Artist: !!!
Album: Myth Takes
Label: Warp

Three years after their last release, 2004’s Louden Up Now !!! (pronounced ‘chk chk chk’ or any percussive sound three times) has returned with Myth Takes. The band has decidedly taken a different path by smoothing down their jagged edges and offers fans more pop-orientated sensibilities.

This process of streamlining !!!’s sound removes the erratic robot bleeps of yore with even paced production. Thankfully, the initial premise of mixing dance/electronic/ ambient and rock remains unscathed even if the beloved knob-tweeking aren’t as prevalent now. The good news is that by cutting back on the experimental side !!! has brought a focus and tightness to the more concise tracks.

Other tracks exude this energy but now focus lyrically on love and elationships. "Must Be the Moon" and "Heart of Hearts" which both share equally banal lyrics, are still musically exciting and fun to listen to. Album highlights also include the echoey guitar and Can-like harmonics of "A New Name" the thick bass-stomp of "Yadnus" and the eight-minute "Bend Over Beethoven."

Myth Takes loses its focus towards the end, but overall is an enjoyable spin. The eight musicians that make up !!! have once again culled their resources and created a disc that not only trumps their dance or electro-clash contemporaries but should serve as a quintessential summer disc.

Artist: Laura Veirs
Album: Saltbreakers
Label: Nonesuch

Laura Veirs is a performer whose style doesn’t necessarily sound like anyone else. Yet, she isn’t a great innovator either. However, there is something extremely comforting about her album, Saltbreakers. Coming on the heels of 2005’s rockish "Year of Meteors," Veirs presents us with a lush coda full of heartbreak, self-discovery and beauty.

Saltbreakers uses the depths of the ocean as an analogy to inner turmoil and the vast complexities of a relationship. The vagaries of weather offer not only breathtaking imagery, but a structurally and thematic ballast to which Veirs ties her lyrics. Salt is the unifying theme throughout all these songs: salt in the ocean water, in tears, and in perspiration. Veirs offers the listener introspection that flows from moody to cathartic to eerily pensive.

She opens the record with "Sorry I was cruel/I was protecting myself/ Drifting along with my swords out flying/Tatterin my own sails/then I tattered yours too" in "Pink Light." Immediately, the tone is set and what follows flows naturally from Veirs like the crests and troughs of the waves themselves. "Ocean Night Song" offers a haunting viola accompaniment while Veirs imagines herself swimming into the depths to join the whales. These appear later in "Cast a Hook in Me" where the narrator eagerly awaits the seduction of a merman.

Laura Veirs has provided us with an almost perfect album. From the heavenly beauty of the choral arrangements of "To the Country" to the solemn pop of "Nightingale" and "Wrecking," Saltbreakers is genuine and artful. Even the faux-soul call-and-response chorus of the title track and the magical realism of "Don’t Lose Yourself" (inspired by novelist Jose Saramago) add weight. The only castaway is "Phantom Mountain," which tends to stain this gem of an album.

Saltbreakers, like its predecessor, is a record that is melodic, idiosyncratic and wonderfully addictive.

Hopefully, Veirs has more records like Saltbreakers in her yet.