When I last wrote about Unknown Component, the one-man DIY project of the prolific Keith Lynch, I focused on one song and compared his voice favorably to Kurt Cobain's.

Five years - and at least five recordings - later, I'm faced with his 2012 album Blood V. Electricity, and his growth is impressive and, frankly, startling. The Iowa-based singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer will be performing at Circle Tap on May 11, and the talent I saw before is now mature, the potential is realized, and the flashes of brilliance have been transformed into a consistently alluring and engaging whole. (And while his singing still has a whine, the edge has been sanded off, banishing all thoughts of Cobain.)

The album is on the one hand atmospheric and spacious and on the other concrete and tangible, finding a happy balance between misty textures and solid frames, and forging a successful, alchemical marriage of synthetic and organic instrumental sounds.

On the Web site of the California band The Lonely Wild is a country-rock-stomp version of Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus," notable for its clarity, the way it bends the song to the band's style while remaining true to the original, and some Michael Stipe-like vocals. But what will strike most people forcefully and immediately is the jarring segue into the guitar solo from Pink Floyd's "Money," with motifs from both songs intertwined for the remainder.

It's a small, natural leap between the central riffs, but it's an inspired pairing. And on its debut album, The Sun as It Comes (released April 2), the quintet shows a similar skill at combining disparate elements into a natural but distinctive whole - explosive desert gothic, with Ennio Morricone's Spaghetti Western soundtracks blended with modern indie rock.

The band will be performing at Rozz-Tox on May 4, and singer/songwriter Andrew Carroll said the band grew out of a solo project. His previous band had been a collaborative songwriting outfit, he said, and writing alone was "kind of liberating, not having to ask for other people's opinions, or having to work with four different people ... . It gets difficult to produce material that way."

Photos from the Victor Wooten concert at the Redstone Room on April 21, 2013, as part of Polyrhythms' Third Sunday jazz series. For more work by Matt Erickson, visit MRE-Photography.com.

The first track of any various-artists compilation bears a heavy burden, required to set the tone for what follows even though the performer had no role in crafting the remainder of the songs. Chris Coleslaw's "Sterling ILL" does this on Hello Quad Cities - Volume 2 with a verse that succinctly repeats a common complaint about the Midwest, and the Quad Cities: "So New York grows / Hollywood glows / Well here in the middle / Well they say it just snows."

Coleslaw's delivery over acoustic guitar is poignant without being doleful - matter of fact yet clearly felt.

The sequencing here is smart - implicitly framing the second limited-edition local compilation as a rebuttal to the argument that our community is a dull dead end and then backing it up with "Sterling ILL" and 11 other exclusive tracks. (Hello Quad Cities is available on colored vinyl only, but each copy comes with a digital-download code.) Last fall's Volume 1 was notable for its consistency, and the follow-up comes close to rivaling it.