BELLE AND SEBASTIAN

The Life Pursuit

(Matador)

Belle and Sebastian are an engaging historical improbability: a fusion of Motown beats and horn fanfares with post-Morrissey tales of northern Britain and 1960s arrangements reminiscent of nonrockers like Petula Clark and Cilla Black. On the Glasgow collective's seventh album, Stuart Murdoch's cast of bedsit daydreamers and schoolkids has been supplanted by a more diverse set: white-collar criminals, religious converts, housepainters, and creepy fantasists.

Murdoch can still serve up a few good swoons (the melody of "Another Sunny Day" soars gorgeously; the narrator of "Mornington Crescent" wears briefs rather than boxers). But there's an unsatisfying vagueness to many of the vignettes, and the band's perennial quality-control problem is worse than ever, with clumsy party jams like "Sukie in the Graveyard" and "We Are the Sleepyheads" cluttering up the program. The session-band sheen introduced on 2003's Dear Catastrophe Waitress (Rough Trade/Sanctuary) doesn't do the songs any favors. Comedy writer Michael O'Donoghue once suggested dividing the world into "things you want to be homemade" (like brownies) and "things you don't want to be homemade" (like military helicopters). Belle and Sebastian should realize winsome Scottish pop music falls squarely into the first category. (Gabriel Roth)

BELLE AND SEBASTIAN

March 21

Concourse at SF Design Center, SF

$30

www.ticketmaster.com

TIMUCIN SAHIN TRIO

Window for My Breath

(Kalan Müzik)

Neoconservative critics like Stanley Crouch want to shrink the umbrella of jazz to the blues, swing, and the African American experience. But after spreading into Europe and colliding with ethnic folk traditions and the Western European chamber music tradition, the music can no longer simply be chained to one continent. For Turkish guitarist Timuçin Sahin, jazz merely serves as a name for a set of conventions he embroiders with forward-looking compositions, improvisation, and timbres on his new record, Window for My Breath.

The tunes belie the album's title. Rather than evoking the sound of quiet contemplation, they shift like restless things, constantly developing and pushing rhythmically or harmonically. Filtered through the kaleidoscopic vision of Sahin and his crack band, bassist Kai Eckhardt and drummer Owen Hart Jr., the pieces effortlessly move between meters and textures, dropping in polyrhythms before swinging or conjuring the avant-funk of Victor Wooten without any of the feel-good virtuosity pills. They touch upon raga and reggae over occasional bursts of ambient computer noises that blurp, bleep, and awe.

Indeed, nothing on the record is transparent in intent or execution. It's dense and abstract, even on the lyrical, fretless guitar and fretless bass duet "Situational Situations." That's because Sahin possesses an unsettling approach superficially similar-sounding contemporaries such as Nels Cline and Bill Frisell temper with excursions into rock, blues, or straight-ahead jazz. Unlike them, Sahin stays beside his window, eternally searching — creating exciting permutations for music and the Muse, if remaining inaccessible to a jazz audience more obsessed with yesteryear. (Alex K. Fong)

GOBLIN COCK

Bagged and Boarded

(Absolutely Kosher)

THE LADIES

They Mean Us

(Temporary Residence)

Goblin Cock and the Ladies are bands run by rock overlord Rob Crow of Pinback. What beautiful melodies Pinback has, not to mention a well-disciplined drum machine. Maybe a quick description of both records would be a good place to start: Goblin Cock is a terrible name (terrible as in Ivan the Terrible) for a wonderful band. It sounds like excellent stoner rock — not Bongzilla stoner metal, more like Wizard Brood. The riffs are catchy but heavy, and the vocals are often beautiful and Pinback-esque while at other times full-on metal, including melancholy mumbling and falsetto squeals. And contrary to what the name might imply, the band is not a joke — at least it doesn't sound like a joke. Bagged and Boarded is seriously one of the best rock albums I've heard in a while. Its title is a comic book reference, so if you didn't know, now you know.

The Ladies are Crow and Zach Hill from Hella. This band plays nervous psych-rock. I'd be curious to hear what their record, They Mean Us, would sound like with different drumming. Don't get me wrong — Hill rips and he's my homie, but his mastery of the drums is sometimes a bit distracting. Still, it's neat to hear Crow's mellow guitar lines backed by Hill's insane octopus-arms playing. Song titles like "Black Caesar/Red Sonia" and "Vacation, Asphyxia, Vacation" ground this record as a fun, experimental freakout. The last song title, "Mandatory Psycho-Freakout," sums up the record perfectly.

What ties the Ladies and Goblin Cock together is not so much a metal influence as the melodic sensibilities of Crow. The bands don't sound like each other, Optiganally Yours, or any other Crow project, but they all have an accessibility that doesn't come at the price of originality. This guy has figured out how to make his songs sound palatable without sounding weak.(Nate Denver)

March 10

Mezzanine, SF

$9 advance

www.ticketweb.com

Also Sat/11

Rickshaw Stop, SF

$10

(415) 861-2011