BARR

Beyond Reinforced Jewel Case

(5RC/DoggPony)

There's not much musical precedence for BARR, a.k.a. Brendan Fowler, which makes his project hard to take yet makes it feel like a total revolution. I'd heard early recordings of what sounded like spoken-word or suburban hip-hop with live drums: The songs were, and continue to be, goofy, self-aware, and vulnerable in a totally uncomfortable though entertaining way. Fowler speaks in the second person in almost a parody of emo self-indulgence, but while there are jokes throughout, BARR is decidedly not a piss take.

Subsequent exposures have been illuminating, as BARR's insight deepened and my own appreciation of the project's scope grew. BARR is both a character and role-playing performance that's trying to attain a perpetual state of positivity. The posicore attitude is a method of coping with life's negative aspects, a constant battle that we witness via BARR's internal dialogue.

The flow of the album reflects this inner exchange, with the A-side having more jokey pieces and the B-side delving into darker material. In "Us" Fowler sings about his dad dying and how uncomfortable he feels with the idea of exploiting death for his art. The musical ideas extend beyond loops and keyboards, veering toward free jazz. His nasal voice and unique cadence stick with you — the way words fall in and out of beat in a constant, self-correcting struggle. Beyond his lyrical content, Fowler's courage to tackle this intense musical tightrope walk serves as a lesson in positive thinking. (George Chen)

ANIMAL COLLECTIVE

with BARR

Sun/5, 8 p.m.

Fillmore, 1805 Geary, SF

$22

(415) 346-6000

VARIOUS

Om Lounge 10

(Om)

Odd, this concept of "lounge" electronic music. On the surface it seems to be intentionally made background music, songs to ignore while doing something more important, like eating sushi. In the '50s, when lounge jazz oozed into popularity in tiki bars, supplementing the postwar generation's newfound leisure, at least the music was something interactive — bands played and people danced to its corny, tropical beat. Today's generation aspires to little more than refilling their cosmos to this era's bland digital downtempo.

Yet the lounge dance genre has flourished, and compilations as numerous as fruit flies swarm the record bins. Celebrating their 10th anniversary, Om Records' latest Lounge collection expands the sonic palette to accommodate producers whose tracks beg for more than casual attention spans.

For instance, Gil T's "Broken Amber" is awash in authentic jazz samples, conga-inflected drum loops, and hypnotic stops and starts that recall French producers like DJ Cam and the Mighty Bop. Bonus points for aural craftsmanship. Shazazam's "Huff N Puff" follows next, a clichéd lite-jazz/R&B vocal number with x amount of generic effects and flanged guitar plucking — points off for backtracking into lounge mulch.

Luckily, that's one of this 14-song compilation's few missteps. The majority of Om Lounge 10's tunes are succulent instrumentals perfect for a suspenseful documentary soundtrack. A lovely counterpoint is Simeon's Rhodes's drenched vocal number "Not Feelin' This" (produced by Colossus), which sounds like D'Angelo produced by a hip-hop-ier Oliver Nelson. But before the eyes begin to droop, Hideo Kobayashi, JT Donaldson, and J Davis enter the fray with some sharp broken beat and soulful house cuts that bring the blood sugar up again. No need, then, for another cosmo. (Tomas Palermo)

NEKO CASE

Fox Confessor Brings the Flood

(Anti-)

At first superficial listening, the fairytale themes on Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood sound craftily trendy — and even dangerously derivative. The darkly folkloric line drawings gracing the gruesome cover art and the melancholy, impressionistic imagery on the songs within ring with Mission School–style stitch-witchery. Her foxy animal metaphors and even her full-throated, spiritual-inflected holler — ringing like that of a backwoods siren in full body-and-soul flower on the title track and "John Saw That Number" — seem to be chasing Jenny Lewis's recent work. But the part-time New Pornographer and ex–punk drummer's fourth studio long-player shows a lyrical and musical depth that comes with years and big ears, dispelling initial comparisons in her favor.

Case has always encompassed so much more than sad-eyed lady folk or Appalachian death ballads: Her love of smoky blues and juke-joint girl singers sets the score for the opening track, "Margaret vs. Pauline" 's downbeat cat fight between girls with parking-lot eyes. Marty Robbins's storybook narratives, unfurling like a highway, and Waylon Jennings's mournful outlaw groove mark "Hold on, Hold on" and "The Needle Has Landed," while warblers Lesley Gore and Brenda Lee might find themselves amid "That Teenage Feeling" 's and "Lion's Jaws" 's divine layers of toothache-sweet vocals.

Working her way through the mad families, sacrificial lambs, wild cats, songbirds, and Ukrainian folk yarns of Fox — and ably carried by players like Band keyboardist Garth Hudson, Calexico, and the Sadies — Case finally takes the voice of the beast on "At Last," and it's a brief relief, peeling back the fur and flesh from all these animal tales and revealing the hunger for the elemental, the skinned life-and-death simplicity, in her metaphorical bestiary. That — and this barely domesticated creature of an album — stays with you. (Kimberly Chun)