"Lonesome sound" stripped to the basics

Amateur Radio Operator might make you look-over-your-shoulder edgy. It's tense, dark, vaguely sinister — calling to mind a Tom Waits song.

What's this band building in their practice space?

Tough to describe. You hear Americana accents and rock rhythms. Perhaps a shotgun marriage between country and grunge.

Neil Young, Creedence Clearwater Revival and even a little "Nebraska" Bruce Springsteen reverberate through ARO songs, like flickering spirits in the speakers.

Mark Johnson is the creator of haunting lyrics and vocals, with Kevin Suggs on pedal steel. John Faryar plays guitar, Chris Early — from the original Band of Horses lineup — is on bass, with Mike Bayer drumming.

From simple titles such as "Water Shed," "Broken Trees" and "Snow" emerge complex, twisting songs. "Water Shed" starts out almost like "House of the Rising Sun," then quickly shifts from creepiness into twitching apprehension.

Johnson started Amateur Radio Operator as a solo project in 2005, upon the breakup of the promising (though unfortunately named) Yeek Yak Air Force. He gradually added musicians to his band, as "I really wanted a more full sound. I have a deep love of old guitars, tube amps, and warm, fuzzy overdrive. ... We practice weekly as a three-piece, honing the core sound, and Kevin and John join us a few practices before shows to build that strata of reverb and echo that takes the hollow sound over the top."

ARO will probably face inevitable comparisons to My Morning Jacket and Band of Horses — as if either of those invented reverb. The tone Johnson, who came to Seattle from Georgia, is shooting for goes way, way back, to some "old-time" Appalachian music.

"The sound actually begins (at least in my head) with Smithsonian Folkways recordings," Johnson said, writing an e-mail from Louisiana, where he was visiting his wife's family. "Dock Boggs and the Louvin Brothers play that lonesome sound that I really wanted to achieve early on, but I did not want to copy it (acoustic instruments + vocals) directly, so I stripped it down to the basics ...

"I really like layered histories — especially those that exist in fable or ephemeral forms that take some imagination to comprehend, so I started building stories around different things I would latch onto from when I was in the South (bottle trees, abandoned factories, rust, obvious passage of time, etc.). That kind of material is everywhere, but the South has such a grittiness to it that is very inspiring to our music. I like to think of reverb as humidity."

Johnson's band is just getting known around Seattle, not yet to "headlining on a Saturday night" status. Amateur Radio Operator is second on a three-band billing at Ballard's Sunset Tavern (9 p.m. Thursday, $7). The Sam Beam-ish Pufferfish and the talented, underplayed rock of Levi Fuller are also on the bill.

Have an ARO listen online: www.myspace.com/amateurradio.

• "Double Wide" might be their best song, although "Complainin' Song" is pretty funny, and for romance there's "Walmart Girl." This is the amusing White Trash WhipLash, on a bill with Sabbath-honoring Plaster and the Press Corps at the Sunset (10 tonight, $6).

The Press Corps is another band to check out, if only because it features Dan Peters, the terrific Mudhoney drummer. Peters is backing another fine drummer, Garrett Shavlik, who here is doing what many percussionists dream about: singing lead. Shavlik, from grunge greats the Fluid, has a pretty good Southern rock-ish voice; his band also gets help from former Mother Love Bone and Green River guitarist Bruce Fairweather.

The Sunset has quite a week, with Nirvana drummer ("Bleach" era) Chad Channing's psychedelic pop band Before Cars (10 p.m. Saturday, $7); jazz-funk improvisers whose name starts with "the Suffering" and includes a word we can't print (9 p.m. Sunday, $5); the piano-pop orchestrations of Grand Hallway (9 p.m. Tuesday, $6); and humorous folk rocker Colin Spring (9 p.m. Wednesday, $6).

• Brendan Fowler, better known as BARR, brings his offbeat game to Atlas Clothing (8 tonight, $8, all ages; 1515 Broadway Ave.). BARR's new album is "Summary," on Kill Rock Stars offshoot 5RC; the standout is "The Song is the Single," jazz-punk-poetry, a brutal, funny commentary on the music industry, with some great beats.

• Deal of the day: The Hands, Speaker Speaker and the Lights at the Crocodile at 9 tonight. Free show.

• Conor "Bright Eyes" Oberst has sold out his concert at the Showbox on Sunday. The indie rocker from Omaha, Neb., is best known for his savagely satirical song, "When the President Talks to God."

• Flashback time: Country Joe McDonald — "one, two, three, what are we fightin' for?" — and the Kingston Trio's John Stewart play the Triple Door (7:30 tonight, $25).

Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent, original members of England's legendary the Zombies — "Tell Her No" and "Time of the Season" — bring psychedelic rock to the Triple Door (7:30 p.m. Monday, $30/$32).

Tom Scanlon: tscanlon@seattletimes.com