Friendship • 2nd Grade at the Cactus Club

Music for sleeping and waking, walking and driving, hunting and fishing, for loitering outside a roadhouse on the haunted tundra. Okay in elevators, not great for dinner. On Caveman Wakes Up Friendship’s new album and second for Merge Records, the band’s historically capacious definition of country music grows wider still. Shambolic guitars are offset by flute pads, bleary poetry is set against a Motown rhythm section, a song about Jerry Garcia and First Lady Betty Ford fades out with a drum solo, like if Talk Talk came from a dingy Philadelphia basement, and was fronted by James Tate. Get off work. Get on the subway, maybe your bicycle. Put your earbuds in. A pop song only lasts a couple minutes, but can create a universe. 2nd Grade’s new 23-track album, Scheduled Explosions, is another entry in Philadelphia songwriter Peter Gill’s rapidly expanding catalog, and simultaneously his most focused and expansive work yet.