A rock tour becomes a pilgrimage - "passin' through this wilderness, searchin' for our home" - or possibly vice versa on Marah's latest album, Angels of Destruction! Both a beefy, bluesy, rock-and-soul bar band and a hand-clapping, guitar-strumming folk-rock band are at the core of Marah, which formed in Philadelphia in the early 1990s and resettled in Brooklyn. Although Marah got started in the heyday of grunge, the band's two songwriters, singers and guitarists, the brothers Dave and Serge Bielanko, reach back to the same roots as Bruce Springsteen does. At times Marah can sound like Elvis Costello leading the E Street Band.

Like their predecessors the Bielanko brothers have far more to say than most bar bands. They pour out words and ideas, and it has taken them some time to keep their verbiage from crowding the songs. On Angels of Destruction! they have found the balance. The words are aligned within melodies and hooks, whether it's the folk-rock tango of "Angels on a Passing Train" or the driven eighth-note pounding of "Old Time Tickin' Away."

Angels of Destruction! worries about apocalypse and redemption. It also tells tales from the band's perpetual travels - particularly in Spain, where it has a strong following - and from its New York City home, where "We come up from the subway/Like we're freed out of Hell." Any hint of pretension dissolves in Marah's music, as the Bielanko brothers' raspy, growly vocals ride roadhouse grooves. In Rolling Stonesy stomps and skiffle bounces, easygoing vaudeville shuffles and driving rockabilly boogies the songs make allegorical visions sound like barroom banter.

- Jon Pareles, New York Times