Despite middle-of-nowhere jokes like
the Mountain Goats' hilarious shaggy dog story "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," the north central Texas college town has thrown up some really good artists, from
Brave Combo to
Corn Mo. Studiously cool post-rockers
Mandarin are another link in that chain, and
Fast Future Present is a self-assured and often fascinating collection of songs that artfully blend the standard elements of post-rock with unexpectedly melodic pop. All the pieces are there: Jayson Wortham's wispy, deadpan vocals rarely rise above a whisper and his lyrics are basically impenetrable, Dave Douglass' battery of percussion almost overpowers songs like the increasingly hyper riff-rocker "Pilot Light," and he and bassist Peter Salisbury regularly shift the songs in and out of unexpected time signature changes, while guitarist Matt Leer and Salisbury's keyboard parts slowly build over the course of the songs, so that a song like "Eye On Time" drifts from a quietly tense opening to a swirling climax before receding and finally stopping dead with a razor-blade edit. What keeps them from sounding like the second coming of
Slint (most of the time, although the eight-minute "Virus Smile" smacks hard of
Spiderland) is that the group places these forbiddingly cool elements in the context of songs as unapologetically pretty as "The Beginning Hides the End" and as melodically rich as the opening one-two punch of "When Heat Sleeps" and "Shadow Your Shadow."