Heard you're doing the rounds again, Autoliner. I've seen your type buzzing about here before, all chromatic scales and shiny production. Summer is peaking and I can't deny that the blue skies and the breeze put me in the mood. You're not kitschy like Emperor Norton, nor as whimsical as the Kindercore crowd, so maybe you can provide some stability. But will you be able to keep me interested?

Single-mindedness is both your strong suit and vulnerability. Take "Weakened," for example. You sing, "I wake up, it happens/ I feel the world around me/ I break down, is this real?/ This isn't what I wanted." Power-pop chords and bouncy drums spring your pick-me-up chorus, asking, "Are you ready for the weakened?/ Take my hand." I hope you aren't trying for a forget-me-not, though, because I hear those vocal harmonies between guitarist, bassist, and drummer every season-- what's to distinguish you? And with puns like that in the song title, you'll never get to my sweet nectar.

It's just that your come-ons are so typical. Occasionally, on songs like "Green Mary," a stingy, Dischordant edge appears in your guitars, but you ruin it with backing vocals (those backing vocals!) that hover in nearly every song. More often you write pieces like "Supersonic Baby," whose heroine with her "lugubrious charms, a skull tattoo on her arm and vegetarian ways, a penchant for pumpkin shoes and post-industrial blues" is just a blatant degeneration from Dead Eye Dick's "New Age Girl."

Don't get me wrong, I like your attention to detail. Whenever you accent your verses with keyboards, or pinch harmonics for occasional guitar squeals, it's the perfect accompaniment to your tight rhythm section. The erratic little solos and miniature prog-jams spread here and there might bring wry smiles, too. Still, your warmth is blunted by the canopy of bands who've done the peppy 90's college radio rock thing before, and I can't shake the feeling you'd rather be Smoking Popes.

At least "Lighthouse" slows down the pace a bit. You try to soothe with the line, "Wherever you go there's a lighthouse watching over you." And while the violins have a certain airy artificiality, your sentiment is very sweet. Still, I can't let this one change of pace infect me, because your kind tend to multiply like a virus. I do find myself tickled by your label Parasol's description of your sound as "a wave of psychedelic momentum that will flood your cranium with the most iridescent paisleys." If only that bug-eyed nightmare vision were true; as it is, you're too rooted in quick, sugary melody to let any psychedelic harmony bloom. So don't alight here long-- watch, my lobes are slowly shutting. For the first time, I find myself waiting for the fall.

-Christopher Dare