As a songwriter, Allan Boothe has always had a vulnerability about him. As a performer, he more frequently comes across as a bundle of nerves than a rock star. On record, he has a way of revealing so much of himself in such a melancholy way - even as he's surrounded by sunny, chugging guitars and bright percussion. He's a reluctant singer, an unlikely frontman, with an unmistakable sound. Even though his band, Humble Cub, has a new album that was mastered in LA by someone who most recently worked with No Doubt (among other big name pop acts), Allan Boothe will always quintessentially, idiosyncratically, be like Allan Boothe.

Humble Cub's last album, back in 2010, concerned itself with the beach, Five Mile Drive, and the sensation of hanging onto youth and relationships in long car rides and buzzed hikes. Telegram From Your Future Life, the band's latest, is conversely all about living, working and playing music in downtown Tacoma - an urban wood not entirely dissimilar from the beach that so enamored Boothe back in 2010.

What has changed, notably, is the strength of the recording a string of playful touches - such as the familiar buzzing sound phones used to make when someone logged onto the Internet on "So Right," or Boothe laughing "This is crazy" on "Shake You Out." Also peppered throughout the album are flourishes of percussion using, I learned, actual instruments utilized by Hal Blaine on historic records like "Good Vibrations" and "Last Train to Clarksville." These flourishes lend a cohesion to Telegram that was missing to a certain extent on Humble Cub's debut album.

"I never know how things are gonna work, I just try things that I think sound cool," says Boothe. "I like listening to records where you can tell they had fun making it. ... It all goes back, I guess to home recording. ... You forget that these interesting things are around us everyday. When I hear stuff like that on records, I feel like I can connect with the artist more, and it inspires me to not always seek perfection."

"King of the Jungle," a favorite at live shows for the past year or so, is a nervy exploration of relating to people in a place and time where relating is more complicated and mysterious than it's ever been. When Boothe's shouts of "Speak Up!" at the end begin to push into the red, it's hard not to sympathize with the utter frustration than can result from trying at communication.

In an album full of distinctive moments and tidbits to be examined, the most striking to me comes in the last song, "Shadow" - which, mirroring the opening track, seems to concern a lost love. Whereas the first track is despairing, with Boothe running into this girl at a supermarket and lamenting that he feels in the way, "Shadow" finds him flattering her and spelling out the name, "N-I-C-K-Y," before tenderly asking, "Dondé Nicky?"

It's the kind of moment that stops you in your tracks. Who knows whether it concerns anyone actually real, but it's this sharp songwriting that finds truth in tiny moments, however fleeting and diminutive they are. Even in a downtown jungle, these moments are as unmissable as the rolling tide of a beach.

THE SPACE, W/ ROSWELL, FRIDAY, DEC. 28, 7:30 P.M., ALL AGES, $5, 729 COURT C, TACOMA

NEW FRONTIER LOUNGE, W/ DEATH BY STARS, OH DEAR!, SATURDAY, DEC. 29, 9 P.M., COVER TBA, 301 E. 25TH ST., TACOMA, 253.572.4020

LINK: The return of Roswell