Alkaline Trio and Pretty Girls Make Grave

Though there are certainly occasions when the miles-of-smiles pop-punk proffered by the likes of Good Charlotte, Simple Plan and Bowling for Soup makes my day that much better, sometimes–like, say, on trash day, or when CSI is a rerun–I get a hankering for some three-chord monte of a darker variety. At those moments, into the CD player goes Good Mourning, the latest from Chicago’s Alkaline Trio, three cigarette-smoking misfits who still believe feral twentysomething angst and totally catchy choruses make sense together. “I take that as a compliment,” front man Matt Skiba said on the phone when I called him on tour in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago. He should: Mourning tracks like “Fatally Yours” and “Every Thug Needs a Lady” pile up lots of the bracingly dramatic imagery Skiba’s always using over whiplash power chords and new drummer Derek Grant’s muscular backbeat. The effect is similar to the Foo Fighters’–you don’t realize how unique the sound is until you look around at the band’s would-be peers. “This one is a darker record than the last one,” Skiba explained, “and it represents things that are really personal to me.” What an idea. Openers Pretty Girls Make Graves are surprisingly singular, too: Good Health, the Seattle band’s Lookout! debut from last year, revitalized At the Drive-In-style emo-skronk by sheer force of will, and the five-piece has a percolating live show I defy you to sit still through. Try now, too, because the Pretty Girls’ bow on big-britches indie Matador, The New Romance, is due September 9, by which point everyone will be dancing.