Songs About Girls...and other mysteries

The self-titled 2004 debut album by Minnesota pop quartet the Vestals was hampered a bit by its democratic structure. Singing/songwriting brothers Ben Gordon and Jeremy Gordon were clearly both talented songsmiths, but in widely contrasting styles: Ben's songs sounded immersed in the entire history of British pop music, from the Beatles and Kinks to XTC and Oasis, while Jeremy's taste for fuzzy guitars and monotone vocals felt more indebted to the shoegazer scene. The brothers still write separately on Songs About Girls...and Other Mysteries, but this time out, they're on the same stylistic page, and the resulting album is a far more cohesive affair. This is power pop of the more ornate stripe, far closer in spirit to the wide-ranging influences and textured arrangements of Jellyfish and the Posies' Dear 23 than the likes of Big Star or the Raspberries. The songs are consistently tuneful, with lyrics that sidestep the usual boy/girl clichés while the vocals mostly remain in the usual winsome high-register style, with enough change-ups like the playful snark of "Drag to Be You" to keep things from getting tiresome. More importantly, the band knows the value of concision in power pop: only two of the 14 songs break the four-minute point, the traditional mark of death that usually means the band is repeating a dull chorus for 90 seconds in the mistaken belief that they're driving a hook home instead of being terribly boring. Happily, boring is one thing this fine album is not.