Impossible Hair play their CD release party at the Black Cat backstage tonight. Doors 9 p.m.

Does every rock fan go through the kind of malaise I’ve been in lately? I’m talking about when your go-to sources for reviews and information lead you to bands that seem overly self-serious or leave you bored to tears. The kind of phase where the basic ingredients that drew you to boilerplate indie rock — theoretically tuneful rock songs served a little rare — just don’t add up to anything worth savoring anymore.

Sometimes it just takes a new discovery, a “small” band off most folks’ radar, to make you remember the joy you got from finding that new act playing on the bottom of the bill on a weeknight in a basement bar somewhere. I got Impossible Hair’s new album, What is the Secret of Impossible Hair?, in the mail a month ago and while it’s come in and out of my CD player in favor of the supposed latest and greatest, I’ve continued to go back to it, because it reminds me what I love about music in the first place.