In addition to work in both and , molded his long-running solo project into various forms since it began around 2005. In 2020, ninth album offered a slightly more warped reading of the angular guitar rock of his associated bands, recorded at home with a particularly unpolished and lo-fi approach to production. felt like off-axis indie rock, but his tenth album, , takes 's homegrown sounds to far weirder places. If the song structures of earlier songs took unexpected turns, those turns happened in songs made up of chiming guitars, steady drum patterns, and pleasantly nasal vocal melodies. opens with a free-floating cloud of sputtering drums and fuzzy tones played by layers of hard-to-place instruments. This sets the tone for the indirect path of the next 13 pieces that make up the album. There's mumbly acoustic guitar pop like "Crooks Go in the Ground" and "Better Get Gifted," noisy, distorted midtempo rockers like "New Mess," and wobbly punk tunes like "Claw" and "Why Am I Missing." explores the contrast between soft and harsh sounds throughout, with buzzing synthesizer lines or fuzz guitar leads rising out of nowhere to suddenly cut through relatively subdued background instrumentals. Most of the songs are brief; only one track is longer than four minutes, and the rest are under three. The snippet-like song lengths, abrupt changes, and kaleidoscope of strangely matched sounds give a feel somewhere between early , classic mid-'90s , and the kind of Pacific Northwestern indie rock sound that has long been part of. The album never goes completely off the rails, but it's significantly more adventurous and randomized than earlier output. Where was once indie rock with psychedelic tendencies, those tendencies take over on , creating a wild and beautiful patchwork that changes before the bliss from one moment completely fades into the delirium of the next. ~ Fred Thomas