Slumber Party revel in hypnotic psych pop reverie, but beneath their dreamy swirls of heroin(e)-chic harmonies and narco-Nico vocals is a darkness that's easy to overlook. On their self-titled 2000 debut and 2001's Psychedelicate – sedated updates of girl-group recordings from the '60s – these four Detroit women sounded like they spent their nights trading secrets under a sky full of Mazzy Stars, their lush, unassuming melodies often dismissed as sonic wallpaper. Those who listened closely to the deceptively sweet songs, however, heard anguished confessions veiled in vocalist-guitarist Aliccia Berg's cryptic, often surreal turns of phrase. In a rare moment of clarity on "Depression Is Best," she summed up her lyrical approach: "You've got to learn to turn your urgent misery into a vague mystery."

The ladies offer more of the same studied melancholy on 3. But while their excellent third album – produced by Godzuki's Dion Fischer and including contributions from, among others, members of Detroit's American Mars, the Hentchmen, and Outrageous Cherry – doesn't diverge much from the somnambulist atmospherics of its predecessors, there are pleasant surprises. The gorgeous "On-T.V." goes gospel; "Black Heart Road" ambles with a leisurely country trot; "Air" brings some levity to the pity party. Still, it's the emotional messiness under Slumber Party's pretty, lite-pop surface that makes these Velvets-inspired songs compelling, elevating them beyond mere background music. So listen up, because 3 rewards those willing to dig deeper and follow Berg's lead on "Drunk": "Where evil is lurking, I'll begin searching." (Jimmy Draper)

400 Blows
Black Rainbow (Rehash)

"You'll want them to hate you, 'cause then you'll be ugly," 400 Blows singer Skot barks three tracks into Black Rainbow, "and if you were ugly you would be so beautiful." Whoot – there it is. For me, the aptly titled "The Ugly Are So Beautiful" serves as the true title track of the album, much more so than the actual one, a chugging guitar dirge with some scattershot piano and none of Skot's vocals. "Black Rainbow" sits smack in the middle of an otherwise brilliant album like a skid mark on a pair of fresh BVDs, but that matters not, as they're making perfectly good fast-forward buttons these days, and it's the only song that won't have you banging your head and screaming along.

You're going to need some throat lozenges, as Skot's voice is as straight and to the point as his no-c-one-t name. It's said that once a Tokay gecko locks its jaws onto your finger, the only way to remove it is to chop off its head, and that's exactly how Skot treats a lyric. 400 Blows are a self-described "anti-melody band," and songs like "Premature Burial" can actually be used as an exfoliant since they'll take the top layer of skin off your face.

As is the tradition with nontraditional three-pieces – they're vocals, guitar, and drums, and no bass – I'm going to assess just what they're missing without the four-string low end. Nothing. With Christian's lockstep riffing and Ferdinand's precision drum work, a bass would just get in the way. These guys are so heavy that they can play in sailor suits and still seem ominous. "I can scream," Skot belts on "The Bull That Killed the Matador," closing out Black Rainbow. "Listen to me screaming now!!!" And you can hear all three exclamation points. 400 Blows perform Fri/26, 924 Gilman, Berk. (510) 525-9926. Sat/27, El Rio, S.F. (415) 282-3325. (Duncan Scott Davidson)

Michael Yonkers
Microminiature Love (Sub Pop)

I first heard Michael Yonkers at my college radio station back in 1998 or so when we got a mysterious-looking 7-inch with two of his songs. It stood out from the usual indie rock and drum 'n' bass in our mandatory singles rotation as it was obviously not a new release, but beyond that, it was hard to tell when, or where, it came from. Reverb-drenched rockabilly with dissonant, droning chords and pre-Sonic Youth alternate guitar tunings? A Duane Eddy-Bo Diddley-Dick Dale hybrid with self-made psychedelic guitar effects to rival the stuff on the early Funkadelic records? Who was this guy? Last year the label De Stijl reissued an entire album of Yonkers's music, but by the time I became aware of it through its appearance on a bunch of year-end best-of lists, all 300 copies of the LP were gone. Now with this deluxe, bonus-tracks-and-all reissue on Sub Pop, the three-and-a-half-decades-old Microminiature Love is widely available for the first time.

Yonkers was an out-of-left-field original, half loner mad-scientist and half regular-guy rock 'n' roller. He wrote the songs and built much of his equipment, including the guitar effects, and he sings in a nervous, wobbly croon that occasionally breaks into a frightening "wahhhh!!!" My favorite songs are still the title track and "Puppeting," but the great thing is that they aren't the only cool tunes here. The whole album – not counting a few stray bonus tracks – is worthwhile. For example, there's "Boy in the Sandbox," an anti-Vietnam song built around an oddly accented, half-time drumbeat and mutated Chuck Berry shuffle that, before the end, veers into a flurry of echoing guitar noise meant to simulate the "bomb blasts" referred to in the lyrics. It's terrifying.

Sure, Microminiature Love is one of those "not for everyone" recommendations, but it still has rare crossover appeal, along with the potential to unite the opposing camps of weirdo experimental-noise fans and old-fashioned, Parkside-frequenting rock 'n' rollers like few things in recent memory. (Will York)

Mark Murphy
Memories of You (HighNote)
Kurt Elling
Man in the Air (Blue Note)

Taking risks has been a hallmark of vocalist Mark Murphy's 47-year recording career. The onetime San Francisco resident usually lands on both feet with his uncommon treatments of standard material, but he gets off on the wrong foot by beginning his tribute to Joe Williams, Memories of You, with three of the late jazz singer's signature blues. Murphy's readings of Memphis Slim's "The Comeback" and "Every Day I Have the Blues" and Leroy Carr's "In the Evening" are obviously heartfelt, but the phrasing is rather forced. Ballads were Williams's other forte, however, and it is in exploring this side of the Williams repertoire that Murphy really excels. The title song finds him at his most relaxed, moving effortlessly from ringing tenor to resonant baritone as he renders Andy Razaf's lyrics with dramatic precision. Norman Simmons, Williams's longtime piano accompanist, produced the disc and supplies marvelously empathetic support throughout, as does guitarist Paul Bollenback.

Kurt Elling is Murphy's leading stylistic disciple. Though 35 years apart in age, the two have remarkably similar tones and share a hipster aesthetic. Whereas Murphy has read Jack Kerouac's works to jazz, the younger singer displays a beatnik sensibility in his ethereal, sometimes seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics to the tunes by John Coltrane, Josef Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Bobby Watson, and other jazz instrumentalists that make up much of Man in the Air. The Chicago vocalist is most satisfying on ballads, particularly Zawinul's "Time to Say Goodbye" and the '60s soft rock hit "Never My Love." Vibraharpist Stefon Harris is among the soloists spotlighted in handsomely crafted arrangements by Laurence Hobgood, Elling's pianist and coproducer. Mark Murphy plays Sat/27, Jazzschool, Berk. (510) 845-5373. Kurt Elling plays Sept. 30-Oct. 5, Yoshi's, Oakl. (510) 238-9200. (Lee Hildebrand)

Trailer Bride
Hope Is a Thing with Feathers (Bloodshot)

The reverb-drenched opening guitar chords of Trailer Bride's new record, Hope Is a Thing with Feathers, ring out as clearly as a declaration of independence and identity – they're as instantly recognizable as American Gothic. Furthermore, this Chapel Hill, N.C., quartet may be the only band around that can take a poem by Emily Dickinson, add accordion and musical saw, turn it into a spooky waltz (as they do on the title track), and not have the results suck.

The rest of the album floats along at a similar dreamlike pace, with songs alternately breezy and woeful. Frontperson Melissa Swingle has a warm marmalade voice pitched somewhere on the sunny side of Freakwater's Catherine Irwin's, and she uses it to create drama of the small-scale variety on the road-to-nowhere song "Vagabond Motel" and of a more wide-screen type on "Destiny." A few songs bring down the barn dance: "Mach 1" is a great white-trash stomper about a dude whose muscle car sits in his front yard as he drives his girlfriend's automobile (note to Bloodshot Records: how about a compilation of car tunes?), while another idiosyncratic American is evoked on "Quickstep," which strongly recalls Rain Dogs-era Tom Waits. Ultimately, Trailer Bride's sound is as organic as Spanish moss and as clingy as kudzu. Trailer Bride play Oct. 1, Bottom of the Hill, S.F. (415) 621-4455. (James Yamasaki)

East River Pipe
Garbageheads on Endless Stun (Merge)

As one-man band East River Pipe, New Jersey's F.M. Cornog channels his history of addiction, homelessness, and mental illness into intensely personal character studies and skin-of-your-teeth survival stories. But while the onetime hobo turned bedroom troubadour has overcome immense adversity to get his shit together, he's no champion of Horatio Alger-style sermonizing: his sad pop songs have always empathized with, and been immersed in the suffering of, societal throwaways. Cornog's 1999 masterwork, The Gasoline Age, demonized the American myth of the self-made man, while the superb new Garbageheads on Endless Stun features, as its title suggests, a cast of loners and losers immobilized by brutal, debilitating despair.