#27. Liars - Drum's Not Dead (Mute, 2006)

Liars' second album, They Were Wrong So We Drowned, was hands down the most disappointing follow up I could have ever imagined. After the band's debut put them forth as one of the best bands to come out of that first wave of early oughts post-punk revival, heirs to Gang of Four and A Certain Ratio's funky, jagged material and all that, they followed it up with one of the least likable albums I'd come across up to that point and all but threw me from their bandwagon. They had made one of my favorite albums of the early decade, not to mention the pair of EPs and the split with Oneida that followed it and were of equal quality, and here they were rambling through what sounded like half-formed ideas, tuneless dirges and pointless experimentalism. It was a willful 'fuck you' to anyone expecting They Threw Us All In a Trench part two, or at least that's how it seemed at the time, and since that was exactly what I wanted I wrote it off. I gave it a few more chances to grow on me, but outside of opener "Broken Witch" and the low rent strip joint sleaze of "There's Always Room on the Broom" every single second listening to the album felt wasted.

I'm going into my unreserved hatred for They Were Wrong to give you an idea of just how much trepidation I was approaching it's follow up, 2006's Drum's Not Dead with. I'd heard the advance single "It Fit When I Was a Kid" already, and while it certainly didn't sound like the Liars I knew and loved it wasn't outright horrible either so I figured I should give the album a chance no matter how much I disliked their previous outing. So I sat down one night with a freshly obtained copy of Drum's Not Dead and was all set to give it a halfhearted listen as I did some homework just to see what it had in store. Within about 5 minutes the homework was forgotten and I was fully in the damn thing's thrall. Furthermore, it made They Were Wrong make sense retroactively; of course it sounded awkward and half-baked at times, it was a transitional album. Not an ill-conceived curveball to defy the expectations of anyone expecting them to keep up with the post punk, a necessary stepping ston between that and the tribal, hypnotic art pop of Drum. It made sense now, and I'm sure if I had bothered to give it its first proper listen in a couple of years at that point I'd find that I was being too harsh on They Were Wrong. Basically, not only did Drum's Not Dead become an early front runner for my favorite album of '06, it was forcing me to reconsider my opinion of what I would have called one of my least favorite albums of all time. That's how fucking good it was.

It was also hard to reconcile that this was the same band that had made They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top a mere five years previous. Angus Andrew's once primal, unpredicatable howl was now a confident, ethereal croon that gave each track a lulling, comforting tone while the reconfigured band got their Boredoms circa-2004 on and became a drum circle with occasional synth and guitar diversions in the most tense and propulsive way possible. The contrast between the two elements is what drew me in I think, I mean just listen to the opening bit of "Let's Not Wrestle Mt. Heart Attack" where the drums and synths are going crazy underneath a chorus of Andrew's almost Cocteau Twins-like vocals and tell me that wouldn't grab your attention, but it was also the overall sound of the album. Liars were working with a rather unique set up the band was using for this, with a pair of drum kits run through guitar amps in various configurations - I don't have the liner notes handy to describe it in more detail than that - giving them a unique, ever changing sound and other instrumentation kept to a minimum in most cases. It wound up sounding like the theoretical meeting of Yamatsuka Eye and Brian Eno, the latter's art-pop genius melded to the former's tribal flights of fancy, and it made for one heck of an album.

I could go into a dissertation on the concept at work here, but to be honest that 's secondary to all the stuff I just mentioned in terms of what affects my enjoyment of Drum's Not Dead. The concept part does give the album its cohesion but it's also a) nigh on indecipherable and b) not at the same level as the music herein. The songs themselves are good enough to stand outside their place in the loose narrative though, special mention to closer "The Other Side of Mt. Heart Attack" for being one of the most beautiful closers of the decade and "Drum and the Uncomfortabl Can" for ramping up the tension without breaking the mood of the album, and in spite of the reservations I had going into it they've done nothing but get better with each successive listen. I still haven't revisited They Were Wrong yet though. I doubt I'll have the same hard feelings towards it in light of knowing the reason for its being, but I can't bring myself to re-evaluate it either. I think I'm afraid that liking it more will make this seem like less of a triumph, though that's pretty unlikely when you look at it. This would be a triumph regardless of who made it, what they made before or after it (2007's self-titled follow up was pretty nice for the record) or how they went about it. It's an album unlike any other and nothing can change that. I hope.

#28. 'You're watching TV, I stay up all night'

Death From Above 1979 "Romantic Rights"

Is "Romantic Rights" dance music for metalheads or metal music for dance afficionados? Is it either? I remember the first time I heard it my first thought was that it sounded like a theoretical future where The Jesus Lizard decided to make a disco song, then my second thought was how awesome it would be if that actually happened and thus how awesome Death From Above 1979 were at that moment. This was right around the time that I was starting to get a bit burnt out on the explosion of dance-punk also-rans that started to pop up in the wake of The Rapture, all so concerned with paying enough homage to their forebears that they forgot to bring enough hooks and talent to the party to really engage me. DFA79, on the other had, didn't seem concerned with doing anything but making the heaviest disco track to ever exist, and in the process conjured up the perfect antidote to the sea of Rapture-alikes out there. "Romantic Rights" was a force of nature in the early days, the song I'd go out of my way to hear as often and as loudly as I dared without ever feeling that I'd get sick of it. Five years on that still hasn't happened.

It's weird that something so fundamentally simple could have that effect on me. All that there really is to "Romantic Rights" is a succession of grungy - as in the sound not the "genre" - bass lines underpinned by some hi-hat heavy drumming and overlayed with some basic vocals, but something about is utterly addictive. It probably comes down to the drums yet again as Sebastian Grainger's upbeat, disco-infused drum beat is so propulsive and effortlessly danceable - and I say that as a mid-twenties white male with no sense of rhythm - that it absolutely makes the song in my mind. That's not so shortchange Jesse Keeler's bass playing and occasional synth burbles though, as between that raunchy tone his bass has and the subtle interplay with Grainger's drums - check out the off-beat syncopations of the final chorus - he acquits himself just as well as his bandmate. There's nothing too complex or twisty here, but the straightforwardness and simplicity of it do so much more for the overall song than those qualities, qualities I generally prefer to hear in songs, would ever dream of doing.

So for such a simple song, you get a simple review. No point in drawing this out any more, just listen to the damn song and imagine it taking the place of "House of Jealous Lovers" on every other singles list to come out this decade. It's much better if you do that.

#28. Clann Zù - Rua (G7 Welcoming Committee, 2003) and Black Coats and Bandages (G7 Welcoming Committee, 2004)

Getting a handle on what exactly to expect from Clann Zù without hearing their music is tough. After all they're an Australian band of Irish expats signed to a Canadian label most well known for releasing Propagandhi and Swallowing Shit albums, a five person band with a standard guitar-bass-drums core augmented by a full time violinist and a 'sound manipulator', and after their break-up part of that lineup went on to form the post-hardcore/emo group My Disco while lead singer Declan DeBarra started a solo career with a few lush albums of folk music. All those things inform what you hear on their lone two full lengths, two of the most unheralded releases of the decade in my opinion, but they don't give you the full picture either. Even knowing all that, the minute that Rua's opener "Words for Snow" explodes into a potent 11/4 section, followed by DeBarra screaming 'For Christ's sake help me/for Christ's sake get me out of here/God of all sick things GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE/GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERE' while a mournfully aggressive tandem violin-guitar breakdown looms on the horizon will still take you by surprise. Clann Zù consistently pulled off things like that, and for that alone they deserve your time. It's not just their ability to surprise that put them on my shortlist and eventually at such a lofty position on this final version - I initially had them a bit higher even, truth be told - but the fact that if pressed I might call them the most passionate group of musicians who recorded anything this decade. This applies more to Rua than it's more reigned-in follow up, but between De Barra's highly emotional vocals and the fury that the band can harness at key moments it's possibly the most emotionally draining stuff I've heard this decade.

Rua may be slightly weaker on the whole - it's a similar situation between it and Black Coats and Bandages as between The National's Alligator and Boxer I guess - but for a debut album it's pretty impressive in its own right. The band's sound is firmly in place, a bit more varied but distinctly theirs at all points. The integration of Celtic themes into what is at its base a pretty straightforward rock sound isn't anything new, I mean that shit goes back to The Pogues or even Thin Lizzy, but something about Clann Zù's means of doing so is pretty distinctive. It's not that they do much besides have De Barra sing in a medium brogue and feature a heavy amount of violin on most of the tracks, but the way it informs the sound of the album is unique enough to make them stand out. Put another way, none of these songs sound like anyone but Clann Zù could have made them; any similar bands either don't have the ferocity, the passion or the skill to pull it off. If a debut album's job above everything else is to introduce your band's sound in the most concise way possible, then Rua gets that done with much more ease than 90% of debut albums.

It probably helps that they're working with a pretty uniform group of songs too. I can't say enough good thing about "Words for Snow", easily the highlight of the band's catalog with that unexpected shift into full on rock out mode, some fantastic bass countermelodies and some of De Barra's best vocals and lyrics, but really of the ten tracks here only " Everyone in the World" really stands as weaker than the rest. "Crashing to the Floor" is probably the simplest thing here but the call and response between the violin and vocals, plus that excellent drum build up makes it one of the best songs on the album. "Everyday" is absolutely gorgeous in it s melancholy, "All the People Now" is at once rousing and kinda subdued in a contrast that works well and closer "You're Listening to a Dead Man Speak" ends the album on a suitably calm note given some of the chaos contained therein. When I first heard it I honestly thought that the novelty would wear off quickly, but Rua just kept growing on me with each subsequent listen as the songs revealed just how much talent the quintet possessed and how much passion they brought to the table.

It also probably helped that as I was discovering the depths of Rua, Black Coats and Bandages had come along and pretty much blew me away from the first listen. It didn't have the fury of its predecessor, but the band had tightened up considerably giving the album a mice sense of cohesion and consistency. Of course they still got their fury on at regular intervals - "From an Unholy Height" is 100% pissed off at all times and all the better for it - but on the whole the tone of Black Coats is much more subdued. There's a distinctly jazzy feel to something like "There Will Be No Morning Copy" due mainly to the band's restraint as well as the production which turns down the loudness of Rua to a much more dynamic and subtle level. When the album does explode though it's still just as exciting as ever, and since most of those moments are shoved to the back half it gives Black Coats a greater sense of tension and release on the whole as opposed to just on the level of the individual songs. Like I said, the difference between the two albums is that Black Coats feels like an album while Rua feels more like a collection of songs. It may seem like an odd distinction to make but in my mind it's all the difference in the world.

Though being more of an album doesn't mean that Black Coats is lacking for highlights either. Once again there's a consistent level of quality across the whole album, but on top of that you've gotta give some extra props to the likes of "From an Unholy Height"'s righteous fury at the Catholic Church ('cross in one hand and a cock in the other/state sat in your lap while you barked out the order') and "You'll Have to Swim"'s tense regret ('I would never change a single fucking thing/despite the fact that I know the brutal vicious end/I still would have kissed you that day'). "One Bedroom Apartment" might not have the strongest lyrics, but musically it's a step above the rest with its progression through various levels of intensity each culminating in a lonely piano accompanying De Barra's croon of 'I will never love again'. That one aside though De Barra's lyrics really came into their own here, the more personal material resonating more than it had previously and the slightly political side shown on "From an Unholy Height" shows that he can write just as effectively when he's not as focused on internal matters.

It's a shame that it was their last release together since it found the whole unit in a nice groove. Of course their subsequent projects were good, but neithe De Barra's solo work or My Disco's limited releases have come close to the special kind of magic that occurred in Clann Zù. It's a shame that such a promising and uniformly great band had to come to its end in its prime, but at least the two albums they left can sit comfortably alongside the best stuff the decade has to offer.

#29. 'I need a hit, baby gimme it'

Britney Spears "Toxic"

In 2004 I was about as much of a music snob as I could ever conceive of being. I thought I was hot shit simply because I listened to Beefheart, had a copy of Peel Slowly and See and was on top of all the hottest new artists while still finding enough older stuff to make my tastes so much more well-rounded than anybody else's. Yeah, I was a bit of a prick to say the least, but that's neither here nor there; the biggest thing in my arsenal of snobbishness was my outright dismissal of anything and everything mainstream. As far as I was concerned I didn't have time to bother with the stuff made for mass consumption; I felt that I was above it and that nothing created in a pop lab in Sweden could possibly be worth anything but my highest degree of scorn. I could reconcile it easily back then, but in hindsight I was a bit of a dick about it to be honest. I was ignoring a lot of absolutely great material for the most unforgivably shallow of reasons, and maybe my move into full time poptardedness is a way of atoning for that period, and even though I've come around to the best of the stuff I was vehemently against at the time of its release (just assume anything on this list that was popular and released between 2000-2005 falls into that category) it's not a period of life I look back on all that fondly.

Essentially though, when I think back tot it, "Toxic" was probably the first chink in my anti-mainstream armour. OK, that's probably a lie, but of all the major hits form around the time that I was in my 'pop is unambiguously horrible and I won't hear otherwise' phase I'm pretty sure that "Toxic" was one of the few that made an impression in any way. Main reason probably being that if not for Britney's vocals it didn't really sound like a pop song. Look at it strictly from an instrumental standpoint; you've got a borderline dissonant string loop, a Spanish guitar, weird middle eastern tonalities in the arrangement, that post-chorus guitar break that sounds like it was ripped from an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western soundtrack and the weird chorus of vocals in the pre-chorus that almost makes Britney sound the least bit sexy. It's such a weird series of production choices, a group of things that you don't think of as being complimentary to each other at all, yet when laid out as they are it works wonders. The dissonant strings make for an instantly ear-catching hook, the guitars in the verse give the song even more of a giddy drive, and the pair of guitar breaks that frame the chorus give it a bit of tension, in and of itself a rarity in pop music. Even back when I was vehemently against anything popular I had to concede that this was top class material - just not in public.

The real shock was that once you figure in Britney's vocals the song doesn't die a horrible critical death. I have my share of quibbles with Spears' vocals on most songs; her range is thin, the emotions never seem genuine, the studio sheen over the whole thing makes her sound like she's a robot trying to be a real girl and failing miserably. But somehow "Toxic" doesn't seem to accentuate those particular shortcomings to any great degree, hell the ethereal pre-chorus vocals approach genuine sensuality - though I'm inclined to give a lot of the credit there to back up vocalist/songwriter/unjustly forgotten 90s pop relic Cathy Denis - which is not a word I'd have ever seen myself using in the vicinity of Spears' name previous to this. It could just be that the residual goodwill generated by the arrangement rubbing off on the other facets of the song, but whatever the cause it stands as the only time I've found Britney to be especially noteworthy as a vocalist, and that's saying a lot.

#29. Polvo - In Prism (Merge, 2009)

I'll just get this part out of the way first: there is no way that a band should sound this good after a 12 year hiatus. I know that this decade that sort of thinking has been proven wrong on multiple occasions, but it still feels odd to think that after such a long break and after the least impressive album of their career Polvo were able to regroup and put out something as great as In Prism. Hell, if not for the drastically punchier production you could probably be led to believe that this was made right after Exploded Drawing instead of Shapes, kind of continuing the matured songwriting of the former and refining the ideas into much more expansive compositions. That's probably why it works so well, not just the expansive compositions - most of the songs break the 5-minute barrier with a couple crossing past 8 minutes - but the fact that it feels like a follow up to Exploded Drawing rather than the continuation of the mediocre Shapes. It's basically Polvo coming back to their roots in a way, letting the reunited guitar trio of Ash Bowie, Dave Brylawski and Steve Popson get their interplay going again while shuttling through eastern modalities and oddly queasy/pleasant riffs like it's 1996 all over again. In other words: it's right up my alley.

There's one key difference to the sound of In Prism though: it's hard to describe it without using the word mellow. Polvo's peak albums may have taken a few breathers, but on the whole they were frenetic, tense and noisy. While a few tracks here hearken back to that sort of sound - notably "Beggar's Bowl" and "The Peddlar" - there's a definite tendency in this reunited Polvo to slow thing down and get downright pretty instead. Looking specifically at the two longest tracks, both have moments of classic Polvo eastern-tinged guitar twiddles and the like, but both "Lucia" and especially closer "A Link in the Chain" are more concerned with drawing out the most beautifully mellow passages of their 8+ minute spans as opposed to flitting between more 'classic' Polvo riffage. And wouldn't you know, those are the two best tracks the album has to offer for that very reason. The band puts as much craft into those mellow passages as they did into the likes of "Stinger (Five Wigs)" way back when, making them interesting enough to draw you in as opposed to making you wonder when they're gonna move on to the next section. "A Link in the Chain" is particularly good in this regard, giving the dynamic trio of Popson, Brylawski and Bowie a great groove to work over for the final half of the song while adding in all manner of distinctly non-Polvo elements (church bells!) to the proceedings to make for a suitably epic denouement for the album.

Of course of you came looking for more of the usual stuff, the interplay between Brylawski and Bowie, the eastern modalities, the queasy dissonance that's quite pleasant in a way, you won't be too disappointed either. While I'd say that the best stuff happens when they sound the least like their past selves it's hard to not get a bit excited at the miniature leads peppered throughout "Beggar's Bowl" and "Right the Relation" or the trilling verse riff from "The Peddlar" as examples of how little has changed since the band's early days. The longer excursions into this throwback style may not pack the same level of intricacy as the mellow numbers, but between the 6-minute "Right the Relation" and the almost 7-minute "Dream Residue/Work" - which come to think of it is the best fusion of the two sides you could ask for - there's enough evidence that the band can still knock out that sort of thing without any trouble at all. It's also in these moments that new drummer Brian Quast makes his presence felt, as his more aggressive style seems to be the driving force behind "Relation" and gives the verses of "Beggar's Bowl" a great deal of propulsion. The fact that in the calmer moments you can barely tell that this isn't the same lineup that made Exploded Drawing goees toshow how well integrated Quast has become with the other three, but when he breaks out a bit it results in the most kinetic stuff the band's done since Today's Active Lifestyles.

I think that might be why In Prism fares so well for me even among the sloughs of other great reunion albums that the decade offered; it's not so much a victory lap as it is the sort of evolution you might have expected Polvo to undergo at some point. The signifiers towards their older material are still out in force, but at the same time there's a sense of forward motion to the band's sound, integrating a newfound mellowness into their previous fury without it sounding like a departure so much as a logical continuation. The 12-year break wasn't really necessary, but the results were (ah fuck it, I get one cliche here) worth the wait. (Fuck I shouldn't have done that...)

#30. 'Don't mess with our love, our love is so much stronger'

The Dears "Lost in the Plot"

You want to know why, despite all the overwhelming similarities between them, Dears frontman Murray Lightburn isn't the black Morrissey, the black Stuart Murdoch or the black Neil Hannon? It's mostly because at his heart he's a simple romantic, not a mordant cynic, a slight naïf or an effete miser. None of the three obvious reference points for Lightburn's vocal style have his level of sheer romanticism, both in terms of lyrics and overall vocal cadence. I mean can you see Moz building a whole bridge out of a repeated mantra of 'Our love/don't mess with our love/our love is so much stronger'? Would Hannon be all but swooning as he sang a line like 'leave me in the middle of the ocean/I can walk the rest of the way'? Would Murdoch have as much power behind his voice as Lightburn gets during the final chorus? Lightburn may share a lot of common features with those three, but any attempt to pigeonhole him as a direct clone of any of them is ignoring too many of his qualities as both a vocalist and a songwriter.

"Lost in the Plot" is a love song, simple as that. It doesn't have layers of meaning or metaphors to sift through, it's just a love song and that's all it needs to be as far as I'm concerned. Few songs, let alone singles, released this decade get the simple art of the love song so right in so little time and so few words. Really, when you get down to it there's only two verses, a chorus and the 'our love' interlude; lyrically it's no longer than a 3rd grade book report but that's more than enough time for Lightburn to work out one hell of a song. Most of the romanticism comes from his vocals, especially the keening, and yes, quite Mozzish, croon of the verses, but the words themselves do paint enough of a picture to make the romance more obvious. As bare bones as they are, the lyrics do actually tell something of a story, a couple being separated by forces beyond their control but insistent that they can make it through the time apart, but without Lightburn's vocals to drive it home I doubt they'd be anywhere near as effective.

Of course there's also the band behind him to consider, and they do just as much to make the song work as Lightburn does. Once again, it's not like there's a lot of complex musical ideas being put forward, but what there is is played so passionately that it's hard to consider the lack of complexity a fault of any kind. It also just sounds totally romantic at most points, between Natasha Yanchak's organ textures and the upbeat guitars from Lightburn and co-guitarist Patrick Krief there's a sort of uplift going on musically even as the lyrics start going into the sadder moments. Outside of the uplift, there's plenty of straight instrumental hook throughout the song - Yanchak's keyboard riff over teh chorus, that triplet-syncopation in the guitars during the last minute of the track, Martin Pelland's bass line during the interlude - showing that the band are much more devoted to the art of composing a full on brilliant song than just letting Lightburn carry the whole works.

Put simply, "Lost in the Plot" is the kind of pop song that should be all over the place these days: passionately delivered, interestingly if not complexly arranged and catchy as hell without seeming to try too hard on any of those points. It may not be the best love song of the decade, but it's definitely one that deserves a lot more plaudits than it's gotten so far.

#30. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca (Domino, 2009)

The last few times I've given Bitte Orca a listen the following question kept popping into my head: Are Dirty Projectors the 00s version of Talking Heads? More specifically, is Bitte Orca the 00s equivalent of the Fear of Music/Remain In Light duo? The markers are all there - interpolation of African rhythms into warped pop songs, vocals that will either entrance you or make you want to run screaming from the room (though David Byrne's got nothing of DPs frontman Dave Longstreth in that category as evidenced on their collaboration from the Dark Was the Night compilation) and a keen sense of hookiness underneath the layers of weird - but is that enough to make the comparison apt? The fact is that for all the similarities between the two, and if you don't hear at least some sort of connection there I'm inclined to think that you're kidding yourself a little bit, Bitte Orca is just too fucking weird at its core to stand in comparison to any album outside of the Dirty Projectors' catalog. The signposts are there, but the way they're referenced leaves them clouded by all manner of knotty, twisted guitar work and out of left field vocal bleats. But then again, the weirdness inherent to this being a Dirty Projectors album is somewhat masked by Longstreth's evolution into something of an art-pop savant, with a heavy emphasis on the pop half of the equation. The two sides are at war with each other for the full 41 minutes and it makes for the most satisfying art-pop album of the decade - or at least something to challenge for that title.

The best thing about Bitte Orca is that no matter which side of the battle wins out the results are equally good. When the pop side wins out you get "Stillness Is the Move," which puts 99% of modern R 'n' B to shame in terms of both structure and pureness of emotion, and the relatively straightforward acoustic numbers. When the weird side wins out you get "Useful Chamber," the true stunner of the album after careful consideration, and "Cannibal Resource." When the two sides are in a dead heat you get "Temecula Sunrise" which would be utterly beautiful if not for the shards of fragmented guitar that rain over the track at its most potent moments. The push/pull between the two sides of Longstreth's songwriting/composition style is half the fun of Bitte Orca to be honest, the first few listens were delightful because I literally had no clue what the next song would pull out and after that novelty had warn off it became more obvious that these were some top notch songs underneath the unpredictability and the weirdness. Even if the last couple of tracks don't quite keep the momentum up, and really I don't envy anything that had to follow "Useful Chamber" and to a lesser extent "No Intention," they still bear the mark of one of the most interesting voices, both in a literal and figurative sense, in modern art pop.

And speaking of voices (segue fucking king here people) I can't help but think that the increased presence of the duo of Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian is at least part of why I'm responding so much more enthusiastically to this than to other DP albums - and I like their past stuff quite a bit. Sure, Longstreth's still front and center on many of the tracks, but even there he seems to be sharing more of the mic time with his two female cohorts, and given that both of them sing absolutely beautifully in contrast to Longstreth's more...shall we say 'divisive' vocals, it's not surprising that I find myself reaching for this over something like The Getty Address. I generally prefer female vocals over male ones at any rate, but the fact that both Coffman and Deradoorian (I never get tired of typing that name...) are such pure and natural talents in that department adds a lot of enjoyment to the proceedings. When the vocals are wholly turned over to them, as on "Stillness Is the Move," the album puts forth its most potently enjoyable bursts, and while thy tend to be the less substantial of the great tracks they're the ones I'll come back to more often. That's not to say that the Longstreth-led numbers are less enjoyable, I can't say that any of the songs here fall under that description really, but the higher level of Deradoorian/Coffman contributions makes for a much more palatable album of the whole.

What it really comes down to is that Bitte Orca might be the most enjoyable album released this year while also being the most potentially off-putting. Far all the purely enjoyable moments there's something around the corner that might make the bulk of listeners turn away in disgust. And that's how I like my pop albums (and once again, if you can't see this as a pop album first and foremost for all its art-damage you're kidding yourself): catchy at its base but not devoid of other interesting touches that keep it from feeling like the musical equivalent of empty calories.

Stillness Is the Move