Buffalo Tom returns, after never really going away

[Bronson's back from a little time off. Not that he'll get any rest tonight ...]

Tonight might be the busiest show-going night in recent memory. So before I post my piece from today's print edition on a group I consider one of the most underrated bands of the 1990s, Buffalo Tom, here's a rundown on what's going on:

Bodies of Water plays a show celebrating the release of their joyous new album "Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink" at 8 tonight in Pershing Square downtown. It's free. ... The material from Patrick Park's forthcoming album "Everyone's in Everyone" (due Aug. 7) gets a full-band treatment when the singer-songwriter (pictured) finishes up his July residency tonight at Spaceland. ... The aforementioned (two items down on the blog) Service Group show also features the wildly fun Henry Clay People. ... Speaking of fun: Say Hi to Your Mom -- L.A. native Eric Elbogen, et. al. -- has relocated from New York to Seattle, and tonight they are back in Hollywood, playing at the Knitting Factory. ... The Rapture rock the Mayan, with a little help from from local lads Foreign Born. ... Portugal the Man plays the Troubadour. ... Another new L.A. quartet exploring  Anglophile rock, Buckfast, hold forth at the gig. ... Chromeo, along with Flosstradamus,  plays the Hell Ya! night at the Echo. ... Sea Wolf (8:30 p.m.) and Midnight Movies (9:30) play the free festivities at the Hammer Museum. ... Tegan & Sara harmonize at the Malibu Performing Arts Center. ... Suki Ewers heads the bill at Tangier. ... The By and By play the Silverlake Lounge. ... And Filter is sponsoring something at the Roxy called Revenge of the Sunset Strip headlined by J*DaVeY, and while I'm not sure what about this constitutes revenge I'm sure somebody who goes to the Sunset Strip will write and tell me.

Is that enough? I surely missed some things.

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And now a few words about Buffalo Tom:

Without a trace of nostalgia, Bill Janovitz is talking about how the passing years have thinned the hair, added lines to faces, changed relationships and rearranged priorities. “All of that hopefully becomes the stuff of songwriting,” the Buffalo Tom singer-guitarist says. “You still want to tap into the same interpersonal and emotional places.”

With the release this month of “Three Easy Pieces,” its first album in nine years, the Boston trio — whose bristling, exuberant guitar pop made them alt-rock favorites in the early- and mid-1990s (think of them as the Shins of their era) — find those places, some 18 years after issuing the first of their six albums.

Janovitz and bandmates Chris Colbourn and Tom Maginnis never broke up after 1998’s “Smitten,” but fatherhood and their professional lives relegated Buffalo Tom to the back burner, except for occasional hometown shows. Old anthems such as “Taillights Fade” and “Soda Jerk” gave those college-rock fans a buzz, but the trio discovered during “very organic” recording sessions that they still had more music in them.

“It was a very emotionally daunting prospect to get together again, now that we’re fathers and working jobs,” he says. “But we’re better at weeding out what’s truly important. I guess that’s called growth.”

The new album, sonically the kin of 1992’s “Let Me Come Over” and ’93’s “Big Red Letter Day,” certainly rings with a familiar quality — as Janovitz says, “that bittersweet/melancholy thing we’re known for.”

“We’re better at distilling what we want to say,” he says. “Before there was always that opaque Buffalo Tom imagery. Now I think the focus has gotten a lot sharper.

||| Buffalo Tom, with Juliana Hatifield opening, plays the El Rey Theatre tonight.