Oh shit: Marah have been running sideways from indie rock trends for so long that they've stumbled into a scene-wide Springsteen love-in. Arcade Fire, Hold Steady, Constantines, even the Killers-- several of the most acclaimed/successful bands of the last three years have taken up influences Marah's been hammering for a decade, and if this trend wasn't already flying high on the fiery eyes of your lover's dying pride when If You Didn't Laugh, You'd Cry dropped in early 2006, it definitely is now. Say what you will about Marah's spotty recordings, but if you were going to set Kids in Philly as the over/under for the quality of the next Killers album, how many of you are taking the over? For the next Arcade Fire album?

Okay okay, but it would still be some kind of nasty irony if the reason Marah didn't catch a break in 2008 is because they don't sound enough like Brooce. It's no secret that Marah, through personnel changes-- Angels of Destruction! features four new members-- or general restlessness or maybe a shredded throat, have abandoned their reedy, rambling The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle sound. Today, they're a beefier band that has more in common with the Strokes or Wilco than the 1970s groups to which they're more often compared. Singers Serge and Dave Bielanko disappointingly leave one another alone too: sloppy buddy-choruses have given way to polite turn-taking.

None of this really changes the fact that listening to Marah is sort of fun, if for no other reason than in the middle of a Marah album you can rationalize a lyric like "Reelin' from a tongue-kiss/ On the outskirts of foreverness" in way that you mostly cannot when you are reading or writing about the band. Marah's reputation has probably suffered among critics for that very reason, but it's a phenomenon that Angels will absolutely not correct: at this point in their career Marah hardly need black-and-white photos of sparking cigarettes, exclamation points, or 10 minute multi-part album closers ("Wilderness") to prove to the world they are very, very serious about rock'n'roll.

Angels contains plenty of good Marah-y things, too. Marah are best when they boogie or slow-dance (as opposed to the alt-rock in-between). Marah find the former on opener "Coughing Up Blood" and "Wild West Love Song", both of which blitz along quickly enough to make you forget about dynamics or even great hooks-- the rush is its own atmosphere. True to their tendency to include one readymade prom-night song on each album, "Blue But Cool" features "wooo-oooh" backing vocals and loping piano chords. It is likely not the album's most ridiculous set of lyrics, but it seems so because they're the slowest, and the best too: "Two heart-sick fools drinking beer on the kitchen stools/ And we're scared/ Yeah we're blue, but cool."

Also: "Now that we're talkin' at it/ How the hell are we gonna pay for all your clothes?" Marah have the infuriating ability to sketch scenes that actually bust hearts, such that it's impossible not to think that their romance-junkie tales wouldn't be better served by the above than by meaningless horseshit like "Angels will rip your chest open/ And fill it with flowers." This is, of course, a long-winded way of saying that Angels is a Marah album, which sort of sucks, but that "Blue But Cool" and "Santos De Madera" and the title track might still make you a little misty eyed and/or end up on a mixtape. More to the point, Angels will cause no one to forget Separation Sunday or even Kids in Philly.