Records are rated on a scale of one (awful) to four (classic) stars:

The Modey Lemon 'Season of Sweets' (Birdman)

3 1/2 stars = Very good
Ratings explained

It's been three years since the last Modey Lemon album -- and five since the band has sounded like this.

On the last full-length, "The Curious City," Pittsburgh's fearsome trio dropped acid and channeled Syd Barrett, or something to that effect. After its release, they forecasted that the next one would be perhaps more melodic, more keyboard-heavy.

Forecasts are known to be wrong. Despite the sugary title, "Season of Sweets" might as well come with a severe weather warning, much like 2003's "Thunder + Lightning."

Fresh from pursuing his softer side with a second trippy solo record, Phil Boyd has his guitar set on heavy psych-metal stun, and it's a beautiful thing to behold, whether it's squalling and throbbing like Hendrix on the opening "The Bear Comes Back Down the MTN," dangerously scraping the median strip on "Ice Fields" or gushing in shoegazer style on the 10-minute bang-up finish "Live Like Kids."

Jason Kirker, always the new guy in the trio, works his magic with Moog synthesizer and keyboards, adding color, tension and a sci-fi buzz to songs such as the darkly brooding "Sacred Place."

And then there's one-man wrecking crew Paul Quattrone, otherwise known as the drummer. Lately, he has been terrorizing the kids with Midnite Snake. Now he's back to driving this engine with manic fury, at least until Led Zeppelin or The Who calls in need of young replacement.

Boyd tops it all with his dynamically cryptic lyrics and a vocal swagger most rock singers would sell at least part of their soul for.

The Modey Lemon revels in being the kind of outfit you can't easily pin down, and as these nine varying songs demonstrate, the group could easily go off on a garage-punk bender, challenge the metal or stoner-rock scenes or just become the world's most dangerous jam band.

Modey Lemon manages to tamper with expectations by combining it all into one volatile concoction.

Put it on once and it's hard to resist repeat bludgeoning, each revealing a little more of the scattered intensity and brilliance.

-- Scott Mervis

Death Cab For Cutie 'Narrow Stairs' (Atlantic)

3 1/2 stars = Very good
Ratings explained

A reluctant bride "who holds a smile like someone would hold a crying child," a misguided suitor passing the window, a single woman with a single pillow on a queen-sized bed ...

Benjamin Gibbard paints these lovelorn portraits with a delicate hand and Death Cab polishes them like a gem on the band's seventh album.

Unlike so many indie-rock bands that leave much to the imagination, Gibbard is a pretty straight-up romantic with a heavy flair for the melancholy. There are some pretty dark existential moments on "Narrow Stairs" -- move over Morrissey and Robert Smith -- but they're softened by his friendly, glowing tenor and the band's generally warm touch.

Take the song "No Sunlight," on which Gibbard sings about how the "warming bath of sunlight" he felt when he was young "disappeared at the same speed as the idealistic things I believed." On the page it reads like a dirge. On the record, it's disguised in bouncy power pop.

Mostly, though, it takes two to tango in these songs, and one of them isn't dancing. Relationships dissolve in predawn light, on melting ice, under the "Bixby Canyon Bridge." In "Long Division," a troubled marriage is brilliantly equated with impossible math. In one song, it's Gibbard simply admitting "You Can Do Better Than Me."

Death Cab gives a few songs a noisy rock treatment and the stalker piece, "I Will Possess Your Heart," begins with five minutes of ominous groove, but for the most part it's atmospheric midtempo rock with gentle, ringing guitars and keyboards.

Gibbard, as usual, is the focus, and there's no denying the long but pleasant shadow he casts.

-- Scott Mervis

Wollny/Kruse/Schaefer '[EM] III' (ACT)

Anyone who listens to WDUQ or peruses the U.S. jazz chart sales -- meager as they are -- can probably tell you that the genre is, at this point, not a young man's game. You'd be hard pressed, surely, to find an American jazz group of any importance (except in the avant-garde) whose members are under 30, and yet have fully realized talents and a three-album discography under their belts.

Not so in Europe. While the American scene has gradually fossilized thanks to the "classicalization" of jazz by Wynton Marsalis and his ilk, the groups in Europe continue to thrive the way they have for at least the past 30 years. And this is not only because such music receives ample government support as it never would in the States, especially under a Republican administration. European jazz evolves also because there is an open-mindedness and creativity there that is mostly lacking across the pond, except for very small, largely ignored pockets.

Case in point is the Bavarian label ACT, which over its 15 year output has been mainly known for ethno-jazz crossover and reverb-laden contemplations like a slightly more world-beat version of ECM.

ACT has seen fit to throw its weight behind a young piano trio which calls itself [Em], after the first initials of the three players: pianist Michael Wollny, bassist Eva Kruse, and drummer Eric Schaefer.

The marketing goal is blatant in their presentation - their second CDs cover displays a cartoonish drawing of them with Wollny sporting an emo-esque haircut, and then the inside photo of [Em] III has Wollny relaxing in a stylish hoodie while the other two glance nonchalantly in other directions. Since a younger crowd would respond naturally to such images, one can only hope this means that ACT is making a serious attempt to engage a youthful fanbase in Europe.

Of course, that could never happen here, yet U.S jazz heads can be suitably intrigued by not only this group's good looks, but also their considerable chops. No, you won't extract free-jazz whirldwinds from [Em], but then you won't get traditional, safe chart playing either.

From the very first note -- when Wollny strokes the inside strings of the piano -- it's evident that theirs will be a subtle, textural approach, influenced by dissonant 20th-century classical tropes and a liberal use of atmosphere and open space (they know when NOT to play, as well as when to keep it soft) as well as the occasional swinging vibe, which doesn't even kick in until the seventh track, "Nocturne."

Yet immediately after that, "Kiyoshi" returns to a more sculptural, tension-building saga, with Kruse and Schaefer scraping and rattling and droning while Wollny peels off thunderous, almost Wagnerian clusters.

Overall, [Em] wields a varied, adventurous attitude that doesn't bash you on the head, but rather masquerades as background music for a bit and then suddenly sneaks up from behind with a careful, surprisingly mature vitality that makes you wonder, "Who are these people?"

-- Manny Theiner

Don Immel 'Long Way Home' (Elemental)

3 stars = Good
Ratings explained

You don't hear the trombone much in contemporary jazz -- only the Crusaders have used it consistently over the years -- so this offering from the former professor of jazz studies at the University of Washington who also has performed with numerous symphony orchestras around the world offers something different than the normal "smooth jazz" fare almost by definition. With "Long Way Home," you get a lot of Chris Botti-style atmospherics and whole-note phrases that typify what's known as the "chill" movement; some of the tunes work and others don't.

I especially liked the grooving funk of "See the Memo," with Immel playing all over the horn, even into the bass range. Ditto "Lemonade Alchemy," with wah-wah effects from the keyboards, a "Wishful Thinking" feel courtesy of vibist Ben Thomas and the intensity rising during the vamp at the end thanks in part to Gary Hobbs' drum solo.

Two intriguing selections: "Whole Lotta [Love]," the Willie Dixon blues chestnut popularized by Led Zeppelin and featuring Chandry Moore on vocal and a long electric piano intro by Marc Seales; and Thomas' composition "Last Dance," with cellist Walter Gray playing the bass line and Thomas also playing bandaneon, similar to the accordion.

However, I didn't go for "Charm Offensive," which repeats the same ostinato throughout but seemingly without a point; or the Latin-style "Fools Full Quiver," with an unconvincing vocal by Jake Bergevin.

-- Rick Nowlin, Post-Gazette staff writer