Pitchfork

If avoiding categories is a virtue, praised be Add N to (X). When we first caught a glimpse of the band on the cover of its first record, featuring a garish and kitschy photograph in which a vintage Moog is pulled from a human stomach Alien-style, it was easy to peg them as some kind of retro art project, making music from the cast-off instruments of records past. That album confounded expectations, offering varied and inspired knob-twiddling that often worked against type. And here on their fourth album, it's now clear that Add N to (X) are very difficult to define and don't fit very well into any particular scene.

Being on Mute and composing music primarily with keyboards, one wants to place Add N to (X) somewhere in the dance-pop continuum, but from the first track on Loud Like Nature this sort of classification is problematic. "Total All Out Water" is anthemic rock at the corner where Glam meets Classic, a corner Gary Glitter (his "Rock and Roll Part 2" drumbeat is stolen here) and David Bowie (circa "Panic in Detroit") have been known to frequent. The riff is undeniable and the bass throb is sleazy, but it would sound like hell worked into a DJ set. This is music for cruising the L.A. freeway system with the top down.

Add N to (X) have a fondness for natural drum sounds and generally eschew drum machines, which partly explains why the band often sounds so much more rock than one would expect. "Sheez Mine", on the other hand, fits quite well into what's happening now in electroclash, with an appropriately stiff drumbeat, chanted lyrics expressing disgust, and an uptempo propulsion. The following "Invasion of the Polaroid People" makes another sharp left turn, with spoken word sections and weird sound effects that combine to sound very mid-90s, like something off the album Steven Jesse Bernstein did with Steve Fisk for Sub Pop. The vocals on "Party Bag" remind me of Neil Haggerty's neo-soul falsetto, but the music is thick analog grunge, all oscillating bass tones and messy noise settings. Despite the presence of a Theremin solo, it still sounds difficult to place in terms of era.

All this variety is to be commended, but a lot of the tracks here sound like unfinished sketches. You find yourself waiting for the hook or chorus to kick in, and too often, it never does. For every "Take Me to Your Leader", another catchy electro track with a great chorus riff, there's a "P.P. Machine" or "Up the Punks," marginal between-song interludes that go on for four minutes, filled with enough interesting noises but fewer interesting ideas. Still, these moments of tedium, while too frequent, don't overwhelm the album, keeping Loud Like Nature on par with the bulk of Add N to (X)'s output. They may be hard to pigeonhole, but they're easy enough to like.