Be Brave Bold Robot

There’s no better place in town for a Be Brave Bold Robot CD release party than Luna’s Café, where the vibe is always cozy and conducive to raggedly tuneful storytelling. That suits BBBR frontman Dean Haakenson, who radiates self-made literacy and puts it to musical use in fey, brambly, rockish folk. Nothing about it is robotic, in case you’re concerned; rather, the songs seem effusively human—chatty, rhythmically fidgety and ready to live, with a few discordant thorns left among the rosy harmonies for credibility’s sake. One quickly obvious keeper is “Intended Music,” whose early phrases Haakenson pipes up with a guileless bleat on the order of Daniel Johnston, only then to declare his own commendable musical and narrative priorities: “Let’s have these conversations out loud.” Right on.