Lucero

There’s a darkness on the edge of Lucero’s town. The foursome comes from Memphis, which seems a million miles away from the golden smile of Nashville — at least in light of the act’s defiantly titled new album, Nobody’s Darlings. On the disc, Lucero works solidly in the Uncle Tupelo tradition, dancing around the nexus of country and rock and singing about hard drinking, small-town suffocation and dumb love. Singer Ben Nichols is able to sound comfortably familiar while making music that’s far from comforting; his mix of Will Johnson’s lonesome keen and Eric Bachmann’s somber rumbling is the band’s ear-grabbing centerpiece. If Memphis music has one signifier, it’s untainted grit, and in keeping with this tradition, Lucero lets the stains show, leaving a class picture that includes a bloody lip and a cheap haircut.