Although I took a liking to the Lost Sounds almost immediately, and admired a lot of their music, I’ve recently reached this conclusion: they’re a great band. This CD and seeing them live the last time they came through LA just seals it. They’re too expansive to be pegged as solely new wave or garage. No mere passing dalliance, their keyboards go from accenting the guitars and modulating the mood, to becoming electronic pythons that slither and snake through the foreground, to being used as percussion instruments. They’re too inventive to be a kitsch act, although they do have certain “darker side of science” sensibilities (this outing includes songs of clones not being able to love and mechanical feelings). This album sounds like a watershed of many of the ideas they’ve been exploring in previous releases, and the result seems more focused, more hypnotic, more paranoid, more direct, and more immediately palatable. Like the end result of a long line of experiments, where the monster’s finally fully put together from all the separate parts and the right type of storm comes along and zaps in all the electricity you need. Instead of frying everything in a fire, this beast of an album sits up abruptly, picks up an instrument, and starts dismantling the lab in fantastic ways you’ve been hoping for. Just when I thought the band was reaching a plateau, the Lost Sounds don’t rehash old ground but launch into outer space.
–todd (In the Red)