Pitchfork

There are a couple of things that make Danish such a neat language. One is its whimsy-- from the looks of it, you just throw together any letters you like and then pronounce them however you want. That's how it's possible for "Under Byen" to be audibly interpreted as "Oh'nah Boon." Also, Denmark is pretty much the only place in the world where lots of people speak Danish. So if you're a good Danish band that writes crappy lyrics, while you might be reviled at home, you'll still have a shot abroad. Writing crappy lyrics also frees up time for other diversions, like raw foodism, or meticulously tending to your music until it's as minutely sculpted as topiary. If Under Byen did indeed save time by cutting lyrical corners on Samme Stof Som Stof, it sounds as if they took up at least the latter hobby.

From what we understand, the Danes are apeshit for Under Byen, so we doubt the lyrics are crappy. Most Americans are just going to have to take their word for it anyway. Under Byen has been reaping accolades in their stomping grounds since 1998, when they began releasing their elaborate post-rock, which sounds like Björk and Mogwai falling down a well together. North America, as it is wont to do with non-English-singing bands, has been slower on the uptake, tentatively joining in the general apeshit-ness when David Fricke, in 2003, called Under Byen the best band in the world. Does Fricke not realize that telling Americans a band they've never heard of is "the best in the world" leads inevitably to disappointment and calumny, or were his comments part of some larger plot to passively destroy Under Byen?

Under Byen aren't the best band in the world, but they're very good. It actually sounds like they're straining toward being the Animal Collective of Mogwais, imbuing those dark, grand structures with weird shambles and Henriette Sennenvaldt's uncanny chirping. Going lighter on the guitar than many of their post-rock peers, Under Byen center their songs around wobbly pianos, melting strings, and shaggy percussion. They thread thin, sneaky melodies through shape-shifting veils of fog. Samme Stof Som Stof's sound palette is a vivid and varied range of grays and blues; each song is like some giant machine on the verge of shuddering apart. This artfully stressed quality is especially apparent on opening track "Pilot", where Sennenvaldt's airy Kim Gordon cool seems to be all that holds the faltering riff and junky percussion together.

Under Byen's great with eerie beauty, as evidenced by the slow-burning arc of music-box lullaby "Tindrer", the tiny crystal machinery thrumming in "Heftig", and the plinky post-Rain Dogs creeper "Film Og Omvendt". These songs are accomplished and important to the album's brooding atmosphere, but Under Byen's at their best when they manage to be chilling and catchy at once. To this end, we get "Den Her Sang Handler Om At Få Det Bedste Ud Af Det", a long and hazily segmented pirouette through a ghostly clockwork array of stiff arpeggios, tensely sawing strings, stately piano, and a gentle yet decidedly Ratatat-esque bridge. Similar to Kronos Quartet's Requiem for a Dream theme, the song's various parts roll toward a marching band crescendo in a series of cunningly understated dynamic shifts. The title track, with its enunciated vocals, speckled percussion, and poppy synth-and-handclaps nuggets, is the most overtly Björkian thing on the album; it also benefits from this mixture of the off-kilter and the infectious. Smart, elegant, and destined to be underappreciated because of their greater emphasis on overarching texture than site-specific crescendo, Under Byen is shaping up to be the Danish answer to Bark Psychosis. Just don't ask me how that answer might be pronounced.