When it rains, it pours! There are eight album releases--that we know of--planned for this Friday and Saturday, but we just don't have enough ink to cover them all. Consult the music calendar for even more Albuquerque and Santa Fe celebrations.

Vocalist Patti Littlefield and tubaist/didgeridooist Mark Weaver enjoy walking out on a musical limb. Now, with the release of their group’s eponymous CD, Resonance, you can waltz on out there with them whenever you like.

On its second CD, the “twisted folk” duo Charmed—Alicia Ultan and Bambi Wolf—once again take on the darkness and find the light. In 12 original, emotionally powerful songs, Bitter Suite 7 explores love, loss, betrayal, memory’s hauntings, the search for a center, and the promise and sometimes redemptive certainty of love.

When David LaBrel left a town of 1,500 people to move to Los Angeles, he found the City of Angels took some getting used to.

It’s been a while since Portland-based desert gypsy rocker Kate Mann called New Mexico home, but the Land of Enchantment still swims in her blood. Her latest release remains intimate even as it fills to the brim with acoustic and electric guitar, fiddle, cello, accordion, piano, saw and harmonica. Mann’s sleepy-eyed acoustic ballads sit at one end of the bar, while cello-heavy movers and shakers beg for another shot at the other. Things Look Different is an album that gets its point across with forceful grace. (SM)

Friday’s benefit for Albuquerque Health Care for the Homeless features the Drop Steady Rockers, Element 37, Better Ends, Master Kali, Ill Conscious, DJ Garronteed and host Hakim Bellamy. A $5 donation gets those 21-and-over into the Blackbird Buvette (509 Central NW) on Dec. 12. The healing starts at 8 p.m. (LM)