Graham Parker has, over his long career, had as many labels as a steamer trunk. He recently jumped to the Chicago-based roots label Bloodshot, which is best known for records by Neko Case, the Waco Brothers, and Ryan Adams. The result, “Your Country,” is being billed as the first Graham Parker country album, and, while it’s true that the guitars have more twang and cry, it’s fundamentally a Graham Parker record. His singing has grown slightly reedier as he has aged, and the thinness suits the material. “Anything for a Laugh,” the album opener, offers up another in a long line of Parker songs with wise, self-loathing lyrics. “The Rest Is History” is an unabashedly romantic ballad (“The sound your breathing makes when you are satisfied”) that skirts sappiness with its gently gritty vocal. “Cruel Lips” brings in Lucinda Williams for harmonies; “Nation of Shopkeepers” offers a touching portrait of Britain’s working class. And the record has a pair of covers, a sprightly take on Jerry Garcia’s “Sugaree” and a roadhouse remake of Parker’s own “Crawling from the Wreckage.”

Lambchop, the sprawling alt-country collective led by Kurt Wagner, has always been hard to pin down—sometimes the group sounds like a dolorous lounge act, sometimes like an ultra-ironic indie-rock band, and sometimes like a Curtis Mayfield-inflected soul outfit. Matters aren’t clarified any on Lambchop’s two new records, “Aw C’mon” and “No You C’mon” (Merge). Anchored by Wagner’s gruff whisper, the band still drifts away on a tide of oblique confessional lyrics and knowingly baroque countrypolitan arrangements, with cloying strings from the Nashville String Machine. “Aw C’mon” is the more consistent record of the pair, with run-down laments like “Four Pounds in Two Days” (about Wagner’s attempt to quit smoking) and “Women Help to Create the Kind of Men They Despise” (selfexplanatory) and a number of wonderful instrumentals. “No You C’mon,” by contrast, sounds like a set of outtakes, although there’s something to be said for the up-tempo “Nothing Adventurous Please” and the instrumental dance number “Shang a Dang Dang.”