Record Rack

*** Scarnella, “Scarnella,” Smells Like Records. This side trip for Geraldine Fibbers’ dynamo singer Carla Bozulich and guitar adventurer Nels Cline (appearing Friday at the Troubadour) goes off--sometimes into the ether--on several challenging tangents. Don’t be frightened. Even the bleakest atmospheres retain the earthy humanity of the Fibbers’ fractured country experiments. A 12-minute piece about a cat named Snowy is practically cuddly--if in a spooky way.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent). The albums are already released unless otherwise noted.