WHY? Sanddollars

Fresh off lambasting the Go-Betweens for employing an antiquated sound that I never liked the first time around, I come to the new ep by WHY?, a band that seems intent on squeezing some fresh juice out of the sonic tangerine. Good for them. This record has the kind of shimmer that tickles the ears, and takes delight in mixing it up, never settling on one way to process vocals or relying on a fixed set of keyboard textures. So while the listening experience is not necessarily surprising in a way that would make you fall out of your easy chair, it at least keeps your tympanic membrane at attention. But it's not all cellophane flowers and marmalade skies. These songs have lyrics, some pretty damn depressing lyrics, and they make The Stranger look like Goodnight Moon.

It kicks off with Miss Ohio's Nameless, a lament for an unsigned singer that always "makes the message board top ten" but "will only be famous in the underground" and like the unfortunate Ritchie Valens will "know where your plane is when it's going down". And the mood is all downhill from there. "Am I sick 2 think I look best under fluorescent light?" singer Yoni Wolf croons on Sick 2 Think. Probably, but don't worry dude, it's all good. The morose imagery is spot on and the band makes narcissistic self pity sound cool for a couple of minutes. In Next Atlanta we find out that the fair city "smells like exhaust" and "rotting possum." Somebody call the Chamber of Commerce, we've got a new slogan!

OK, it's a depressing mess, needlessly turning the existential dread-ometer up to 11. But hey, it's got a nice tune and you can dance to it. Actually you can't dance to it, but you certainly can recline actively with your headphones on. You can also take the "melancholosity" with a huge grain of salt. It all sounds a bit too playful to be anything but a big joke. I don't know, it's not really profound enough for me to try to make a case either way. But the tunes are catchy and the special effects are cool, so if you like that kind of thing, as I do, then walk, don't run, to your local pc and download it.