The Return of the Multiple Cat represents the first set of new material from Pat Stolley's band The Multiple Cat in a dozen years, but the man has hardly been slothful.

As a founder and a member of bands, Stolley was intimately involved in the Quad Cities-based Future Appletree label - active for half a decade starting in 2002. And from Daytrotter.com's beginning in 2006 to summer 2008, he was the Web site's primary recording engineer; he estimated he's logged roughly 800 Daytrotter sessions and still typically records between 12 and 24 a month.

That experience, he said last week, took a toll. "For a while there, I was so depressed about music in general because of having worked for Daytrotter and seeing the amazing amount of bands and stuff out there - how much noise there is out there. It makes you just want to pick up your toys and go home.

"But then there's this other thing: I don't really have a choice. I'm going to keep writing songs and recording them, whether anyone is going to listen to it or not."

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.

Based on her vocal confidence and itinerary, it's hard to believe that Nikki Hill is by her own admission a neophyte on the music scene.

She began singing in the church choir in her native North Carolina when she was six or seven, but her tenure as a performing and touring rock-and-roll artist is considerably shorter - basically less than a year. Yet she co-produced and released her self-titled debut EP last year on her own label, she's planning a spring release of some sort, and this spring and summer she'll be playing in Italy, Germany, Sweden, Norway, and Spain. On Saturday, she'll be performing at RIBCO, and while you might not have heard of Hill, she's doing her damnedest to change that.

"I'm kind of in that ride-it-'til-the-wheels-fall-off mode," the 28-year-old said in a phone interview last week.

There's something strange about the Colorado-based band The Swayback.

It's not that the quartet - which will perform at RIBCO on October 13 - does anything particularly unusual or fresh with its music. It's that with a basic guitar, bass, drum, and vocal foundation and accessible songs, the band has a clear, distinctive, and authoritative voice. Through conviction, chops, and polish, the Swayback enlivens modern-, classic-, and hard-rock formulas - and influences and references - without really altering them. It's workmanlike in the best sense.