WHITEJACKET

“Let me take you down,” Whitejacket mastermind Chris McDuffie sings on “River’s Song.” His next words aren’t “… ’cause I’m going to Strawberry Fields,” but they might as well be. The former Apples in Stereo keyboardist paints with Beatlesque brushstrokes on much of his debut, recreating George Harrison’s guitar tones, Paul McCartney’s “Blackbird” picking (on “Single Seagull”), even the oom-pah bounce of the Sgt. Pepper’s era (“The Modern”). If all he’d done was imagine a lost Fab Four album, Hollows would be an achievement, but McDuffie’s psych-rock knowledge runs deeper. “River’s Song” owes more to the Creation or the Move than it does to the Beatles. Throughout, McDuffie honors the best of the ’60s by proving himself not just a curator but an updater.