The Year's Ten Best Overlooked Albums, So Far

Jace Everett: Red Revelations
Having gained a new constituency when his sleazy True Blood theme "Bad Things" became a surprise U.K. hit, this country upstart takes a sharp left turn: an entire album of film-noir psychobilly set in fleabag motels and loaded with space-distorting reverb, rumbling Link Wray twang-raunch, and dusky seduction metaphors playfully flirting with Satanic possession. Two ethereal ballads recall Chris Isaak; several faster and noisier songs re-create 1965 garage punk from scratch, snotty hooks and all. Oddest cut: the droning, scream-shocked "Burn for You," a dead ringer for the art band Suicide.

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Traband: Domasa
Despite relying on brass for bass notes and rarely employing loud guitars, these Czechs have managed one of 2010's weirdest and most stomping rock albums — it never stays in one place long, yet its stein-hoisting, oompah-like groove melds naturally with its ritual Slavic forest melodies. The latter come from sour trumpets, funereal pipe organs and elongated violincello notes, and can be gorgeous; hard-strummed centerpiece "Kantorovy Varhany" drones out fuzz like the darkest Velvet Underground. But Traband goof around a lot, too, directly quoting Dylan and Neil Diamond, on harmonica and tuba.

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Luther Lakey: The Preacher's Wife
As befits a Mississippi soul-bluesman who has dabbled in country and knows his gospel, this smooth-voiced songwriter's forte is ballads — often ones where he ponders long-term unemployment, or resigns to playing the cuckold. The Goodwill store and coupons help; the butcher's meat doesn't. He offers advice to two suicidal buddies and consoles a lady married to a philandering pastor. In a comedic funk number done two ways, he mimics somebody's mama and a redneck cop and starts growling "Brick House." But when he gets so down and out he begs to shine your shoes, his high notes echo Sam Cooke's.

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This Moment in Black History: Public Square
Miraculously, this biracial Cleveland four-piece makes hardcore tantrums feel vital again — their rhythm section does more than just mosh, and twisted blitzes "Panopticon" and "90% Tone" suggest influence from weird old northern Ohio punks Pere Ubu and The Pagans. But it's guitarist Buddy Akita's chops that really put the set over: the guy is fantastic, shifting deftly through surf, Stooges, spy themes, Byrds psych, and Sabbath trudge. The vocals, generally a high Die Kreuzen screech, are inaudible but not ugly. And by the time they toss off their Run-D.M.C. joke "My Notes," they've earned it.

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Jerrod Niemann: Judge Jerrod and the Hung Jury
As proud of its hip-hop-via-Family Guy between-song interstitials (there are eight of those) as of its drinking tunes (five, as tallied in the final skit), this is one entertainingly ambitious country album. Niemann compares a girl favorably to cocaine, turns some '90s Australian yacht-rock into a Top 10 hit, spends a Robert Earl Keen cover flirting with the f-word, stirs up an alcoholic alphabet for frat rats to slur along to, lets arrangements get multitracked busy or old-school spare. At the barrelhousing end, flipping the bird at Nashville propriety, he wakes up with a topless teacher.

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Slim Cessna's Auto Club: Buried Behind the Barn
Eight decade-old recordings from a spooky-ooky Denver cowpunk crew — two previously found on a college-radio compilation, a few retooled for later albums. But at just under half an hour, the length here is perfect for these rustic gloomsters to avoid slipping into doldrums and for non-Goths to get off on their hopped-up ghost hoedowns, the catchiest of which concern a fatal gunfight, a demonic codger strolling Main Street and a mineworking in-law falling off the wagon and into the river. Elsewhere, they yodel over an Everly Brothers melody — and invent a new dance called the "Earthquake."

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Eddy Current Supression Ring: Rush to Relax
These rocking Aussies are addicted to anxiety — in fact, "Anxiety" is the opening track, and plainspoken Brendan Suppression spends subsequent panic attacks hiding in the corner at parties, apologizing to his better half and coping with her manic depression. He repeats himself a lot, too. But the truly obsessive repetition happens in the rhythm, over which axe ace Eddy Current takes every-which-way solos that'd bring tears to Tom Verlaine's eyes. Finally, in the album-closing title cut, tribal drums lure you on holiday to the Melbourne beach, where the tide splashes ashore for 24 minutes.

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Marrow: Sunshine Enema
This co-ed San Francisco trio's grassroots synth-pop sounds way more human than their genre usually allows; Erin Fortes' vocals have bite, bounce and bubble, as do the beats. Drum 'n' bass skitters, factory clanks, gabba speedups, rave trance-outs, guitar shocks, little gewgaws of noise: it all keeps moving, so fluidly you barely mind that the first four cuts hover around the seven-minute mark. Best songs: A plaintive Depeche Mode rip, a sadistic She Wants Revenge cover, a propulsive guest rap, and — surprise — a very pretty remake of the McGarrigles' '70s folk classic "Heart Like a Wheel."

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The Reverend Payton's Big Damn Band: The Wages
A new drummer boisterously passes his entrance exam, and otherwise Indiana’s loudest old-timey barn-dance trio raises its own stomping, swerving stakes. In fact, as the Reverend stresses in one key cut, nearly "Everything’s Raising" nowadays: gas, groceries, our ages — just not our wages. The bum economy ("In a Holler Over There," about starving kids and meth labs, and "Just Getting By," about living hand to mouth) and impending senior citizenry (in "Redbuds") are obsessions elsewhere too. But it’s nothing fermented grapes can't help, as the Cajun frat-punk jig "Two Bottles of Wine" makes clear.

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Intocable: Classic
On their 13th album, Texas' biggest regional Mexican band pays tribute to '60s norteño legends Los Relámpagos del Norte. That duo's accordionist, Ramon Ayala, produced, and 14 of 17 songs are covers. As academic exercises go, tracks like "Rogante" and "De Qué Es Tu Corazón" make for sprightly cowboy polkas. But towering over all else are two of 2010's most irresistible singles, in any genre: the super-hooky shout-along "Hay Ojitos"; then, at album's end, "Estamos En Algo" — a stop-and-start pastiche of group yells, sustained squeezebox and impossibly soulful singing: a party with dread in it.