2 keepers
keeper avg .200
Between Jimmy Tamborello's bubbly electronic backgrounds and Ben Gibbard's twee delivery, much of the album leans towards the cutesy despite Gibbard's usually downer lyrics. Indeed, my overexposure to the thoroughly non-threatening "Such Great Heights," whose syncopated swishes I'll forever associate with a UPS commercial, diminishes any novelty Tamborello worked so hard for. For me it seems to hinge on ones stylistic tolerance for effervescent computer music, which probably isn't my thing, so most of the moments that stick out for me are Gibbard's, such as his graceful, sliding guitar riff (similar to Chris Walla's on "Transatlanticism") that leads "Recycled Air"**** out, and the giddy fatalism of "We Will Become Silhouettes." But since for me most of the album resembles that UPS commercial most of the songs feel pleasant but easily ignorable. Moreover, "Sleeping In" and "Brand New Colony" are based around especially simplistic lyrical themes, the former a set of of wish fulfillment dreams, each concluded glibly with "don't wake me I plan on sleeping in." The strongest combination of the two contributors' artistic approaches is the admittedly Bjork-inspired "This Place Is A Prison"****, where Tamborello matches Gibbard's modern version of "Hotel California" with an appropriately brooding soundscape. Interestingly the album ends with the darkly frantic "Natural Anthem," which is also a stark contrast to the rest of the album; it is suddenly subdued when Gibbard enters at literally the last minute forcing an anticlimactic ending.
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