It’s been over two years since Kazutaka Nomura – alias PWRFL Power – released his LP, PWRFL Power, and friends and fans will have noticed Nomura’s physical absence from Seattle during that interval as well. “I was having some visa issues,” Nomura explained to me recently. But after spending two years skipping back and forth here to Japan, Nomura says, “Finally I got my green card processed, and now I’m here for good.” And less traveling means more music-making – Nomura is writing a new batch of songs that step away from his previous comedic tunes about chopstick usage and his cat. “I’ve been becoming a little bit generic, writing about life,” he says, “things you think about as you get older” (he is 26). Additionally, Nomura is leaning towards some more soulful influences. “I have been spending extra time in analyzing older solo acoustic style of blues (like Skip James, Reverend Gary Davis, Lightning Hopkins, John Jackson),” he says. “You will hear big influence from those guys in [my] new songs.” With Kyle Bradford, Cumulus. ERIN K. THOMPSON

Wed., Dec. 29, 10 p.m., 2010