It’s not as much about the error Bill Buckner made in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series, as it is about the long sequence of events that set that error up to lose the game. It quietly makes the point that every out recorded, every run across the plate, every play, even every pitch is something that goes well for someone on one team, and badly for for someone on the other. The line that almost makes me tear up a little is “Bob Stanley picked a pretty bad time to uncork a wild pitch,” which is almost the whole thing in a microcosm: if Stanley’d really picked a time, he would’ve picked some other time.

McCaughey’s lyric doesn’t read particularly well — it’s a bit like an an essay with rather mangled grammar — and it’s frankly kind of amazing that it works as well sung as it does. I credit that partly to McCaughey’s sensitive, restrained delivery, which makes his meaning plain when his words don’t quite, and partly to some very canny arranging. “Buckner’s Bolero” is the longest track on the record and one of the most expansively rendered. The timing of the backing vocals is notably sloppy, which makes the song seem a bit more loose than it really is, in a not-at-all bad way. Paul Brainerd’s pedal steel lends an appropriately melancholy country tinge to the track, but what really pushes this into the realm of transcendence is how Ira Kaplan’s guitar looms over it, simultaneously screeching and shimmering, both a curse and a benediction.

In Pellet Gun’s hands the song is almost-but-not-quite unrecognizable without the lyric. The slightly sneery talk-sung vocal recalls Henry Rollins (especially on “Slip It In”) or Big Black’s Albini, with just a dash of the brilliant, demented disrespect Artie Sinatra brought to Dinosaur Jr’s covers of Young’s “Lotta Love” and The Byrd’s “I’ll Feel a Whole Lot Better.” The sheer quantity of guitar noise reminded me of Book of Knot’s magnificent deconstruction of “The Ballad of John Henry” from Traineater, but although both tracks are amply spiky, “John Henry” lurches, but “Rock and Roll” drives.

I really want to hear more from this band and/or the people in it, but the album credits only have this to say about Pellet Gun: Eric, Guitar; Dave: Bass; Brian: Drums. Any additional info would be appreciated. The only “Pellet Gun” I can find on the Internetubes is an Arkansan blues/funk/rock act — very clearly not them.

“Salivating” was the first thing I heard from The Broken Family Band, but they’ve been around for a handful of years/albums, and I’m gradually exploring their back catalogue. They apparently started out as a sort of British take on Americana, with some identifiably country-ish traits, but now they’re producing straightforward rock with no particular genre signifiers. “Salivating,” with its bouncy bassline, simple-but-hooky verse riff, and energetically strummed chorus, sounds a little like a distant cousin of The Godfathers circa Birth, School, Work, Death.

Please and Thank You has several more strong songs, and a quarter of the way through 2009, it’s my current candidate for year’s best album.

At the moment you can listen to Salivating at The Broken Family Band’s official website.

The trick an unabashedly retro act needs to pull off is to craft songs worthy of the obvious influences. Nanobots deliver the goods with “Spontaneous Combustion.” It features an arresting, octave-hopping, staccato, guitar-masquerades-as-keyboard riff and outstandingly geeky (and hooky) co-ed call-and-response chorus (”No chemical/Spontaneous!/Accelerant/Spontaneous!”).

Nanobots have been active almost four years, but so far have left little recorded evidence — I’ve only tracked down a pair of (digital) singles. “Spontaneous Combustion” is only available in a live version on the one from Simbiotic Recordings that hints at, but doesn’t fully realize the song’s potential — the sound is a little murky and the performance is not quite as tight as you might expect from a studio recording. But Nanobots’ energy and enthusiasm carry the day, as far as I’m concerned, and if they can put together an album with a few more songs this good it will be a year’s best shortlist shoe-in.

If they make it to Boston (and I hope they do), they’d fit perfectly sandwiched on a bill between two Beantown acts: the similarly retro Miskatonic, and the similarly twitchy Ho-Ag.

You can check out “Witches vs. Wolves” at New York Night Train Recordings, and there are more links from there. S-S-S-Spectres EP Sea Potentia Divina is also available from eMusic and iTunes.

I’m way late to the party with this one. All the hip Brooklyn music blogs cooed over this back in 2007, and the band has already broken up. Sigh.

I have gone all completist about S-S-S-Spectres, and there’s evidence on the Internets that people have listened to tracks — notably “Magic Mountain Reference” and “Your Hands Are Missing Mine” — that I haven’t yet been able to track down. If you can help me listen to those, please get in touch.