BY JOHN SCHACHT

Quietly slipping in out of towns across America this year has been arguably one of the best double-bills you didn't even know you missed - South San Gabriel and Centro-matic, the two sonically schizophrenic facets of Denton, Texas' prolific songwriter Will Johnson and friends.

Chugging into Chapel Hill's cozy Local 506 venue with both outfits in tow for the first time, Johnson and company delivered to a small but soon-slackjawed crowd two sets of songs highlighting their superb 2008 double-disc "collaboration," Dual Hawks, as well as friendly nuggets from both bands' back catalogs.

Featuring three guitars, pedal steel, drums, keys and fiddle, the South San Gabriel sextet established a reflective mood with its brand of Big Sky noir, processional soundtracks to endless I-10 horizons and remembered heartache. Johnson opened the hushed break-up memoir "Emma Jane" with a crisp finger-picked pattern on his tobacco-burst hollow-body, bending his vocals between resigned sigh and anguished howl while Scott Danbom provided a blanket of gentle synth beneath, replacing the album version's cello and viola. With Matt Stoessel's pedal steel eventually adding more high-and-lonesome melancholy, the music took on the spectral quality of the song's "feeling so like a ghost" lament.

Those precisely-arranged textures distinguish South San Gabriel from the more ramshackle four-piece indie rock of the parent company, Centro-matic. Once "Emma Jane" had faded into the ether, and "Glacial Slurs" from 2000's South San Gabriel Songs had transformed from the album's nervous march to a languid stroll (accented by Danbom's mournful fiddle lines), the band unfurled two cuts from 2003's Welcome, Convalescence, each vying for Most Transcendent Moment in a night of many.

With drummer Matt Pence pushing things along via shaker, brush and bass drum, and Bryan VanDivier adding baritone guitar bottom end, "Smelling Medicinal" contrasted slo-burn kindling verses with the full-band's chorus infernos. The latter raised their Scoville rating each time around so that when Johnson finally let loose with a wailing "we take to the sky," and Danbom joined in for an outro of yearning "ooo-ooo"s, you'd have to have been a hard-hearted sonofabitch not to feel your spirit soar with the sentiment. On the other hand, "St. Augustine," a twisted tale of a highway kidnapping ("you and your manicure/me in my stocking cap/in the trunk of your car"), steadily built intensity and tempo toward its roaring crescendo, Danbom's grand piano-like Roland runs and surging pedal steel swells punctuating each massive guitar chord and lifting the song into the rafters like a hymn.

"Dark of Garage" and "Feel Too Young to Die," from 2005's The Carlton Chronicles, tethered the set back to earth without sacrificing melody or emotional impact. The songs may ostensibly chronicle the life and death of Johnson's pet cat, but their unflinching look at mortality may explain why the SSG/C-M franchise, now in its second decade, hasn't had more mainstream success - as beautiful as these songs are, Johnson's subject matter is never for the feint-hearted or those whose idea of musical escape does not on occasion include a journey into the darkest corners of our psyches. But for some, the catharsis that Johnson and company provide in this SSG incarnation is every bit as liberating as Centro-matic's beer-hoisted-in-salute rock anthems.

After an enjoyable middle set of twisted Texas ballads from Chris Flemmons of The Baptist Generals, the four core members of Centro-matic - Johnson, Danbom, Pence and bassist/guitarist Mark Hedman - reintroduced themselves to the audience and, no longer seated, tore into a 14-song-set focusing mostly on the band's three most recent releases: Dual Hawks, 2006's Fort Recovery, and 2003's Love You Just the Same. 

If South San Gabriel's 50-minute set was the lonesome sound of vast Texas desolation, then Centro-matic's 90 minutes were the "I'm-still-here-goddammit" declaration of redemption. Johnson's songs often speak to power and hypocrisy, and not by accident many Centro songs allude to the band's decade-plus slog through the spotlight-free recesses of the indie rock world. Though not without the occasional snide comment directed at The Industry, the songs don't come across as sour grapes but rather a frank admission that, yes, a little notoriety and extra dosh would be welcome given the blood and time poured into the endeavor -- but not at the cost of our integrity.

The other reason there's no bitter after-taste is because Centro-matic songs are a celebration of balls-out-rock without gratuitous reference to The Life and its excesses. Instead, it's a mix of Replacements' hooks and winsomeness, GBV-like fuzzy guitars and fuzzier narratives, and a touch of Everyman Springsteen filtered through a minor-key Texas twang aesthetic. It's a gorgeous mess of influences, in other words, and with nine full-lengths' worth of material to choose from, Johnson doesn't even decide on the set list until between acts - emblematic of this band's looser spirit.

"Flashes & Cables," from Love You Just the Same, may best embody Centro's blueprint, and on this night provides pure rock transcendence. The song opened with a lament about fleeting happiness before Pence's double-time drumbeats and a guitar explosion kick-started the pace into overdrive while Johnson decried "the rogues and the scoundrels" of the media machine. After a brief, second-wind bridge, the song picked up steam until Danbom, playing more elaborate Roland fills with each bar, and Johnson, now in full guitar-chord bashing mode, joined in a timeless chorus of "ba-ba-da-da-dum" shouts that epitomized music-making abandon.

Johnson's strengths come from the amount of emotion he mines from simple open chords and standard tunings, and a voice whose spot-on pitch makes up for its lack of range. Stretching vowels into multi-syllabic cries, snarls and yowls, it's as much another instrument as lyrics-and-images vehicle, made even more effective by the judicious use of Danbom's harmonies. Similarly, the Crazy Horse-like guitar solos - Johnson's hurler-in-slow-motion-windup-leg-kick signals their arrival -- on songs like Love You...'s "Mighty Midshipmen" and "The Rat Patrol and DJs" from the new record impressed with their cathartic, primal power rather than any wanky fret wizardry.

And it would be shoddy reporting to understate the work of the rhythm section. Pence, whose relaxed swing on the drum-kit belies impeccable timing and power, fired the Centro set in direct correlation to the accent-role he provided in the SSG configuration. Hedman supplied rock-solid bottom end, occasionally handing off his bass to Danbom and grabbing a Gibson SG to add guitar heft to songs like Fort Recovery's "Calling Thermatico" and "Call In the Legion Tonight" (one of three cuts from 2000's All The Falsest Hearts). It's impossible to imagine the Centro sound without either.

As hard as this set rocked, the single-song encore seemed entirely fitting. Johnson performed "All the Lightning Rods" from Love You Just the Same by himself, the song a gentle, elegiac bridge between South San Gabriel and Centro-matic . The solo voice-and-guitar performance was a reminder that all this naked beauty originates from the soft-spoken man in the trucker's cap "running circles in the rain" and "counting all the lightning rods" while "waiting for a ride," content for now to spin his emotions and vowels out into the timeless void in the hopes of making a connection. On this night, for the lucky few in this crowd, there can be no doubt of that.