Bird-Dog

The Verlaines’ second full length album found the trio of Graeme Downes, Jane Dodd and Robbie Yeats at a new level of striking excellence and beauty, Downes’s sense of yearning, contemplation and his detailing of quotidian existence while aiming for something else matched by one lovely performance after another. “Makes No Difference” and the semi-chanted “Icarus Missed” musically match the melancholy, but the burning blast of “Slow Sad Love Song” and the sense of heading into the future on a remake of “C.D. Jimmy Jazz and Me” provide balance.