It’s been too long since we last heard from planet Lockgroove, but Boston’s best-kept secret make up for lost time with some help from an extended family on the SharkAttack! label/collective’s album-length four-band compilation 3.5 eps. Lockgroove’s twin brothers, Ryan and Martin Rex, return with what might be their best material yet: the elephant fog has lifted somewhat, and their blissfully melancholic pop side predominates on three new feedback-drenched rainy-day dispatches from the tattered remnants of daydream nation. Another Rex brother, John, shows up in Charlene, whose squalling two-chord drug pop comes from the Jesus and Mary Chain school of Velvet Underground worship — think Black Rebel Motorcycle Club with a minor in Medicine and My Bloody Valentine. Lockgroove’s David S. Goodman unveils his solo project Compass, in which he cloaks his Syd Barrett folkisms in comforting algorithmic bleeps from hallucinating mainframes. And the instrumental quintet HelloAttack are happy to erect somber, elegiac cathedrals around gently weeping slide guitars, but they’re even more ecstatic when they’re tearing the whole thing down in a rush of oncoming traffic noise.
(Lockgroove, Charlene, HelloAttack, and Compass play a CD-release party this Friday, January 25, at T.T. the Bear’s Place. Call 617-492-BEAR.)