The morning after: waking up in the same clothes you slept in, your aching head on the pillow of some foreign bed, self-awareness dawning on you and the clarity that comes with those first few moments of consciousness. Your brain feels like a sick oyster shrinking in the shell of your skull; you know you’ve been in this position far too many times and you’re genuinely baffled as to why you persist on winding up in it. This scenario is the sound captured by “That Feel”, the hangover rising up from within and you being resigned to claim it almost as a badge of honor.

As far as album closers go, they don’t come more effective (and affecting) than “That Feel”. Opening with a languid guitar sounding like a drunkard rolling out of bed and a dirge-like drum rattle, the song breaks in the way of sunlight creeping through the slots of a boarded up window. The ramshackle ferocity dominating Bone Machine is largely absent here, Tom Waits toning it down and creating the sensation of one awakening from the night terrors of the previous songs. You might be lucid, but the impact of that ordeal is not going to leave you; the feeling that the woes of life have imparted on you will remain, and will define you for the time you have left. “There’s one thing you can’t lose / It’s that feel”, Waits sings, sluggishly trying to assert some sobriety, “Your pants, your shirt, your shoes / But not that feel”. He doesn’t define what “that feel” is, for there’s no need to do so; you either have that feel or you don’t, and those that don’t, well, they will eventually.

Klinger: As you know, Mendelsohn, when it comes to choosing albums for Counterbalance, we take our marching orders from a website called Acclaimed Music, which is run by a Swedish mathematician who has compiled as many lists as he can get his hands on, feeds them into a machine, and posts the top 3000 on his website. We bow before our mathematical overlord Henrik Franzon, for he is truly the Nate Silver of rock. Still, all this precision does take us into some odd places. These past couple weeks are a good example—I’m pretty sure Sufjan Stevens’ 2005 magnum opus Illinois is the polar opposite of last week’s selection, Straight Outta Compton. My ears are about ready to drop their transmission from shifting gears so fast.

Despite the presence of Kanye West, Alicia Keys, and Chris Martin, the star-studded bill at Wednesday night’s Hurricane Sandy benefit concert in New York City was staffed mainly by the classic rock contingent, particularly of the British variety. “This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden”, Mick Jagger astutely quipped from the stage, which his Rolling Stones shared with fellow aged countrymen Paul McCartney, the Who, Eric Clapton, and Roger Waters. Waters’ rendition of “Comfortably Numb” with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder was one attempt to bridge the noticable age gap, but it was McCartney’s team-up with another representive of the grunge ‘90s that is bound to generate buzz over the next few days.

The Pacific Northwest has been home to more than its fair share of iconic musicians — Jimi Hendrix, Quincy Jones, Kurt Cobain, and Elliott Smith all spent their formative years in this rain-soaked corner of the world. But for my generation, those who came of age in the years shortly after grunge’s demise, there is no band that better exemplifies the Northwest sound than Boise, Idaho’s Built to Spill.

The band has seen many incarnations, from its beginnings as a loosely conceived solo-project for founder/songwriter Doug Martsch, to its current line-up of drummer Scott Plouf, bassist Brett Nelson, and guitarists Jim Roth and Brett Netson, which has earned a reputation as one of the most dynamic and inventive live rock bands in recent memory. As a guitarist, Martsch belongs to the same school of outre virtuosity as Dinosaur Jr.’s J.Mascis and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, although he balances his more experimental tendencies with a heavy dose of classic rock sensibility. But it is his unique approach to melody and songcraft that have exerted such a considerable influence over the music of the Pacific Northwest. And while a few of Martsch’s most ardent admirers, such as Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard and Modest Mouse’s Isaac Brock, have gone on to achieve greater levels of commercial success, Built to Spill maintains a core of deeply devoted fans to this day.

Chad Valley’s Hugo Manuel has been a busy man. The Jonquil frontman just completed a tour of the UK with Massachusetts electronic band Passion Pit and Glaswegian electro-pop outfit Chvrches, and also launched his first tour of the US as Chad Valley, so he was justifiably tired when we met to discuss his debut album Young Hunger. While in America, the Oxford-based artist had the opportunity to headline a label showcase at CMJ, and though the tour wasn’t what you’d call traditional, he got the opportunity to promote his music in a way which should open up regional programmers to his unique blend of ‘90s-era Balearic chillwave and modern electronic music.

Manuel recently spoke to PopMatters not only about his new full-length, but how the album’s numerous, noteworthy collaborations (Twin Shadow, Glasser, El Perro Del Mar, etc.) came into being, and how he accidentally came across Bono’s unique method of writing lyrics.