's second post-millennial album starts with two of their most contrasting songs. It's set off with an instrumental that, 27 years earlier, might have been licensed for a soundtrack. Next is "Future Love," a golden-hour delight shimmering like nothing else in the band's catalog, albeit with rush-inducing harmonies and hurtling drums evoking their early days. Tempestuous extremes also characterize much of what follows on . "End Game" presents a bleak flip side to "Future Love," recalling -era before a violent outburst amid 's resentful protestations of "What went wrong? What is wrong with you?" The downer mood is felt elsewhere in the pummeling "Kill Switch" and thrashing "Fifteen Minutes," a pair of antagonistic numbers fronted by . The guitars on the latter itself vacillate, generating -like gentle hypnotism and then dropping the hammer almost exactly as those of did on "Duel." On the comparatively blithe "Repetition," quote one of and 's creativity-stimulating Oblique Strategies cards, and they maybe pulled "Use an old idea" a few times while writing and recording. Obvious above all else is "Clouds of Saint Marie," like "Vapor Trail" a wistful remembrance using condensed water as a metaphor for lost love. Whether the ideas are 's own or those of other bands, they tend to be good ones, slightly twisted or prized apart and rearranged. is further proof that these four musicians belong beside one another. They still create quite a sighing racket. ~ Andy Kellman