Stranger's Morning

Actor/producer/writer/director Adam Goldberg also needs a slash for "musician." The artist—whose credits include Saving Private Ryan, Dazed and Confused, and Entourage—has issued several albums, including this second set as The Goldberg Sisters, and he's far more accomplished and artistically left-of-center than one might imagine. Stranger's Morning includes pop songs that feature mellotron and that would be just as at home with a copyright date some 45 years earlier (that's 1968, in this case). It's no surprise to learn that The Flaming Lips' Steven Drozd is a friend and occasional collaborator—since if one had to pick a modern reference point for The Goldberg Sisters, it'd be the Lips, Mercury Rev, or another band like them that favors ornate arrangements and higher-than-normal pitched lead vocals that bend with the breeze. Tunes such as "Would You Know," "York," and "It Can Get You Down" sound less like the work of a solo artist than of another psychedelic group touring the country packed like sardines into a beaten-up old van.