Old-timey music comes in many shapes and sizes, but no one injects levels of ghostly punk fervor into the often-staid genre of Americana like The Pine Hill Haints. This ragtag bunch of North Alabama “junk musicians and travelers” (as their bio so accurately states) have released their second collection, entitled To Win Or To Lose, and it buzzes and jumps with an infectiousness that’s hard to resist.

The first thing you’ll notice about The Pine Hill Haints is that you have to turn their music way up — not to get bombarded by decibels, but simply to pick out all the understated instruments like accordion, washboard, musical saw, and bucket. Rather than pummeling you over the head with revivalism, the Haints subtly craft their ghoulish creations with careful attention. Lead singer Jamie Barrier’s vocals carry a touch of 1980s punk’s full-throated melody, with his powerful delivery translating even though he’s barely amplified on one-minute torchers like “Not So Lucky And The Invisible Kid” and “Charley Horse.” The humid New Orleans feel of “Bordello Blackwidow” shimmies by far too quickly, before “Scar” and “Screaming Jenny” skank in sounding like acoustic Bradley Nowell outtakes.

“Never Gonna Die” produces the whistling phantom effect the Haints are most well-known for, and combined with the following track “My Bones Are Gonna Rise Again,” adds an element of banjo-led craziness a la Gypsy legend Django Reinhardt. “Never Cry’s” woozy Celtic-influenced rockabilly gallops into your ear, “Revenge Of The Spider-Web Boy” struts into the hollows of Appalachia, and “Je Passe Devant Ta Porte” takes a weepy detour into Cajun country. If that doesn’t give you a good idea of the ridiculously far-reaching range of The Pine Hill Haints, well, maybe you need to get spooked yourself. –NM

Let’s forgive artist/filmmaker Thomas Campbell right up front: yes, his three films (The Seedling, Sprout, and The Present) all display a similar affection for longboarding and retro shapes, and yes, the two with official soundtracks (Sprout and The Present) both contain a very similar smattering of bands and artists. But that doesn’t take away from the majestic beauty and masterful success of The Present’s score — let’s also remember that very few surf film soundtracks receive mainstream releases.

But where Sprout focused on jazzy improvisation, The Present seems to fall a bit more on the folk ‘n’ roll side of things, with Vetiver, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Cass McCombs, and Plants And Animals all making appearances (Vetiver’s stomp on “You May Be Blue” and McCombs’ sparkly pop on “When The Bible Was Wrote” stand out). Cast member and expert longboarder Alex Knost weaseled his band Japanese Motors’ catchy simplicity onto the program, and the movie’s Africa section is well represented by funky percussion-focused tracks from Nbadva Kure and Gabor Szabo.

Longtime T. Moe collaborators The Mattson 2 and Tommy Guerrero revive their junk-shop jazz vibe, along with newcomers Mice Parade, who keep The Present consistent with past Campbell efforts by contributing a seven-minute epic. The Photographic also lend a lengthy opus to the soundtrack, albeit a crunchy instrumental that serves as the hardest song on the album. So yes, The Present does tread closely to past takes on surfing’s alternative board movement and hipster music scene. But so long as nobody else is tackling the complex nature of marrying modern, diverse music with modern, diverse surfing, we’ll keep looking to Thomas Campbell for inspiration. –NM

Bearded freak-folk stormed the musical scene in the early 2000s, but the genre has broken down into enough geographical subdivisions to present challenges for critics. Bowerbirds don’t lay claim to any particular regionality, but their music weds the pastoral and the rambling in equal portions, resulting in All-American contemporary acoustica that has little use for borders or boundaries.

Bowerbirds’ second album, Upper Air, again finds Phil Moore and Beth Tacular exchanging harmonious vocal lines, while softly strummed guitars and exotic instruments like autoharp and upright bass provide indulgent touches. “House Of Diamonds” has a meandering quality that only finds its way home once Moore and Tacular exultantly sing, “You are already free” over percussive guitar chords. “Teeth” and “Beneath Your Tree” both steal an upbeat European page from the book of fellow musical wanderers Beirut, but that energy comes to an abrupt halt on the sparse “Silver Clouds,” which inexplicably lacks Tacular’s heavenly pipes.

The rest of the album quietly rocks, with “Ghost Life’s” unstructured chorus evoking visions of a wooded paradise and “Northern Lights’” plunking piano adding down-home charm. The nearly silent “Bright Future” and the synthesized “Chimes” are the only low spots on Upper Air, but the fingerpicked and hand-clapped beauty of “Crooked Lust” quickly erases them. The earthy charm of that track serves as the hallmark of the Bowerbirds aesthetic, one that even freak-folk detractors can get down with. –NM

The title of Los Angeles power trio Nebula’s new album Heavy Psych says it all: these guys churn out guitar-obsessed cosmic explorations, all in the smoky haze of influences like Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, MC5, and even latter-day grunge saints Mudhoney. Lead singer/guitarist Eddie Glass defected from stoner-rock impresarios Fu Manchu in the late ‘90s yet has stayed true to that band and genre’s THC-drenched crunch.

Nebula started their career on psych-rock haven Tee Pee Records, and after stints at several other labels, they’ve returned home for their sixth full-length. Opener “Pulse” packs in the spacey guitar/vocal effects, before “The Dagger” pummels listeners’ eardrums in a modern-rock-meets-Jimi-Hendrix kind of way. And “Aphrodite’s” languid jam could have come from the heyday of Page & Plant, just with a lot more drug-fueled experimentation. “Dream Machine” is a misguided Middle Eastern instrumental, but things shift back into gear on the shit-kicking “Crown Of Thorns” and the excellent “Little Yellow Pill,” which begins with a muffled banjo intro before ramping up into a heavy blues trot. Heavy Psych isn’t rewriting any stoner-rock rules — and thank God none of the album’s songs clock in at much more than five minutes — but Nebula certainly knows how to provide the perfect soundtrack for your hazy late-night indiscretions. –NM