New Threats From The Soul, featuring guest vocalist Catherine Irwin of Freakwater on its title track, reckons mightily with the perplexities of human efficacy and agency in an absurd and debased world. This probably sounds hopelessly plodding and severe. It is not—not remotely. It’s a shit-ton of fun. The songs are all earwigs; the arrangements genuinely thrilling, enlivening efforts by the crackerjacks that comprise the sprawling Roadhouse Band. Each trip through the record reveals more of the depth and breadth and tangle of its tapestry. New Threats From The Soul is a masterclass in reducing the sublime to the prosaic, immensity to infinitesimally, and vice versa (the trick can only work both ways). The record functions in parallel with Kafka’s winking dictum that there is an infinite amount of hope in the universe, just not for us. For fans of Silver Jews, Bill Callahan, Lambchop, Cass McCoombs, Sparklehorse.