Owls are nocturnal animals, so they should have no problem playing venues at which the headlining act starts rocking well after midnight. However, the type of music this quartet plays -- jazz-tinged indie rock with plaintive vocals -- tends to render listeners somnolent. Fortunately, Owls drop a potent pep pill into this glass of warm milk. Mike Kinsella's skittering drumbeats provide the group's pulse, and singer Tim Kinsella eschews the lazy, don't-give-a-hoot monotone favored by many of his peers in the genre. As a result, songs such as "I Want the Blindingly Cute to Confide in Me" are less airy than their painfully clever titles imply. Three of the group's members graduated from the computer-assisted-recording class known as Joan of Arc, but here, it's just shimmering guitars and erratic rumbles from the rhythm section, with Steve Albini's involvement ensuring an organic sound that's just a bit too noisy for naptime.
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