Salinger

On “The Girl With Nothing to Say,” which opens this Orangevale trio’s five-song CD debut, singer-guitarist Stu VanAirsdale begins by lamenting an uncommunicative partner over a pensive instrumental track that owes more to space than to action. The song builds, the bass and drums fall in behind VanAirdale’s plaint (think R.E.M. imitating Fugazi), then the band shifts gears and it’s epiphany time. So it goes for most of the rest—a quiet start, a granny-gear build, then everyone’s firing on all eight cylinders behind VanAirdale who’s sing-shouting wetly into the mike. Salinger makes intelligent, eccentric and often sharply angular music, nicely recorded here by renowned indie-rock theorist/engineer Steve Albini. This may not be a shot heard ’round the world, but it oughta resonate pretty loudly around these parts. (And naming a disc after the great third baseman/slugger Thomson gets Giant bonus points.)