On the first proper album from local band Junker, the songs seem to exhale from exhausted lungs. Previous recordings have seen the band in a rain-blind fury of desperation, but Somewhere in These Transmissions deals more with the tragedy of the known and existential terror. To wit, songwriter Stephen Brooks delivers a one-two punch on “We'll See What You Can't See” and “Me and Mr. Kurtz.” On the former, he declares, “Sometimes I can't believe in anything at all”; on the latter, he repeatedly revisits the line, “Dying on my own.”

Junker's signature sound is fairly simple: strummed guitar, with the leads handled deftly by Zach Wright's pedal steel. The songs build slowly, with most ending up around seven-minutes long. The first sign of a plugged-in guitar occurs on the third track, “Esta's Song,” which, perhaps unconsciously, continues on the same theme ("esta" being Spanish for "is").

The album closes with “Austin to Albuquerque,” and the lyric, “It never feels the same as it did the night before,” which gives lie to the symbolic hope of the track's title, making clear that for all the bright eyes and phony manhood ensconced inside the myths of America's westward movement, there remains a curious emptiness to it all. I'm reluctant to place the “Americana” tag on Junker, but if we can stretch the term to include the caveats above, then maybe it all fits hand in glove. 3 out of 5.

Stream Somewhere in These Transmissions on Bandcamp.