Luther Russell makes his 'Repair'

Luther Russell chuckles knowingly when an interviewer remarks that the songs on his fourth album, "Repair," seem kind of happily mopey. "That's me, smiling at everything that could possibly be sad," he says, pausing and then laughing. "There you have it. End of interview."

Yes, that's the album in a nutshell, but how the 36-year-old arrived at his sage stage is the back story of "Repair," a title you can take to mean "some sort of therapeutic thing, or the double-entendre, like to repair home," he says.

Indeed, Russell's latest songs materialized after he returned to his native Los Angeles in 2002 after eight years in Portland, Ore. "When you play a gig up there, it's not like you're looking out into the audience to see who [from the record industry] might be checking you out," the former Freewheelers frontman says. "I realized, 'Hey, if I'm doing it here, it must be because I like it.' And when I moved back down here, I brought that attitude with me."

But his move back to L.A. was fraught with real-life problems -- his divorce, as well as illnesses in his family -- that slowed his artistic progress yet "probably informed the songs," he says. When "Repair" was finally recorded, virtually live and with producer Ethan Johns (Kings of Leon, Ryan Adams), it was a quick process.

||| Russell plays Saturday night at the Echo. Among the openers is Sarabeth Tucek, whose album Russell co-produced.

||| Download: "My Own Blood."

◊ ◊ ◊

Highlights this weekend

Great Northern and the Comas make for a great bill tonight at Spaceland, while Solare plays at El Cid. That is, if you're not at the Hollywood Bowl watching Cheap Trick and the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra performing Sgt. Pepper's. (Hmm.) They're channeling the Beatles on Saturday night too. ... Speaking of Saturday, the Avett Brothers play the El Rey, and Ladybug Transistor and Castledoor rock Spaceland. ... Also Saturday night, International Pop Overthrow finishes up its 10th edition at the Knitting Factory, highlighted by a set from the Waking Hours. ... And on Sunday, it's MF Doom at the El Rey.