With Chicago’s Ponys, Ian Adams delivered songs like “Chemical Imbalance” and “Shadow Box” in a voice at once blase and agitated. Now leading Submarine Races, Adams continues his indie-rock adventures. His established mix of ringing guitars and the occasional distorted keyboard reinforces an emotional palette to which he’s added a sort of (bluffing?) bravado. In an assertion of generational detente, Adams offers “Hey Dad (The War is Over),” while challenging his own peers (“your little band and your so-called friends”) with “Postcard.” The singer also puts forth advice to friends (“Get Yourself Together,” which is more funny than withering) and dispatches from relationships (in “Ghosts and Worms,” he promises to declare his love in wet cement: “Next time you walk by it’s all spelled out”). Whatever his state, Adams feels good enough to lay down a telling cover – Neil Diamond’s declaration of a “Boat That I Row” that’s “big enough for two.”