BUZZ BANDS

Aussie quintet tries U.S. again

The Australian quintet Augie March is hitting the U.S. again this year, packing a valise full of music awards from its native country and an album full of lush imagery and harmonies. But as Glenn Richards knows, all that and a $20 bill won’t gas up the tour van.

“It’s very difficult for bands from Australia to come to America and Europe, because it’s so expensive,” the band’s singer-guitarist says. “Unless you’ve been lucky enough to have a hit song, it’s basically pay-to-play. It’s a hard slog, but we’re up for it. You try to convert as many people to the cause as you can without losing money and a bit of your sanity.”

You like Augie March’s chances, though. On its earlier ventures to the U.S., the Melbourne band, whose name was nicked from a Saul Bellow novel, was on the now-defunct indie label SpinArt; the new album, “Moo, You Bloody Choir,” has the backing of Jive/Zomba. Its keen storytelling betrays none of the troubles Richards and bandmates David Williams, Adam Donovan, Edmondo Ammendola and Kiernan Box were having with their record labels, both at home and abroad.

“Many times, I think songwriters have only two or three themes that they just attack from different angles,” says Richards, citing inspiration from one of his heroes, the late Grant McLennan of Aussie luminaries the Go-Betweens. “There’s no reason you can’t write about anything.”

Augie March performs tonight at the Roxy.

Singer smiling at everything sad

It’s noon on Tuesday, the day Luther Russell’s fourth album, “Repair,” is released, and the first thing out of the singer-songwriter’s mouth encapsulates the emotional tenor of the record. “That’s me, smiling at everything that could possibly be sad,” he says, pausing and then laughing. “There you have it. End of interview.”

How the 36-year-old arrived at his sage stage is the back story of “Repair,” a title you can take to mean “some sort of therapeutic thing, or the double-entendre, like to repair home,” he says.

Indeed, Russell’s latest songs materialized after he returned to his native Los Angeles in 2002 after eight years in Portland, Ore. “When you play a gig up there, it’s not like you’re looking out into the audience to see who [from the record industry] might be checking you out,” the former Freewheelers frontman says. “I realized, ‘Hey, if I’m doing it here, it must be because I like it.’ And when I moved back down here, I brought that attitude with me.”

But his move back to L.A. was fraught with real-life problems -- his divorce, as well as illnesses in his family -- that slowed his artistic progress yet “probably informed the songs,” he says. When “Repair” was finally recorded, virtually live and with producer Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon, Ryan Adams), it was a quick process.

Russell plays Saturday night at the Echo. Among the openers is Sarabeth Tucek, whose album Russell co-produced.

Fast forward

L.A.’s Great Northern and New York-based the Comas combine for a strong bill Friday at Spaceland. . . . Chicago boundary pusher Pelican hit the Troubadour on Friday behind the new “City of Echoes.”. . . Moving Units begins the push for its forthcoming album, “Hexes for Exes” (due Oct. 9) with a show Saturday at the House of Blues Anaheim. . . . Tuesday will be busy: British quartet the Magic Numbers returns, playing the El Rey with support from the Little Ones; the L.A. quartet Buckfast brings its anthemic Britpop to the Mint; the Wildbirds (also playing a Monday residency at the Detroit Bar) rock the Troubadour; San Francisco’s Film School is in to play Spaceland; and Dengue Fever heads up Cambodian Rock Night at the Knitting Factory.

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