The music of Chapel Hill's Salt to Bitters is tense and tortured, subverting its good-timing folk-band instrumentation for songs that survey the sort of discontent that happens when life turns into one messy after-party. Like early Bright Eyes committed to a barstool sentence, Salt to Bitters digs into despair and spotlights the results with no filter. The sweet-voiced Anna Rose Beck opens; her optimistic lilt and plaintive romanticism balance well against Salt to Bitters' savagery. —Grayson Currin