Labor Day traditionally represents the spiritual end of summer — oh yes, it has spirit, how ’bout you? — but don’t tell ANR, Fruit Bats, Male Bonding, Robert Earl Keen, or Motopony, all in town this week.

Perhaps the reason ANR’s Stay Kids sounds so bright is the band are from Florida, where the meteorological autumn is more like our end of July. It could also be that the record was originally released in time for summer, and gets a deluxe roll out next week via 10K Islands. Like a block of TV On The Radio simmering in Animal Collective kaleidoscopics, there’s a heavy familiarity but one that breaks down defenses with ease. It seems strange that it’s not ANR but opener We Barbarians who choose to cover Talking Heads’ “Strange Overtones.” The selection betrays the straightforward nature of the Headspace EP, which surely has more influences than U2 and The Killers — they’re just overpowered. (Wednesday@Empty Bottle with Bigcolour.)

Robert Earl Keen might seem to favor winter, at least if you’ve ever watched him argue for playing “Merry Christmas From The Family” in July because we were past halfway to the holiday. You could also reason, however, that there’s not much difference temperature-wise between Chicago July and mid-winter Galveston, Texas. Keen trots some more Margaritaville-flavored arrangements on his new Ready For Confetti (Lost Highway), but still flashes some of his (or his characters’) cold blood. “The Road Goes On And On,” hardly a companion to his glass-raising “The Road Goes On Forever,” could be the most relentless lyrical attack he’s ever recorded, while “I Gotta Go” wreaks havoc at every turn. “Show The World,” conversely, might be one of his warmest songs, and he returns Todd Snider’s gesture with a cover of his “Play A Train Song,” while retouching one of his own oldies, “Paint The Town Beige.” (Thursday@Joe’s On Weed with Tyler Reeve. This show was originally scheduled for the 10th.)

If fall is going to take away summer, Eric D. Johnson thinks, then he’s going to take falsetto away from R&B. While generally derided as one of the most facile manifestations Prince’s influence, Johnson’s use of it throughout Fruit Bats‘ new Tripper (Sub Pop) gives his silky folk-pop a brilliantly nimble twist. It also provides a consistent route through his mellowed-out narratives. Fruit Bats has never — despite Johnson’s links to Califone — been one of his label’s noisier outfits, but with Tripper he breezes by with as much conviction as one can do so. Pray the soundboard does a service to his voice: some earthquaking lyrics hide in the all-rightness. (Thursday@Lincoln Hall with Vetiver and Breathe Owl Breathe.)

Also going one quieter, Sub Pop labelmates Male Bonding return. Shorn of the overwhelming fuzz on their debut, Endless Now portrays a leaner band looking to distinguish themselves. Produced in an actual recording studio, it’s not so much a case of trying to sound less like Wavves or No Age, but more like themselves — which means power-pop and Teenage Fanclub. The dozen tracks zip by with a deceiving sameness — though the distortion has been tamed on “Tame The Sun,” the colors rest in shades of third and seventh notes. Frontman John Arthur Webb could very definitely have altered his delivery now and again, but there’s a certain charm in the record’s very subtle changes. (Thursday@Subterranean with Love Inks and Hospital Garden.)

Will the real Motopony please stand up? There are two bands using the name: one that supplies gentle folk pop as on a self-titled Tinyogre debut, and then the one producing live displays seen here. Cue this kind of quote to accompany the build-up to their next album: “We wanted it to more accurately reflect our stage show.” (Friday@Schubas with Tiny Fireflies.)

– Steve Forstneger

Years ago, all the CMA hubbub about Taylor Swift probably wouldn’t cost Texan Robert Earl Keen much sleep. The country singer/songwriter didn’t get angry — he just killed.

“I have a few dead bodies around,” he told IE last year. “I’m a lot softer now – the body count has dropped to almost zero.” If he does seek retribution though, “I can look at ‘em and think, ‘I’m putting your fuckin’ ass in a song. I’m gonna fix you.’” Since the early ’80s, Keen has been a charter member of the Texas musician corps, along side such luminaries as Guy Clark and Joe Ely, and, to a degree, Lyle Lovett and Steve Earle. His influence carries through in Hayes Carll and Todd Snider, though it’s not so much a musical one as proof that a good story and “purple sunset” recordings done right can equal longevity.

He’s a raconteur’s songwriter, weaving real life (“Corpus Christi Bay”) through Southern humor (“Copenhagen”) and borderville fables (“Sonora’s Death Row”). His current album, The Rose Hotel, is his first for Lost Highway and a departure overall sonically — call it a ’50s Ray Price fan making peace with the ’70s — but at its heart lies Keen, flapping his gums and telling stories you wish you had.

– Steve Forstneger

This summer, after his mid-afternoon Lollapalooza set, Texan singer/songwriter Robert Earl Keen found himself in a rather deserted portion of Navy Pier. Opposite a mysterious arcade machine with a sinister Gyspy skull inside, he popped in a quarter and said, “I want to be big. No! No! Sound big. I want to sound big!”

Well it could have happened – and the truth isn’t so far off. Struck by his albums’ tendencies to sound unfettered by modern (post war) production techniques, he told longtime buddy Lloyd Maines he wanted this fall’s The Rose Hotel (Lost Highway) to sound big and so it does.

“I’ve always done everything on a shoestring or out of my own pocket,” he says, “always felt that was my limiting factor: the expense of making a record. I was limited with this as well, but when I started talking to Lloyd about this record, he asked me what I wanted to do and I said ‘I just want to make a really fat . . . a lot of rhythm stuff going on, a lot of singing going on.’ He was totally behind me. There wasn’t any kind of confusion about what I was saying.”

Keen says that last bit with a hint of a chuckle. Like many from the distinguished line of Lone Star troubadours, he was sick the day they taught orchestration at school. But he also considers himself a special case when it comes to leading his band.

“One of the big jokes with my band and me is they say, ‘Oh, so you want kind of purple sunsets?’” he snickers. “‘That’s exactly right, guys!’ Matter of fact, I hired my steel [guitar] player because I told him, ‘What I want here, Marty, is I want some purple sunsets.’ He goes, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about.’”

Fans who’ve been in Keen’s corner since 1984’s No Kinda Dancer needn’t brace themselves for a string of George ‘n’ Tammy duets sprinkled between wide-lens, Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds madness. Sunsets, while not always purple, venture towards indigo even though what’s on the horizon wasn’t exactly stirring Keen this time around.

“I find some certain themes that recur,” he says, assaying his career, “but one thing I like about Rose Hotel and one reason I called it that and like the song is it’s a little out of my league and is something I’ve been trying to lock into for a long time, which is kind of an ‘urbanscape.’ I do a lot of sort of desert/Southwestern/Texas/whatever you want to call it, a lot of my stuff has that kind of setting and I have very little urbanscape. That was what I liked about it and I locked into that song really easily. I don’t know why. That was, in some ways, out of the norm for me. However, in ‘Throwing Rocks,’ that particular song is my bread-and-butter murder ballad. I never seem to get into that kind of song without killing someone,” he laughs. “I’ve done that a lot. There are themes I don’t seem to be able to escape, which continues to this day. I’m always trying to stretch, particularly musically, because when I started I was feeling really limited. Now I feel fairly robust musically.”

The album opens with the title track, a slow-roller bustling with standard Keen fare (accordion, mandolin) but somehow sounding fuller with cameos by 12-string electric guitar and layered vocals. It’s followed immediately by “Flying Shoes,” which enters on a bass guitar pattern that sets the beat more than the drums do, while a guitar wet with delay provides the color.

“I like Ry Cooder records a lot,” Keen mentions. “Some of those ones that he made like Chicken Skin Music or Into The Purple Valley. He always had all these vocals and great rhythm thing going on. And a lot of it would be filled up by like a buried slide-guitar track and maybe an upfront, big, electric rhythm thing happening. A lot of things going on at one time. Not that it sounds like a Ry Cooder record, but the reason I give you that example would be I wanted something that it was not just linear going from the beginning to the end of the song. Just spilling out all over the place sonically.”

– Steve Forstneger

For the full interview, grab the November issue of Illinois Entertainer, available free throughout Chicagoland.