have always been cute, above all things, and their fourth album is easily their cutesiest yet. If you couldn't tell from the title's polyglot preciousness or the cover's construction paper cut-out pajama partier, 's lispily whispered lyrics should leave little question. Her wake-up litany on opener which could be the world's mellowest alarm clock music, runs, in part: "it's time for you to get out of bed/splish-splash some water and comb your bed-head." This isn't children's music, per se (though children would probably enjoy it), nor is it in the typical sense of that tag (artwork parallels to notwithstanding). Indeed, it's not very far removed from the abstract melodyscapes that constructed on earlier releases using battalions of bell-like toy instruments and flotillas of gently chiming sine waves; both strategies resurface here, with most tracks tending to favor one approach or the other. In particular, the stately eight-minute closer recalls the slowly unfolding pure sound mini-epics of , if perhaps even more cradle-friendly. But the duo definitely explore some new territory here, including behaving like an actual duo for the first time on record: 's almost cartoonishly cute wisp of a voice turns up on all eight tracks, in each case more prominently than ever before. making good on its title, is by far the closest have come to making a dance number with its steady four-on-the-floor; hooky bassline, jittery, -style percussion, and simple, poppy glockenspiel/whistling riff. The hazy, viscous isn't one, really -- though it wouldn't have sounded out of place on ' -centric -- but the blissful nearly is (actually it's a , as, naturally, is the shambling, ukulele-led ) Another first: though a certain unstructured floatiness persists, many of these cuts do come across as bona fide songs, thanks to 's vocal input as well as 's knack for understated melody, which makes this quite possibly 's most accessible release to date. On the other hand, fans of the primarily instrumental earlier albums may be put off by their retreat from abstract sound sculptures toward something vaguely resembling -- or simply by 's undeniably little-girlish voice. Either way, it's hard to deny that, as have slowly and steadily tweaked their musical approach, their fundamental underlying aesthetic hasn't changed, it's merely grown more distinctive and more fully realized. ~ K. Ross Hoffman