TOTR’s bailiwick is “experimental rock,” usually referring to the artistic license to have no direction whatsoever, and you know how monumentally enticing that sounds. The band has some off-the-wall, iconoclastic stuff in their past (their self-released debut EP was titled OK Calculator), but they’re now simply a very listenable band with masculine lines.

“Halfway Home,” the jump-off track, is the sound of Billy Idol, Wire and Psychedelic Furs jamming after settling their differences over a couple of 40s; if you’re one of those lost 80s souls who loved the poor unloved Lords of the New Church, this is sweet revenge. Remember that this stuff is a genre Viewmaster, though, next flipping over to the Klaxons nu-rave market and gussying it up with some tasteful funk in “Crying” before flirting with Chemical Brothers lunkhead-rap in the buzzy, jazz-inflected “Dancing Choose.”

Hall & Oates get welded to Air for the faux-thoughtful “Stork and Owl,” heavy emphasis on the faux – this lot kid around with each other all the time, one of many things that belies their (unearned, if you ask me) rap as gloom-meisters.

By Eric Saeger

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