Sam Roberts Band and The Championship

It’s easy to imagine singer-songwriter Sam Roberts enduring the long Canadian winters of his youth by immersing himself in classic American rock records, finding an escape in the heartland rock of Bob Seger and Steve Miller and the power-pop of Big Star. These influences manifest on Roberts’ latest album with his Sam Roberts Band, Love at the End of the World, though they’re tamed, as if filtered through the worn-in armchair of Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky. Roberts is only in his mid-30s, but on the album’s lead single, “Them Kids,” he indulges his inner grumpy old man: “The kids don’t know how to dance to rock ’n’ roll,” he laments, “the golden years are under attack.” When his band rallies with cries of “Taking it back, taking it back!” it sounds more like a threat than a promise.