Kiletron

Ans. Andur's ear for sweetly strange pop/rock (and eye for great album design) continued into 2009 with Kiletron, a dozen sharp songs' worth of an album. The sense that they're almost a Gorky's Zygotic Mynci for a new time and place continues as well, with their lovely non-English-language harmonies and psych-prog hooks again present from the start with Reede. But it's not simply that, and some of the best songs on Kiletron are their own little worlds. The semi-spoken vocals, low-pitched and almost shrugged off over a bass-led quick kick of a song, make Melodraama a wry, entertaining treat, while the distinctly Cure-like rushed guitar pop audible there recurs in even more winning fashion on Mu Binoklis. Ester takes that joyful feeling even higher with it's easy harmonies, flecks of nervous guitar and piano interplay, and a generally winning late-afternoon-on-a-summer-day breeziness, something the following Puhkepev further builds on thanks to the horns. Praha Kevad and it's synth/squelch shuffle might be the only song in the universe that sounds like it was partially derived from Paul McCartney's Wonderful Christmas Time (and sounds far superior to that effort, thankfully).