Reviews: Olivia Rodrigo, Midland, Red Clay Strays, Modest Mouse, Old Crow, Mike Campbell.

★★★★

All those allusions to the Cure on the singles leading up to the release of you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love were no coincidence. Olivia Rodrigo spends a good portion of her third album in a sustained funk, her melancholy creeping into the moments where the tempo quickens. Where her first two albums were bifurcated between ballads and barbed punk-pop, things get a bit blurry here. Rodrigo heightens the tension by building the drama on “Stupid Song” and “Purple,” occasionally stripping her arrangements so she’s presented in an unsettlingly precise closeup, as on the hushed “Honeybee.” The escalated theatricality feels very goth, even if the album itself rarely lingers in the shadows. When Rodrigo enlists Robert Smith himself for a duet, she places him on “What’s Wrong with Me,” a tune whose bright melody pulls the song out of its purported depression. These flashes of light help you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love play as a pop album, albeit one that’s swiftly leaving the adolescent realm. Rodrigo seems itching to leave juvenilia behind, following her head more than her heart, tempering the temptation to follow her bad ideas wherever they may lead. Her concentration on craft means you seem pretty sad feels layered but controlled, purposefully lacking the tart pop that gave Guts its kick. She’ll still curse, she can’t conquer her petty instincts, but she’ll polish the big jangle of “U+Me=<3” so it feels like a pre-Nirvana college-rock hit and give a “Maggots for Brains” a gleam that suits the heyday of MTV. Only the relentless neon synths of “Expectations” connect with the sense of abandon that fueled Rodrigo’s boldest hits, its pulsating presence both a welcome jolt of energy and a yardstick for her artistic maturation: she can still hit her hooks hard, she just chooses not to.

★★★★

It feels like Mission of Mercy is where Mike Campbell & the Dirty Knobs hit their stride, all by not doing much of anything at all. The former Heartbreaker no longer seems concerned by his vocal resemblance to Tom Petty, nor does he seem to want to do much more than deliver a killer little rock’n’roll record,