Nervous [LP]

A decidedly Vancouver-sounding record that invokes names like Frog Eyes, Mother Mother, Destroyer, and anything related to Spencer Krug (Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, Swan Lake, Moonface), the third long-player from ex-Great Lake Swimmers Colin Huebert and Erik Arnesen, better known as Siskiyou (a Gold Rush history-rich county in Northern California), is a brooding, nervy, and darkly satisfying slab of overcast alt-pop that flirts with dissonance, yet remains ultimately committed to harmonic agreement. Those melodies are solemn, however, and the aptly named Nervous serves them up repeatedly encased in barbed wire. Nowhere is that predilection for pop necromancy more apparent than on the evocative opening cut "Deserters," a densely packed, bottom-heavy dirge that deftly utilizes the talents of the St. James Music Academy Senior Choir and sax sorcerer Colin Stetson to conjure up something that's both impossibly beautiful and deeply unnerving. That unwavering adherence to mood (and a bleak