Seattle’s Night Beats have steadily ascended the indie-rock ladder with a lethal swagger, snagging many a festival-bill spot and accruing more than 36,000 Facebook followers. They’ve drawn heavily from their 1960s Texas roots—13th Floor Elevators, Moving Sidewalks, though not the Red Krayola—to create a catalog rife with blues-tinged psych- and garage-rock that hews to the genres’ traditions while still sounding vital. Night Beats leader Danny Lee Blackwell is a rigorous songwriter who values melody as much as he does distortion, reverb, and other effects geared to nudge you out of mundane reality. However, the slick new Dan Auerbach–produced Myth of a Man finds Blackwell stripping away familiar NB elements and going for a more “mature” singer-songwriter approach that yields some pleasant songs (“One Thing,” “Eyes on Me”) but doesn’t play to his strengths. by Dave Segal