assured replication of stripped-down old-time folk music. In fact, Eriksen sings three songs accompanied by nothing but the air in the recording studio. Every Sound Below, a Northern affair with some Appalachian and Irish themes, is a songbook of murder ballads and stories from Civil War-era Massachusetts. Eriksen accompanies himself on guitar, banjo and fiddle, offering the feel of a dusty porch jam. His throat-singing alone is enough reason to give this album a listen.  —Lee Taylor

Sarazin Blake
The Air Your Lungs Forced Out
(Art of the Underground)

With subdued intimacy and a quietude that quickly turns to politically impassioned balladry, Sarazin Blake combines narrative lyrics with folk-inspired guitar. The Air Your Lungs Forced Out features a full band with pedal steel guitar, dobro, upright bass and drums. Blake uses precise sensory details to recall stories of companions and strangers, grounding his music in nitty-gritty imagery. Blake takes cues from Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, among others, and marries his poeticism with growling, murmuring and resonant vocals.  —Fraylie Nord