Omaha scene scores again

Neva Dinova

“Neva Dinova” (Crank!)

*** 1/2

Reaching the crest of the title track of “The Execution of All Things,” Jenny Lewis of the Los Angeles band Rilo Kiley sings: “Then we’ll go to Omaha, to work and exploit the booming music scene....” Whether her tone is earnestly hopeful or sweetly ironic, that’s exactly what Rilo Kiley did, signing to indie label Saddle Creek and recording its engaging second album in Nebraska.

Out of the same city and recording studio (but via an L.A. indie label) comes Neva Dinova, whose self-titled album marries three-guitar atmospherics with Jake Bellows’ compelling poetry to form a nearly perfect union of sonic saccharine and lyrical snap.

“Brooklyn,” for instance, warbles like a lovely Wilco ballad, its narrator innocently recounting his pursuit of a girl he saw on the subway. By song’s end, you realize it’s stalking, plain and simple, and the narrator Just Doesn’t Get It. Then there is the delicate “Dances Fantastic” and its sleights-of-rhyme, like: “[she] broke my heart and out poured oil / I don’t want that kind of goil.”

Neva Dinova invokes its effects sparingly -- barbed-wire guitars only as exclamation points, gauzy swells of distortion to build drama. You hear the reverb-soaked “Did You Disappoint Your God?” or the poignant “Jesus’ Choir,” and you wonder, what’s in the water in Omaha?

-- Kevin Bronson