Science Fiction Illustrated

Despite its glammed-up name and by-default futuristic title, the thing about Mother & the Addicts' second album is how comfortable it is with its style — rough, slightly lo-fi indie rock with dance tendencies that could have been recorded just as easily in 1990 as 2007. In a world of Hot Chip and the Klaxons trying to weld shamble with preset grooves that just seem to call to mind Jesus Jones wondering what exactly rave was, Mother & the Addicts don't break the mold by much. The best song on the album, "So Tough," is an obvious fusion of Pulp and Saint Etienne circa 1993 (the song title, also the name of the latter band's second album, surely wasn't chosen due to coincidence). Plenty of other musical comfort food moves like that crop up throughout, and in their own context — a mostly horrifying U.K. rock scene for the first decade of this century — Mother & the Addicts show a slight ambition.