Unquestionably, 2008 was a dark year for the members of Cuba, rife with losses both personal and universal, a slow creeping sadness seeping in like the floodwaters that temporarily sank parts of the city that June.
Now, a year and change later, the band’s buoyed up and bounced back, lyrical sorrows reflecting the roughness of that troubled time even as the joyous ranging sprawl of its music demonstrates the rebounding strength of playing at top form.
“Disease in the family, divorce and a surgery, flooding in the backyard and it’s haunting me,” …

In Christina Blust’s music, the darkest days are illuminated by the sudden flowering of a friend’s amaryllis. Magnolias dream of flowering under the snow. Her accordion conjures the hoodoo of a hurricane- ravaged New Orleans where she once volunteered.
And the cancer that once plagued Blust’s mother and sister — now, thankfully, in remission — is wished away, becoming poppy seeds, a wooden desk or a cotton skirt.
“It just seems to me that, of all the things a group of cells could be, why would it want to become cancer when …