Love American Style

Undo (Oxygen/BMG)
by Jamie Kiffel

If you miss the days of wan-voiced, incomprehensibly emotional English boys droning musical eulogies, Love American Style might be your panacea. Generally senseless lyrics fall as fate directs, sometimes yielding interestingly convoluted imagery, but direction is either buried or lacking, and I am reminded of trying to find divine meaning in magnetic poetry kits. Occasional, inventive instrumental effects do arise, such as on “Ticket,” which bends chords under the music in an intentional warp, suggesting you’ve got your turntable spinning at the wrong speed. “Undo” is exceptionally catchy and bursting with harmonic shouts for a song that has few chord changes and is more Anglicized than most Brit pop. Unfortunately, most of the disc has a repetitive aimlessness, made unnerving with such incomprehensible lines as, “Orange ways royal bring-me-downs” in “Not About to Lose It,” and “Scary people the staging bruising by an open-eyed incisor” in “Divider.” Those who cringe with artistic offense upon sensing the spectre of revision in Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” might feel relieved by this spate of consciousness, but anyone who favors an undercurrent of intent with their free speech might feel more comfortable reading a corrected copy.