The Cotton Jones Basket Ride

Over three albums and a clutch of EPs, Cumberland, Maryland's Page France established themselves as earnest-enough purveyors of riddling Christian indie-pop slightly reminiscent of Elephant 6 Collective efforts. Late last year, though, frontman Michael Nau and his longtime bandmates shuttered the project and launched another: the Cotton Jones Basket Ride. Releases, their publicists promise us, are up ahead on the horizon somewhere, but at present the CJBR is represented by leaked tracks such as "Midnight Monday and a Telescope," a ramshackle C&W duet between Nau and bandmate Whitney McGraw. Nocturnal, smoky, and ambling, the song coasts on subtextual held-organ notes and playful pockets of acoustic-chord shimmer, an appetizing hint, perhaps, that CJBR really represents a new facet of what these tour-happy twentysomethings are capable of. With the Botticellis; Seymore Saves the World. 21+.
Thu., June 19, 8 p.m., 2008