NEW YORK — It is generally frowned upon to not know if you’re coming or going. But in the case of “The Big Island,” the sophomore offering from Brooklyn-based Americana-indie band Motel Motel, it’s a super power. The band has somehow mastered the ability to make listeners feel nostalgic for home and for the sense of familiarity, yet ready and yearning to embark on a great voyage of things and places unfamiliar.

Motel Motel’s songs contain strong vocals and heartfelt orchestral chords, and just about every song on “The Big Island” has a joyous and powerful energy. Classifying the quintet as a “rock band” doesn’t fully describe them, but they are also not what one thinks of when they hear the words “indie Brooklyn band.” Even though when you get off the subway to see one of their shows, one of their audience members may glare at you for being in your work suit or not having stylish bed bug bites, Motel Motel is anything but another stale hipster band. They are completely original, and any influences one may hear in their music probably comes from the band’s similar experiences or level of talent as other great musicians.

Motel Motel is a modern rock band that ties in an indie edge with the sprawling sounds of the great west. The album makes listeners feel as though they can live in this dream time of comfort when they felt “home,” even just for a few moments. Their vocal harmonies are so soul shaking that they seem to unite the listener with some higher human emotion. If nostalgia were an instrument, one of the five musicians that make up Motel Motel would be a master at playing it.

Yet the band’s western twang and sudden key changes make the listener feel as if they are exploring uncharted territory. Their songs are like some kind of untamed ocean, where the water under your boat starts out with one motion and takes sudden unknown turns. Whether the waters are quieting down, or ripples begin to turn into a tempestuous tirade, the one thing that is certain is that you don’t know what nature has in store for you and your journey. No one song on “The Big Island” ends with the same sound, tone or emotion it began with, making the music as mysterious yet natural as the aforementioned sea. And like the ocean, no matter what direction the “waves” are moving, the music seems to seamlessly flow.

This nomadic quality may have something to do with the Motel Motel’s members seemingly making up some sort of mini Rock ‘n’ Roll House of Representatives. They each hail from a different state and represent almost every time zone the country has to offer.

“I think because we’re all from all over the place, I think we all kind of speak to different experiences and have sort of a sentimental sense of the road and traveling and that kind of thing,” said Mickey Theis, one of the band’s guitarist and vocalists. “All of us I think have that. We all came to New York because we were unsatisfied I guess with where we were living and I think this band has taken us different places.”

Motel Motel’s first album “New Denver” sounds more chaotic and a bit edgier than the band’s second feat. “New Denver” sounds like the result of scooping up the island of New York City and suddenly dropping it in a big square state out west. “The Big Island” has an easier and more joyful yet longingly sound. The latest album definitely depicts different perspectives, ones that are sometimes working together and sometimes working in discordance. This element is one reason “The Big Island” is so unique.

“We’ve known each other for so long we kind of discovered a way to work with each other. Its not as beautiful as it may appear, we argue a lot, we fight a lot, just yesterday we got into some pretty intense arguments,” said Eric Engel, guitarist and lead vocalist. “It’s a lot of intense moments we have that make decisions. But when it does work out and it does come together, it’s beautiful,” Eric said.

It is hard to miss the influence of Hawaiian sounds on the album. It is not to say that “The Big Island” is going to be part of your Sublime/Jack Johnson/311 “Surfs Up!” play list next summer, but it does have elements of what most would consider a “beachy” vibe. It incorporates Hawaiian themes in a very grand way, perhaps in the way that you would describe an epic wave would crash into the shore in Hawaii vs that experience in New Jersey. This sound melts into the album seamlessly thanks to an instrument called the Pedal steel, a string instrument with a reputation for being extremely difficult to play. Many of the band members expressed how impressed they are with keyboardist Erik Gundel’s ability to effortlessly play such a complicated instrument.

“The Big Island’s” Hawaiian influences have no doubt to do with guitarist/bassist Timothy “Timo” Sullivan’s growing up in the Aloha State. The band said that on this album, the duty of creating lyrics naturally fell more so in the hands of Timothy and Eric Engel.

“My dad is a fisherman,” Sullivan said, “and he fishes at night, so my idea of Hawaii is like dark oceans and scary waves and very epic. So it wasn’t conscience at first, it became conscience, that we were trying to make an album that really swelled and was epic. Where the Hawaiian most came into play was (in the song) ‘Kaimanu,’ because that’s the name of my dads boat. … So we pictured it like (the sounds and lyrics of the song) would be him sailing into the ocean. But we never named that song ‘Kaimanu’ until the end, we always pictured it would be a song about the ocean, but it all fell together.”

The Hawaiian theme doesn’t stop there. Many of the songs have the Island’s mythology, imagery or culture entwined with its notes. Another song on the album, “Keauhou,” references a harbor, and urban legends about a Hawaiian King, King Kamehameha, who was said to carry a giant rock 40 miles just to prove he could be king. This is a story that well known to Hawaiians according to Timothy, and storytelling such as this is what this album does so well.

This is a prime example of the familial feel many of the songs have, and perhaps it is because we can sense it is familiar to someone somewhere. To those non-Hawaiians, it seems like an exciting story from a far away land, but to someone else, it’s a story from home. One constant theme on “The Big Island” is its push-pull feeling of reminiscence and the exploration of lands and emotions unknown. The album has something identifiable and familiar for everyone, and something mysterious and exciting for everyone else.

“(“Keauhou”) is about leaving from a harbor, that harbor always struck me as a really desolate sad harbor to leave. As you dock all you can see are rocks, but as you turn around and jetty the corner, the ocean just opens up,” Sullivan said, reflecting on his trips to and from the Keauhou harbor.

The one criticism that must be bestowed upon Motel Motel is that it is probably easier to spot King Kamehameha carrying that rock than it is to catch the band performing live. But the band has a number of upcoming shows in New York. Seeing the band play live is an experience that no one should miss. Motel Motel’s bodies and instruments simply explode with gleeful movements and noises respectively, and the feeling fills the entire room to the brim. No matter what the venue, Motel Motel’s live performances completely transforms any space, making the audience forget how they almost got shanked passing the scary Brooklyn truck yard by a vacant lot to get to the venue, and brings them to some sun filled, sweet and lovely beach or mountainside.

This band and this sound is exactly what New York City needs — a safe haven from the hustle and sometimes harsh atmosphere of our “Not quite as big” island. Motel Motel brings the ocean to our parched ears, and serves as an oasis in our urban desert.

Upcoming Motel Motel shows:

• October 21, 10 p.m., Bowery Hotel Arcade 44 Party (CMJ)
• October 21, 11 p.m., Spike Hill in Williamsburg (CMJ)
• November 13, 9 p.m., Bruar Falls with Tuning
• November 20, 9 p.m., Pianos-Start Magazine Presents Roadside Graves with Motel Motel and Dinosaur Feathers
• December 15, 10 p.m., Grasslands with Depreciation Guild

CHESTNUT HILL — Imagine walking into someone’s home and seeing a child’s drawing on the refrigerator. It’s filled from edge to edge with bright colors, wobbly lines and adorable depictions of everyday scenes. Now imagine taking a closer look at that drawing and noticing that in it there is a helicopter shooting bullets at a person who’s lying dead on the ground with blood coming out of his head. Meanwhile, a lime green and pink tank spits bullets at a cozy yellow and orange home made up of the most basic of shapes.

A child who escaped the nightmare in Darfur drew this disturbing image coated in candy colors.

That drawing is among a set of 500 others done by child refuges of Darfur as part of a traveling exhibition called Waging Peace.‚  The event is sponsored by Boston College’s center for Human Rights and International Justice, and the Center for the Arts and Social Responsibilities.

In 2007, Waging Peace member Anna Schmitt went to the country of Chad to learn about the living situations and humanitarian rights of Darfuri and Chadian refugees. Schmitt began collecting testimonials from adults in these areas when her focus turned to the youth, who had witnessed just as much terror as their elders. Schmitt handed out paper and pencils to kids between the ages of 6 and 18, and asked them to draw their future hopes and their strongest memories. What she found were honest depictions of the horror that these children witnessed in their everyday lives.

The government of Sudan’s story of the events that have unfolded in the past four years is not surprisingly very different from the pictures drawn by the children. What makes this exhibit fascinating is that the viewer enters with the back-of-the-mind thought that children have no reason to dramatize or fabricate their illustrations. At this age they are naƒ¯ve to the workings of politics and of government and its role in the gore and terror that they witnessed.

They just drew what they saw.

The sketches in the exhibit feature a number of elaborate events. Just as an American child might draw a scene from their home or school, the Darfuri children depict villages on fire, men on horseback shooting machine guns into crowds, and tanks and helicopters shooting into the air and dropping bombs on towns. The one common element that ties all of the drawings together is the blatant, and obvious red scribbles. Thick red smudges draw the viewer’s eye to outlines of adults, animals, and babies that lie on the floor of the representational villages, unmistakably and brutally murdered.

The images serve a duel purpose. While serving as a form of therapy for children that have obviously been emotionally scarred, the pictures also serve as an eye opener to audiences that may be unaware of the crisis that has taken over Darfur. The illustrations also provide evidence that there is much more brutality happening in Darfur than is being represented by its government. Therefore, many of the pictures will be submitted as evidence to the International Criminal Courts in the proceedings against officials of Sudan that have denied policies of genocide. The drawings certainly bring a level of awareness of the tragedy in Darfur to Boston, and shows how art therapy can be a useful tool when helping children and others deal with a crisis.

CAMBRIDGE — In artist Heide Hatry’s exhibit “Heads and Tales,” at the Pierre Menard Gallery there is a table. It is a long, slender, metallic and sturdy table often seen in a hospital operating room. The table symbolizes all that we know and are comfortable with.‚  On top of this table, however, is an idea of much contrast. A decaying body lays on top of it, as though abandoned at her time of death by an entire room of hospital patrons, left to rot and decompose.

And this isn’t even the most disturbing piece at the Harvard Square Gallery.

Around this body, and around the rest of the gallery, hangs images not so monstrous but equally disturbing. On the walls are pictures of women, shot from only the shoulders up, framed in thick black frames. A closer observation reveals that the women look as if they are not present. They have features that make them look like a woman — pouty lips, all different styles and colors of hair, big black eyes, and some even have nice clothing and accessories. Their eyes are large and dilated, and seem to be fixed on something that is not there. Their skin looks creamy and soft, but at the same time it looks awkward and pale — too pale for the living. That is because they too are dead.

They look as though they should be seen in a casket, not on gallery walls. Their makeup is heavy and waxy, and the gallery looks like a mortician’s portfolio.

What makes these woman look so life-like and yet no longer on this earth, are because of the unconventional materials used by Hatry. A sped up projection of the artist creating the pieces is shown on a gallery wall. She pulls apart pig skin and body parts. She unwraps fresh pig eyes from their sockets with the haste and regularity of unwrapping a piece of chocolate. She then carefully sculpts and molds materials that should be in your frying pan to a manikin like frame to give life to a dead woman.

Some of the women look less fearsome than the others. In the work titled “Head of Debbi Tale: What happened to her by Rebecca Brown,” the woman in the photo looks happy. She has a small smile on her face as she looks at the camera with her head slightly tilted. Her curly blonde hair playfully dances in her face. Other women in the exhibit are not so fortunate, however. One of the more grotesque images, aside from the body, is called “Head of Jennifer, Tale: Goes to the Dogs by Selah Saterstrom.” In this photo, Jennifer does not appear only to be physically dead, but the expression on her face is dead too. Almost her entire eye is black, dilated with a pupil fixed on nothing. Tiny flies crowed her lips, and attempt to cover entire her eyeball. She does nothing, she can’t.

But it is not only in appearance that Hatry gives the deceits a life-like quality. Juxtaposed with each woman is a frame of text from different writers who the artists asked to pick a woman and give her a story. This creates for a variety of tales for each woman, written as though the viewer has randomly opened a page in a large text book and started reading. Some are written in prose, others are written in the form of poems, stream of consciences, and screen plays, all as different as the women in the frames.

In the case of the work titled “Head of Nanny, Tale: Losing sequins by Jennifer Belle,” we can read only a snippet of one woman’s life story. The photo is of a darker skinned woman with plump rose-colored lips made of pig parts. Her hair is curly and a wild fiery red. She is photographed like so many others outside in front of leafy green trees. The prose starts of with the sentence, “Before she came to take care of the baby there were several before her who hadn’t worked out, mostly because they got on the nerves of the mother.” The story goes on to tell a short tale of Nanny’s interaction with the child and mother. “Head of Jill, Tale: Big With Child by Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro,” we read her story in the form of a play. “Jill: I can feel it (presses the left side of her belly) right here it’s like a little knot. Steve (to audience) she asks me to feel it ten times a day.” We read on to learn that Jill and Steve are getting an abortion.

Some of the stories are simply small windows into a stranger’s life, and some are more dark and disturbing. By adding these stories to her pictures, Hatry does something that we do not often do in life. She forces us to acknowledge the fact that the dead do not simply become bodies, they were once women with a life, women with a story to tell. We realize that all of these women — sisters, girlfriends, nannys, rape victims, strippers, little girls and housewives will all end up like the woman on the table: dead and decaying, losing their story with their physical appearance.