Mark Kozelek Mark Kozelek

On her fifth full-length album, How A Fantasy Will Kill Us All, songwriter Corrina Repp charts a path through the unknown. Fueled by a desire to start over and make a clean break with Portland, where she’d lived for 21 years, and where she released a string of albums on HUSH and Mark Kozelek’s Caldo Verde label, played with her band Tu Fawning, and appeared semi-regularly on the parody comedy series Portlandia, Repp headed across the country. The promise of a new relationship was waiting for her, but it wasn’t to be. Turning away from the failed relationship after three weeks, Repp made survival a full-time occupation. Stowing her possessions in a storage unit in Woodland Hills, California, and leaving with no real plan, Repp embarked on a nomadic journey that would shade her music for years to come.

Kyle Wall, the Brooklyn-based songwriter who records under the name Wharfer, doesn’t exactly sing his melodies. He swirls them around in his mouth, chewing on his words as he describes how they taste. And while his influences are all immediately clear (Bill Callahan, Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, later Bob Dylan), Wall doesn’t really sound like anyone else. His voice is the first thing you’ll notice about his music: his folksy drawl, his odd pronunciation, a phlegmy grumble like he’s fighting a cold. And while some singers might sand down their idiosyncrasies as their songwriting progresses, Wall has doubled down on them with Scenes of the Tourist. Over 12 songs, he has refined his music to mostly piano and vocals, relegating his backing band to more atmospheric duties while his strange and weary voice does the heavy lifting.