"Little Maggie," a minor tragedy in three verses, is the only traditional number on Alabama Chicken, an incredibly pretty collection of songs by San Francisco performer Sean Hayes. Aside from a cover of Bob Dylan's "Walkin' down the Line," the rest are originals. But much of the album carries the pleasant weight of old times, in its accents, its idioms, and the instrumentation – banjos, jaw harp, saw, fiddle, harmonica, guitar – that follows Hayes's high, slightly tremulous vocals around in various permutations throughout.

And the vocals, every creak and catch and quaver, are part of what makes this album lovely. When his voice rises and shakes on a song like "Two Big Eyes," its trembling evokes thoughts of lonely breakdowns. Elsewhere, as on the lazily paced "Diamond in the Sun" and the jazz-inflected "Rain Coming Down," calmer sentiments prevail to equally gorgeous effect. Countering the wrecked hopes and depressed fatalism of "Little Maggie," on which a young man gives up on the woman he desires, "Here We Are …" gets swoonily romantic, with traces of Gershwin-style love notes in its dust and stars, before breaking into a sprawling, druggy, bar-crawling epic that tracks cocktail queens, ravers, bus stops, street scenes, and the smell of old memories. (Lynn Rapoport)

Tussle
Don't Stop EP (Troubleman Unlimited)

Now that the Rapture's Echoes has been silenced and New York's punk-funk wellspring has all but run dry, the Mission's Tussle have stepped up to revive the scene with a burst of energy that just might extend its shelf. Don't Stop, the quartet's second EP, displays their restless spirit and ability to look forward and back, merging lo-fi tastes for ESG and Liquid Liquid with a desire to push things in unconventional directions.

Tussle's secret lies in the two sets of drums that create a sparse, subterranean rumble rather than a clanging catastrophe; the tight interplay between Andy Cabic's bass and Nathan Burazer's numerous synthetic instruments that weaves polyrhythmic intricacies the band's East Coast ilk only dream of; and the fact that they trust their own musicianship.

While sticking to the instrumental form, these five tracks plunge into experimental territory while keeping their feet planted on the nu-disco dance floor with remixes by Soft Pink Truth (Matmos's Drew Daniel and, in this case, Martin Schmidt) and Stuart Argabright, an early-'80s pioneer from NYC's no wave-electro days. The payoff is rewarding, as the reinterpretations' arrhythmic percussion and lo-freq freakiness are as appealing to tech heads as they are to rockers.