Headless Household’s Balladisimo Is an Album to Sink Into

The cover of Headless Household’s Balladismo shows the barely discernable figure of a woman dreamily reclining beneath a foreground of stormy ocean waves. It’s a fitting image for an album that shifts and ripples gently between various low-key avant stylings — takes on jazz, lounge, soft rock — while maintaining a dreamy blue mood throughout. The ninth album from this enduring band of regional free spirits, masterminded by music penman Josef Woodard, has many peaks, including plaintive Americana number “3/4: The Road” with Glen Phillips on vocals, the ultra-catchy “I Love You, Too,” and a rainy day’s worth of lovely trumpet and sax jazz pieces. It’s an album to sink into.