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William Elliott Whitmore, a farm boy who hails from Lee County, Iowa, is set to release his new record, Animals in the Dark, on the Anti- label on February 17. After a trio of acclaimed, intimate, spare, and highly personal albums on the Southern label, Whitmore gets more political on Animals in the Dark, and he also fleshes out his sound. What remains the same is his wizened, worn voice, which gives a startling authenticity to his straightforward, woodsy folk music.

Whitmore will be performing with The Donkeys, Pictures of Then, and Meth & Goats at RIBCO on Saturday, January 17, in a show presented by Daytrotter.com. The show starts at 9 p.m., and admission is $8.

In this interview with the River Cities' Reader, Whitmore talks about why he began looking outward, the challenges of writing political songs, and why he decided to collaborate more on this album.

The California-based Donkeys spent three years on their second album, Living on the Other Side, from start to release, and that combined with the quartet's warm, fluffy, unhurried music might create the impression that the band moves slowly. Some songs sound downright lazy.

"We're laid-back dudes," said keyboardist Anthony Lukens in a phone interview last week. "We try to make it sound like nothing's contrived or rushed. So I would probably take that as a compliment if something sounded, maybe, effortless would be a nicer way to say it. ... We're hardly lazy. ... We're definitely relaxed dudes. It takes us long time to get from Point A to Point B, because we're going to hang out and talk about it for a long time."

Parlophone - the label home to everyone from the Beatles to Colplay in the UK - found the Swedish quintet Love Is All a touch hard to work with.

The label released the band's 2006 debut, Nine Times That Same Song, but dropped it after receiving rough mixes for the follow-up and getting resistance from the group about employing some outside producers to shape the recordings.

It was a union destined for failure, but Parlophone simply discovered what the members of Love Is All knew already: They are difficult.

"Everybody has so much say about everything," said lead singer Josephine Olausson in a phone interview last week. "It can get really frustrating."

The Quad Cities quartet Chrash goes by many names, and right now its preference appears to be Chrash Flood. That shape-shifting seems to reflect an almost willful desire for obscurity.

It's also a fair summary of Chrash's appropriately titled new record, The Name They Change, which the band will celebrate Saturday night at RIBCO.