In Brief

* * * Adam Schmitt, “Demolition,” Parasol. So effortlessly does this 31-year-old Midwesterner ply his trade you wonder when he’ll try his hand at invention. Schmitt, mostly a studio guru since 1993’s “Illiterature” (his second of two albums for Reprise), offers up 10 home recordings that sound nothing like demos. Mixing boisterous and jangling guitars, he suspends exuberant choruses from power-pop hooks and waxes world-weary in a way that suggests an introverted Paul Westerberg, or a Tom Petty who wintered on the Illinois plains.

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Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two (fair), three (good) and four (excellent).