While Bruno seems increasingly ambivalent about playing to his strengths, Toomey has her own strengths as a singer, which (somewhat surprisingly, to me) work pretty well with Bruno’s songwriting. The new songs (7 of them) are largely excellent, if intentionally weary. What led them to pick “Masonic Eye” for revisiting, though, or “Pointless Triangle”? And why does the front cover look like a remedial grammar textbook?

Here I kept thinking that “the Soft Boys” was just, fundamentally, the name that Robyn Hitchcock’s albums were issued under in the 70s. But no, it turns out that there’s a definite Soft Boys sound as distinct from Hitchcock general style… and this doesn’t have it, except on two songs. Notably, the more striking of the two is also written by the whole band, unlike the whole rest of the album (except for a flimsy opening instrumental). So nothing is inexplicable here, only disappointing. With luck they’ll make a real Soft Boys album next.

My theory: a good rhyme works even when you’re expecting it; it has a rhythm that builds tension just in time to release it, albeit on a tiny scale. And so I can see all the good qualities I’m used to in Bruno’s music here, but somehow the songs don’t work; I honestly think they just can’t fully support the slow tempos, not most of them. The pre-rock arrangements put me off at first but that passes quickly.

My expectations for this were almost too high to be met, and they nearly ARE met, so that’s good. One can get a few songs or order the record from www.statuesque.org.uk. Depending on whether some of the slow songs grow on me or not, this might well be my favorite record of the year.

I can see how it was mistaken for disposable pop-rock at the time, but the reason to hear this band is the amazing melting-cathedral voices of Maria Taylor and Orenda Fink — and having first heard them deployed much more purely in their new band, Azure Ray, that’s really all this record is for me. In Azure Ray they got musical backing more suited to those voices; knowing that that would and could happen, the occasional misfires in LRR aren’t frustrating at all. The bargain bin had a few dozen copies of this, so if you’re in Boston (home to the label, not the band) you really ought to.

Bad. Why do people make bad records? It’s a mystery.

Rhythmically tight and melodically scrappy. Makes me realize how cordoned-off indiepop and indierock were from each other ten years ago, since otherwise there would have been a lot of bands exactly like this. Or were there? I tend to think this would have stood out even if there were.

They edged into classic-era GBV fuzzery on the last record but apparently that was just due to lack of resources. This one’s reverted to easy-listening indiepop. I’m glad I didn’t pay to hear it.

The fascinating track here is the first one, where guest rapper Beans’ vocals are left mostly intact but still chopped off occasionally or otherwise digitally messed-with. I like the remainder of the disc (seems that, of the two guys in Funkstorung, De Luca has most of the impulses I like) but in general Peabird’s vocals are either turned into tiny rhythmic elements or left totally whole to drift along in a way that nothing else in the music does. I remain unsure whether this is hitting its intended mark and I’m just on the fringe of the audience, or whether something is holding the creator back.

You know you’re in trouble when you name records after drugs. And when you put out enough records that awful titles end up on decent (not great) EPs just because you need to get everything out the door. On the same subject, I guess, I thought “Richard Meltzer, Robert Pollard, Smegma, Antler and Vom” was just about the best self-parodic band name ever, but I bought the CD and learned it was in fact a record with contributions from five distinct entities.