The Microphones - Don't Wake Me Up LP

As part of K's slight expansion from the release of purely indie pop records, there are the Microphones, whose Don't Wake Me Up moves between gritty lo-fi rock and droning, spacy constructions; a delicate pop melodicism lies beneath the surface noise of both, putting the general aesthetic of the album somewhere close to Stereolab's Transient Random-Noise Bursts, or some of Grandaddy's early work. The latter of the two approaches seems to fare better, with the songs' dramatic builds and careful composition rendering a sound that is a lot more artistically impressive than pure rock -- but the fuller compositions are just as impressive, using their rampaging drums and the odd dichotomy between lo-fi guitar noise and frail, His Name Is Alive-style vocal presentation to approach something like an exaggerated shoegaze effect. Above all, Don't Wake Me Up offers a fascinating and involving set of sounds -- even in the rare moments when these sounds aren't organized as well as could be, they're still compelling.