The singer/songwriter Sondre Lerche speaks of his audience like a pool of friends and acquaintances -- a blob that's ever-changing.

With each album, he said, "you're gaining someone, and you're losing someone. ... You're going to be reunited with someone you met in the past, and somebody else is going to take some time off and not be a part of what you do, and then also someone brand-new is going to enter the field and be excited about what you do. ... I like that idea."

That speaks to a healthy attitude toward the consequences of his artistic exploration, as well as the fickle taste of the public, but it also reflects the intimate nature of his adventurous, manicured, instrumentally omnivorous pop music, which seems to foster a relationship between artist and audience.

Lerche should be right at home at his Daytrotter.com show on Wednesday at Huckleberry's, with the small venue offering him plenty of opportunity for that give-and-take.

It might be lemons and lemonade and all that, but Rock Island native Lissie Maurus said she's pleased that it's taken her this long to reach this point in her musical career.

Maurus (who performs under the name Lissie) spent half a decade in Los Angeles and, for the most part, made her living from music. But when she comes back to the Quad Cities for a Daytrotter.com show next week headlined by Sondre Lerche (see article here), she'll be supporting her first proper release.

The Digable Planets that perform at RIBCO on November 6 will be different from the casually low-key, jazzy hip-hop group that from 1992 to 1995 made a major splash, with the single "Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)," the well-regarded albums Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space) and Blowout Comb, one Grammy, and another nomination.

But Doodlebug (also known as Craig Irving and Cee Knowledge) insisted that even without Ladybug (Mary Ann Vieira), he and Buttefly (Ishmael Butler) are authentic Digable Planets.

"We're the ones who created the name Digable Planets and produced all the music and wrote all the music," Doodlebug said in a phone interview last week. "We decided to continue the tradition of Digable Planets. If she doesn't want to do it, that doesn't mean the group has to die. ...

"Ninety percent of everything that came out of her mouth was written by one of us. Why wouldn't it still be Digable Planets?"

The most obvious touchstone for the local power trio Forty Minute Detour is Alice in Chains, which is odd when you consider some of the other things that get thrown into the stew.

Alice in Chains, after all, seemed like the most authentic grunge-metal group -- dark and dirty and, in the person of lead singer Layne Staley, living the nightmare of its songs.

Forty Minute Detour's In the Edges often invokes that dank blackness. Chad Clark's vocal performance and his big, flat, fuzzy guitar hook make "Nervous Breakdown" the Alice-iest cut on the album.

But it's rare on the record in not breaking from the formula. And you only need to look at the band photo from In the Edges to know that this is a little different: Bassist Josh Elmer, guitarist/vocalist Clark, and drummer Josh Morrissey are all smiling.