Though they’re a trio live, Broken Smokes actually revolves around the insular dreamworld of transplanted Northwesterner Charles Smith, who makes indie rock that couldn’t be the product of anything but one very depressed (yet occasionally witty) slacker. And while part of that stems from the appropriately low-fi self-production, it also comes down to influences. Combine Beck in his post-girlfriend dystopia, chronicled on Sea Change and Mutations, with the kind of cheery, hooky despair Rivers Cuomo of Weezer used to wallow in before his dreams all came true, and you’ll have an idea of where Charles is really coming from. This being indie rock, there’s a heavy slice of irony weighing it all down, but the peculiar numbness of all sensitive kids’ immediate post-breakup era remains front and center, like when the group grafts a slowed-down version of King Harvest’s “Dancing In The Moonlight” onto the pain in the un-ironically titled “Assholes and Yourself.” And with or without the irony, it’s painful stuff: “Melting away to the security of non-existence,” Smith sings on “Melting.” “Biding my time in the beauty of no one caring.” Or, on the one outwardly-gazing track here, “Bush (Fuck Him)”: “I believe in natural selection / but can it really be done this election?” Ouch.