Picking up where their first album left off, Subject Bias' sophomore effort, It Takes One to Know One, represents a steady step forward for the Portland-based indie rock outfit. The new album bears the same trademark features that characterized the band's debut-a tendency toward moody, textured melodies and dynamic changes a la Radiohead, and the emphatic, brooding style of singer and bandleader Kevin Ouellette. But ITOTKO is decidedly better, its 13 tracks benefiting from improved songwriting and tighter performances across the board. Ouellette plays acoustic and electric guitars and sings while, on the album at least, a solid but rotating cast plays bass and drums, rounding out the core trio. As on Average Potential, a supporting group of musicians adds simple but significant embellishments to the mix, fleshing out various tracks with trumpet, violin, organ and other instruments. The band, as it shadows Ouellette through soft, languorous passages and intermittently swells beneath his fits of distress, weaves a sturdy backdrop to the singer's shifting moods, alternately punctuating and pulling back. Perhaps most notable on this album, though, are Ouellette's equally languid voice (which, when he's not lashing out, sounds as if it were utterly tapped, like he was singing uphill or through a mouthful of molasses) and his lyrics, which display a curious combination of acute self-consciousness and scathing moral authority.

Roundhouse

Seacoast blues band Roundhouse's self-titled first album is an easy, ear-pleasing collection of original songs that, according to their Web site, draws on the Memphis and Chicago blues styles, as well as Cajun Zydeco music. The songwriting is split nearly evenly across the disc's nine tracks with harpist and singer Mike "Bullfrog" Rogers alternating numbers with guitarist Buddy Shute. For his part, Rogers prefers to swing. He's got the requisite super-smooth delivery and a knack for the genre's witty, tongue-twisting lyrical style (as on "High Class Man," where he lithely croons about a woman looking for "an uptown beau with real cash flow"). And while Rogers hops, Shute, on the other hand, grooves. Arguably the "bluesier" of the two, Shute uses his reedy, more restrained voice to his advantage, most especially on his prototypical blues lament, "You Just Don't Know Misery."