The old moniker Nathaniel Rateliff and the Wheel was fitting for a band that carried and moved something bigger than themselves, a band started by a few friends from Missouri who’d moved to Colorado, leaving marks in all the trails they’d crossed and surely worn down in return. Stripped of “The Wheel,” perhaps Nathaniel Rateliff and company are settling down. In Memory of Loss is a wailing, whinnying debut of impassioned folk, its sparse but epic diaries punctuated by gospel harmonies and hums. Recalling the cautious strums of Tallest Man on Earth and cathartic style of Bon Iver, Nathaniel Rateliff produces the kind of music that whispers but echoes, the kind of music to sit with and swallow. With Pearly Gate Music, Battleme. MARY PAULINE DIAZ

Tue., Aug. 3, 7:30 p.m., 2010