The coy press materials give a shaggy-dog backstory for this band that?s too goofy to be believed, perhaps to bolster the assertion that this is a really out-there kind of pop. I can?t make head or tail of the whole thing so I?ll dodge and simply review the sounds. I hear some admirable expansion of song forms here, but I can?t think of it as truly groundbreaking in light of what Radiohead has done in the same vein over the last several years. It?s not to say that this music is entirely derivative of Radiohead (though the vocalist sounds awfully like Yorke on several songs here, particularly on ?Popstar Rsearching Oblivion? and on ?Fire Engine on Fire Pt. II?), but it?s certainly informed by it. You get strange sampled white noise, theremin melodies, and muffled drums backing up or overlaid on aching, melodramatic tunes; ?Happiness Is on the Outside? sounds like a Victrola playing Eno playing a Finnish folk song in an electrical storm. And that?s good! Rare is the moment when the band plays a tune straight: ?Losing Carolina, For Drusky? takes a languid, Grandaddy-esque (languidaddy?) approach to a romantic melody that recalls, oddly, Springsteen (circa The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle) before closing with a coda that blends slide guitar, tape samples, and literally operatic vocals. It?s quite ambitious, but hard to follow sometimes as well as a bit grating. One final gripe: the CD?s last song, ?How the Plains Left Me Flat,? is a 4? minute song, but the track plays mostly silence for 11 minutes more, with a few quiet sound squiggles and spoken-word samples in the middle and at the end. This is all perfectly legal but it shouldn?t be. 6/10 -- Sal Addays (5 September, 2005)