Jason Walker is a singer-songwriter who has had his fair share of misfortune in recent years, from battling mental health problems to overcoming addictions. On his third album, Ceiling Sun Letters, of which tonight is the launch night, he lets out some of those demons.

Supporting Walker and his band tonight is Canadian songstress Carmen Townsend.  Wearing her rock heart on her sleeve, she roars through her set, backed by a tight bass and drums rhythm section. While the straightforward rock ‘n roll of many of her songs can become slightly monotonous after a while, it’s when she deploys a heavier sound or picks up an acoustic guitar that her music becomes more interesting and she really comes into her own.

Proving alt-country is not a domain exclusively reserved for Northern American artists, Jason Walker and his band make music that echoes Wilco with bits of Brendan Benson and Ryan Adams thrown in.  Merely comparing Walker’s music to theirs, though, would do injustice to the way he has made the sound his own.  Playing songs from his new album and a few from previous ones the performance doesn’t dip at any point, keeping the set varied and eclectic. If you want to hear some finely crafted country-rock songs performed in a way that would put a lot of more popular bands to shame, you could do a lot worse than checking out one of this guy’s upcoming shows.