Mr. Marco's V7

When a band's name focuses on a single member, it seems silly to carry on under the same moniker in that performer's absence, even if the rest of the group is perfectly capable of writing its own material. So after a three-day send-off, Mr. Marco's V7 will hibernate until its guitarist, Marco Pascolini, returns from Washington, D.C., during the winter holidays. Pascolini composed and arranged two of the tracks on the quintet's most recent release, La Musica Surreale From the Midwest: "Ballad of Sandoval" opens with searing country-fried riffs before disappearing into a haze of horns, and "There's Always Somebody Better, but I'm the Best" uses guitar lines that shuffle and slide to paint the group's jazzy output blue. On the other seven songs (bassist Johnny Hamil wrote five), Mr. Marco's V7 experiments with melody like a scientist testing the properties of a newly discovered substance. The band chills grooves to their freezing point, then lets them thaw until the pace heats to a boil. At times, the tunes provide an immediate accessible payoff before stretching once-hummable hooks beyond recognition; on other songs, the group begins with a floating free-form assortment of sounds, then creates life with the seemingly unattached parts. Mr. Marco's V7 is even more adventurous live, which means fans who catch all three parts of its long goodbye won't sit through similar sets.