The venerable Chicago band The Sea & Cake will release its 10th album in September. Singer/guitarist/songwriter Sam Prekop told me it will be called Runner. And ... well, that's about all he offered initially.

"I haven't actually listened to it," he said in a phone interview last week, promoting his July 21 RIBCO show with The Sea & Cake bandmate Archer Prewitt. "It's like a really fond memory already. I'm like: Why listen to it and attempt to take it apart?"

Prekop said he's in the "recovery period" for the album - the time between when it's finished and when he and the band need to learn the songs for live presentation and to prepare a new show. He said that at first he dreads reworking the songs for concerts, comparing the process to how most people feel about (and procrastinate with) taxes and homework.

But something with deeper roots could be contributing to his ambivalence about The Sea & Cake. The long-running outfit - which the All Music Guide called "the elder statesmen of impressionistic indie rock" - might just be inherently frustrating to Prekop's admittedly "restless" nature.

It's rare when critics and artists see eye-to-eye, as an external perspective often misses intent and the nuances of creation, and the view from inside is often too close to see the bigger picture. But with Lucero's Women & Work, the Memphis-based band and its reviewers are seeing the same things from their respective vantage points.

In a phone interview earlier this month promoting his band's April 3 performance at RIBCO, bassist and founding member John C. Stubblefield said that the new album - released March 13 - is distinct from Lucero's previous studio records: "Every album before [2009's] 1372 [Overton Park], we've always kind of gone in and reinvented to a certain degree. ... Rather than reinvention on this one, I think it was more realization ... ."

That was echoed by AllMusic.com's Thom Jurek, who wrote: "It's as if this sound was always there just waiting for them to mature enough to let it breathe. ... Women & Work is the sound of a ... confident band, fully embracing their hometown's musical legacy, and wrapping it inside their own sound, making each both larger and deeper."

Stubblefield said that the album has added a "strong sense of regionalism" to Lucero's punkish alt-country barroom brawn, most obviously with the soulful horn section that debuted on 1372. That album, he said, was "kind of Lucero with horns on top of it, where it was hinting at this certain thing. On this entire record, now that the horns have been playing with us for a couple years, it's more integrated and more organic ... ."

And Women & Work also touches on the blues and spiritual traditions of north Mississippi. "It was cool to realize all the different musical styles of the region and pull it off on one record," Stubblefield said.

(Some have found fault with the album's love-letter-to-Memphis approach. The A.V. Club thought the band took the homage too far: "It all sounds familiar, and that's the problem ... : Lucero has never sounded so assured or less distinct.")

Led by singer/songwriter/guitarist Ben Nichols, Lucero since its 2001 self-titled debut has established twin reputations as hard-working road dogs and sterling songsmiths. You can hear both in Nichols' authoritatively weathered and abused voice, as he infuses the album's titular themes with both art and experience. (There's probably something in his genes, too, as he's the brother of writer/director Jeff Nichols, whose two feature films thus far are grimly rich, daring, and humane. Lucero scored his Shotgun Stories.)

After a brief introduction, "On My Way Downtown" kicks off Women & Work with a bright boogie, and the title track continues the party vibe.

The tempo slows and the mood darkens on "It May Be Too Late" - "Now I could get better / Or I could get drunk / Two doubles for the road / Reckon I'm done" -but Nichols infuses the words with an undeniable rhythm that buoys it.

On "I Can't Stand to Leave You," he sings with a downbeat resignation that's leavened by a certain hopeful sureness, and the latter is matched by every instrument - the rhythm section, the female backing vocals, the keys, and the horns. The band expertly draws from opposing feelings and somehow makes that feel natural rather than ambivalent.

The album, Stubblefield said, was developed over two months, and he said the process involved "exploring every idea and every riff. ... A couple of songs, the bridges became whole other songs. Kind of our most collaborative effort."

The productive labor is evident on Women & Work, which often creates resolution where there should be loose ends and tension. As Paste wrote, it's ultimately "a mixture of a retrospective eye and [the] solace of the future."

Lucero will perform on Tuesday, April 3, at RIBCO (1815 Second Avenue in Rock Island). The 8 p.m. all-ages show also features William Elliott Whitmore. Tickets (RIBCO.com) are $16 in advance and $20 the day of the show.

For more information on Lucero, visit LuceroMusic.com.

If you attend a Satellite Heart show - such as January 7's at RIBCO - two of the songs you might hear are "Rock N' Troll" ("Fighting dragons / Killing marauders / Doing things that we thought that we'd never do") and "Pizza Party" ("Even Saddam Hussein like[s] pizza"). Both are irresistibly dumb; the first could be a Spinal Tap cover, and the second could have come from Flight of the Conchords.

Yet before you think that the Quad Cities-based quartet is a joke band, or a one- or two-trick pony, make sure to check out Satellite Heart's full-length studio debut, Become the New, when it's released in late January. It does include the aforementioned live-show staples, but it's also a roughly vibrant rock record filled with hooks and charm aplenty.

Without casting aspersions, it must be said that Meth & Goats' new album Leisure Time starts at full throttle and never lets up, with few variations in volume, pace, or approach. The Moline-based quartet has crafted a pummeling record that over 32 minutes offers scant relief. The album's first stylistic breather is the space noise of seventh track "Gem Vision," which is even more assaultive than the other nine songs.

In that context, though, the album is quite an achievement - razor-sharp, discordant hard rock finding a midpoint between the breathless anger of Rage Against the Machine and the sonically ravenous exploration of Cedric Bixler-Zavala's and Omar Rodriguez-Lopez's the Mars Volta and At the Drive-in, without the ego-driven ambition of any of those bands.

If Leisure Time also lacks those groups' moments of transcendent grace, that seems like a choice: Angular and throwing sharp elbows all over the place, Meth & Goats - which will perform a record-release show at RIBCO on Friday - makes no pretense to pretty. The album is loaded with hooks and urgency and dares you to keep up.