About the only thing Michigan-based musician Warren Defever has kept constant in the decade and a half he’s been recording under the His Name Is Alive banner has been the name. (The name of the band, that is; Defever himself has gone by both Warren and Warn.) He established a brief 120 Minutes toehold back in the mid ’90s with an intricate brand of bedroom-bound dreampop. But subsequent HNIA discs have touched on everything from mechanized synth-rock to psychedelic Afrobeat to gooey Beach Boys fluff. So it goes on Detrola, the follow-up to 2002’s Last Night (HNIA’s final release for 4AD): though the album opens with a lush tapestry of strings and saxophone that suggests a trip back to Defever’s ambient shoegazer era, the chintzy post-Prince funk of “After I Leave U” (sung by Andrea FM) kicks in soon enough, as if to announce that Defever has no such journey in store. The album’s best cut is “I Thought I Saw,” a deliciously mellow soul-rock jam that imagines Todd Rundgren fronting Steely Dan. But that’s just one of Detrola’s varied charms; determining your own favorite requires a dip into Defever’s wide world of sound.
His Name Is Alive + Low | Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, Somerville | Feb 2 | 617.864.EAST
