NIGHT CANOPY

Of Honey and Country

(Go Midnight)

1/2

Night Canopy is Seattle's newest dream team, featuring beloved solo artist Amy Blaschke and Pretty Girls Make Graves' drummer Nick Dewitt. Their debut, Of Honey and Country, has its inspired moments, but overall the album manages to stay on a safe path, never veering too far from the haunting but safe places the duo feels most comfortable in.

The strongest tracks in the 12-song collection are strong, however. The romantic, nautical opener, "Seasick Casanova," starts with crashing waves that quietly wash up on the shore throughout the song. A gentle guitar melody and charming bells accompany Blaschke's sweet and warm voice—she sings "If I wreck my ship, little darling/Would you catch me quick, little darling?" while the song playfully echoes a slowed down doo-wop number. It's enchanting in its simplicity.

Following that, "Boom! It's Spring" boasts a more self-assured attitude. Blaschke's voice gets distorted, eliminating the flawlessness of the previous track. Synthesizer steps in with guitar, upping the urgency and proving the band's versatility.

From there, though, the disc falls into repetition—the melodies in "Pine Box" and "Tell Me You Been Lyin'" feel desperate and long-winded. With the addition of "Lone Wolf" and "Falcon," the band spend too long lost in a familiar moodiness. It's not bad, but Night Canopy is much more interesting when they're reaching for the light at the end of the night rather than dwelling in the darkness that comes before it. MEGAN SELING

Night Canopy's CD release party is Fri March 16 at the Crocodile, with the Fleet Foxes and Ghost Stories.

DR. DOG

We All Belong

(Park the Van)

Dr. Dog's fourth album, We All Belong, is that inscrutable high-school loner, content to hang by himself, whom you simultaneously resented and admired. It's a personality barometer, and your reaction to it will be decided by your general disposition in life. Lover or hater? Wet blanket or down for whatever? "Let's grab a case of lager and some old beat-up shoes, head down to the river, strap on a canoe," they sing on "Weekend." If you can't get with that plan, don't bother showing up.

It's hard to find fault with a sound so nonchalant, so much itself (a self eagerly recycled from the ELO/Beach Boys/"Ob La Di, Ob La Da" holy trinity) that the joke's on you if you don't get it. It's twee, it's derivative, and it's self-consciously kooky, but it's unrepentantly so. Dr. Dog's ease with their influences comes from confidence in them—you can almost hear the hugs and high-fives between songs—and it's infectious.

The best number from the band's late-'06 EP, "Ain't It Strange," is still the best here, starting with '70s-FM-radio harmonies before springing into a grandly reverbed outro. But it's wedged into an array of similarly springy songs thick and shiny with organs, harpsichords, dueling guitars, and lots of group la-la-las and whoa-oh-ohs. Restless anxiety lurks in the shadows in the form of minor chords, wiry guitar, and song titles like "My Old Ways" and "Die Die Die." The title track brings down the curtain with a grand flourish of voices and strings and horns, heralding the stoned summer-afternoon epiphany of its chorus: "We all belong." Sincerity, after all, is a form of soul, and it teaches an inconspicuous little lesson: If you deigned to hang out with that loner kid in high school, you might've liked him. JONATHAN ZWICKEL

Dr. Dog play with Bobby Bare Jr. Sat March 17 at the Crocodile.

SIBERIAN

Hey Celestial!

(Sonic Boom)

1/2

Siberian has been quietly bobbing around in the saturated sea of local indie rock for a while. Even though the Seattle quartet's sparkling brand of guitar-laced beauty has brought them a few notable gigs at the Croc and Neumo's, until now they haven't had a proper release to keep them from sinking back under the radar once the show ended. Finally, the band releases Hey Celestial!, a warm six-song EP that's sure to cause hearts to flutter while cementing them into the minds of many.

Everything about the album is gorgeous—singer Finn Parnell's crooning is smooth and romantic, the guitars are unpredictably dynamic, and the drumming is crisp and quiet in the mix, letting Parnell's magnetic voice soar above the guitars. While some tracks portray a comforting sense of optimism, others ache with subtle heartbreak. In "Paper Birds," Parnell croons, "If I'm just an old flame/don't turn me on. Maybe I can change/It's so strange/what am I supposed to say?/I will learn to let go of this/where do I go now?" But if their lyrical skies are overcast, Siberian's melodies beam brightly through the clouds.

We see a more haunting, emotional side of the band with the closing track, "Talk to the Moon." Guitars playfully stab back and forth in the beginning, but it's where the song goes two minutes later that makes it the perfect closing track: The guitars flicker and build, there's a saw quietly echoing in the background, and at the climax the music falls all over itself, glittering through the atmosphere like a starry sky. MEGAN SELING

Goose

Iceman

Slider

Maverick