broke away from the crowded pack with 2005's superb , a ragged but ornate barroom romp that drank its way to the top of countless year-end lists by finding that thin vein that separates triumph and desperation and hammering as many nails into it as they could in under 50 minutes. Fans used to 's visceral, caterwauls may be disappointed in the bruised and elegant upon first listen, but further spins reveal as more of a stepping-stone than a peak. "It's just a life story/so there's no climax," from the rousing opener sets the tone, and its floor tom gallop and volatile whoops sound like an unholy combination of -era and spilling out of an old player piano. has proven himself again and again to be a gifted wordsmith, and features some of his finest parlor room romanticisms and slacker-poet observations to date. a studied rumination on some of popular music's most beloved numerically titled tracks ( etc.) adds an unnecessary integer ("Not everyone's keen on lighting candle 17/The party's done/The cake's all gone/The plates are clean"), cleverly illuminating pop culture's insatiable thirst for sequels and remakes. It's a trick that could easily turn trite in less capable hands, but one of the band's many strengths is its ability to mirror with arrangements that match the earnestness, wickedness and occasional pomp of the lyrics. Those talents are used most effectively on two of the record's other highlights, the soft and broken and the alternately heartbreaking and hysterical the latter of which chronicles the suicide of poet and manages to integrate ' so seamlessly that you'd swear it had never existed before. It's not all winsome about backstage passes and gutter bound writers though, as and company open up the full sneer on making less of a metaphor for the cinematic lives we wish we could have and more of a reminder that it's us who make the films. [The first 5,000 copies of (the "deluxe" edition) came with a bonus disc featuring all of 's demos for the record.] ~ James Christopher Monger