Pacific Northwest darlings Carissa’s Wierd spent several years recording the kind of ramshackle sadpop eventually varnished for the mainstream by Death Cab for Cutie; in fact, Death Cab guitarist/producer Chris Walla served as producer for Carissa’s third and final album, 2002’s Songs About Leaving. Originally overlooked outside the Northwest, Carissa’s Wierd may be on the verge of a posthumous reassessment since providing the spawning-ground for the phoenix-like Band of Horses, whose chiming classicism has brought two of Carissa’s old members to a banner ad near you. But there isn’t much binding the Crazy Horse canter of Band of Horses to the rainy shuffle of Carissa’s Wierd—save new lead singer Ben Bridwell and old lead singer Matthew Brooke, an Arizona native who with his new band seems to have returned to the musical terrain of his home state. Bridwell’s big-sky wails in Band of Horses are as distinctly Southwestern as Brooke’s forested whispers in Carissa’s Wierd are unmistakably PNW; and while epic, Neil-Young-inspired jangle-pop can’t but draw fewer haters than hushed, Chris-Walla-produced white-boy blues, those of us who still curl up with We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes from time to time would do well to make room for both.

Take the unfortunately titled “Ignorant Piece of Shit,” from Songs About Leaving—all circular melody and half-chanted vocals from Brooke and harmony-mate Jenn Ghetto, it pulls off the old Walla trick of getting imperceptibly lusher as it goes along, as the rain falls harder, the trees grow heavier, and the girl’s absence persists. It’s an addictive song, gently propulsive, quietly persistent, its three minutes made even shorter by a modest but insistent lope that carries you all the way to its whirling-strings climax. But tear it open, dry it out, and pump a hot wind through it, and you get “The Great Salt Lake”: Bridwell belts his wails across a George Herriman landscape, the old quiet pulse becomes a roaring heartbeat, and suddenly the song’s not so much addictive as outright commanding. If Carissa’s Wierd whispered in your ear, Band of Horses stares you in the eye—and either one works, whether it’s pine trees or plateaus you want to see out the window.

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