If you’re looking to satiate your singer/songwriter fix, you could certainly do worse than the new album from Carll Wilkinson, Pomegranate, which he’ll be releasing Friday at Acoustic Coffee. He’s true to his genre, eschewing any backing instruments or vocal doubling, relying just on his voice and an acoustic guitar. The result is a pretty spare recording that doesn’t deviate much from song to song, but which has soul to spare and doesn’t have an offensive note on it. Often, the guitar isn’t much more than a whisper, and Wilkinson is happy to rely on his voice to carry the day. It’s got a pleasant timbre and should remind folks of Dave Matthews fairly often, emphasizing as Wilkinson does that kind of crack-on-purpose style of singing. Unfortunately, Wilkinson swallows a lot of lyrics with that style, and it’s difficult sometimes to make out the words, which works against a record meant to stand on its songwriting virtues. Still, there are gems here, and Wilkinson rarely relies overtly on the verse-chorus-verse construction — even when choruses are included, they’re almost hidden, sometimes getting softer, rather than louder, than the verses. "Traction" has a nice hook, down in the mouth like much of the record: "Used to have traction, but I must have got stuck/ I feel my whole world spinning, and it’s just me gathering dust." On "Hallelujah," we get some echoes of the most recent Sufjan Stevens disc, but where Stevens builds in multiple string tracks and soaring vocal backing to get at that idea of a chorus of angels, Wilkinson just puts himself out there, for better or worse. On the whole, it’s better.

Take note: the Element, formerly the Christian Hayes Element, are now officially Sidecar Radio. Ryan O’Connell mysteriously reports: "There were numerous reasons for the name change, some more pressing than others, hence the suddenness of the name change."

Portland/Florida rapper Anger has released Releasing Anger (makes sense), on Dialectic Records. Be on the lookout for a local release gig.