If
Complicated Shirt's first album sounded like a new millennium updating of the somewhat artsier end of the old American indie scene, with hints of early
Dinosaur Jr and
Mission of Burma, the follow-up,
Compromising Compositions, seems to be going for a full-on art rock effect that, no kidding, sounds like a modern-day indie rock take on willfully fractured '70s acts like
Slapp Happy and
the Red Krayola. The band's punk roots are largely sublimated here, showing up only in Drew Benton's rough, strangled vocals. The songs, which are mostly in the 90- to 150-second range, vary from the oddly pretty, semi-Baroque "The Thawing Neck" and the pipe-organ-based rant "Bad Plumbing Beneath a Spilled Philter," which both recall
Uncle Meat-era
Frank Zappa, to full-on tributes to
the Red Krayola's special blend of clashing rhythms and spastic, hectoring vocals on "Resilient" and "Rickets." Best of the bunch: "Seasonal Affective Disorder," the closest the album gets to what the average person would consider a pop song, without losing
Complicated Shirt's urge to make things, well, complicated. ~ Stewart Mason