Greyhound

"THIS IS A REAL GOD DAMN EMERGENCY!!" shouts Steve Albini to close Excellent Italian Greyhound's opening track "The End of Radio." A warning that caps off sarcastic platitudes like "Can you hear me now?", "That drum roll means we've got a winner!", and "I'd like to thank our sponsors," the line's unnerving insistence is a reminder of Albini's simple, yet commanding language. Often ushered into dark corners with other furrowed musicians pumping their fists and directing anger toward a faceless opponent, Shellac are in fact purveyors of a strand of staunch politicism that's as funny as it is critical. The commentaries are biting and the sarcasm is snide, but save for the darker musical signifiers, their lyrical conviction is usually dressed in a garb of humor and playfulness.

Since hooking up with the Eclecto Groove label in 2008, roots/blues rocking guitarist Mike Zito has been honing his craft, shifting his focus from a hotshot blues six-stringer to a literate songwriter and soulful singer who just happens to be a badass guitarist. On his third release for the imprint, he brings along the talented Anders Osborne (who appeared on his previous disc) as producer/second guitarist/backing vocalist, and together they craft a tough but introspective Southern rock set with strong roots in the swampy sounds that have clearly inspired Zito. Instead of entertaining multiple guests as on his last outing, Zito pares his band to a backing trio featuring Osborne, drummer Brady Blade, and bassist Carl Dufrene, the latter who, like Osborne, has worked with the similarly styled Tab Benoit.

Bertine Zetlitz's fantastic fifth album continues the inspired pairing with Pleasure's Fred Ball that produced the utterly masterful Rollerskating two years earlier, making it her first album not to involve a wholesale change-up in collaborators. Although her earlier albums, made with a series of distinguished pop and electronic producers, were frequently brilliant and certainly established the strength and consistency of her musical identity, Zetlitz seems to have found an exceptionally sympathetic confederate in Ball; in any case, their partnership to date has produced some of the very finest and most uniquely realized pop music of its day, bar none. Essentially following a similar template to Rollerskating - casually sophisticated dance-pop that blends lush organic instrumentation with understated electronics, recalling '70s funk, AM pop/rock, and disco while still sounding effortlessly modern…