If you want a sense of what Mini Mansions sounds like, interviews and reviews often reference the Beatles' experimental side and the late singer/songwriter Elliott Smith. But you're advised not to raise the comparisons with Michael Shuman, the Queens of the Stone Age bassist who formed Mini Mansions in early 2009.

Shuman has previously been up-front about the influences of and his love for the Beatles and Smith, but when I asked him about Mini Mansions' new self-titled album compared to the Beatles, he responded curtly: "I don't think it sounds anything like them." A lot of writers have repeated the comparison, he said, but "I just think it was the wrong bandwagon."

A trio that primarily employs keyboards, bass, drums, and voices, Mini Mansions - performing at RIBCO on December 11 - plays pop music that immediately grabs you but is also streaked with oddity and darkness. The Beatles comparison is frankly inevitable because of the vocal style and harmonies, and the spirit of Smith is undeniable as well. (For the record, outside of a closing scream and vocal flourish in "Monk," there's barely a hint of Queens of the Stone Age.)

Monte Montgomery's guitar-playing is so distinctive, dexterous, and seemingly ingrained that it sounds like he might have had the instrument in his cradle. So it's surprising that he could have just as easily played the trumpet.

His first instruments were trumpet and piano, and he said he only took the guitar seriously "when I no longer had a piano or a trumpet at my disposal, and my Mom had an extra guitar. That's what I had. I often joke about, 'Mom, what would have happened if we hadn't lost that trumpet?' ... I think fate had other things in store for me."

He's similarly matter-of-fact about his decision to abandon electric guitar for an acoustic. "I could do a lot of things on acoustic I was relying on electric for," he said in a phone interview earlier this week. "So why not leave the extra guitar at home and the additional two heavy amps I was carrying around for my electric, and just play acoustic? It really was kind of just that simple."

The playing by Montgomery, who will be performing at the Redstone Room on November 17, is anything but simple. In 2004, Guitar Player magazine named him one of the 50 greatest guitar players of all time, and he's been called the acoustic Hendrix.

The opening track of the Band of Heathens' One Foot in the Ether is classic electric alt-country, but a listener unfamiliar with the Texas quintet would be wise to withhold judgment or expectations. "L.A. County Blues" casually segues into soft harmonies recalling the 1970s in "Say," and then "Shine a Light" digs heavily into soulful, organ-heavy gospel.

That diversity of styles befits a group with three primary songwriters who each play multiple instruments, but it also reflects an understanding of the essential similarities shared by different branches of roots music.

"I've never seen blues music or soul music being very far away from country music or bluegrass," singer/songwriter Ed Jurdi said in a recent phone interview promoting the Band of Heathens' November 4 performance at the Redstone Room. "The approach is slightly different in terms of who's singing the song and what they sound like."

Songwriters Jurdi, Gordy Quist, and Colin Brooks - with bassist Seth Whitney and drummer John Chipman - are celebrating the fifth anniversary of their band this month, yet rather than settling on a sound, Band of Heathens has embraced a stylistic sloppiness.

Images by photographer Chris Jones from Thursday's Papa Roach concert at the i wireless Center, with openers Skillet and Trapt. Click on any photo for a larger version.

Papa Roach: