After a banner year of touring with indie-folk luminaries like The Tallest Man on Earth and Bowerbirds, Timothy Showalter brings his lustrous baritone and oblique, resonant songwriting back home to Philly in support of his excellent third album. The self-released Dark Shores — produced by John Vanderslice, a writer similarly given to intimate, imagistic fictions — trades the sparse, synth-dappled ruminations and wide-ranging historical-fantasy reenactments of 2010’s Pope Killdragon for a rootsier, frequently fuller sound and a tighter lyrical conceit. Centered around a moon-dweller’s reflections on an earth life (and a lover) lost in the wake of climate change and environmental collapse, these songs’ sci-fi figurations form a thin, permeable veil for all-too-human heartbreak and isolation.
Sat., Dec. 15, 9:15 p.m., $10, with Buried Beds and Little Big League, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com.
