Pitchfork

When last we heard from Brooklyn quartet the Double with their 2004 Catsup Plate release Palm Fronds, drummer Jeff McLeod was on the disabled list with a hand injury. This setback forced the group to hastily re-shuffle their recording strategy, as they were required to utilize a jerry-rigged assortment of electronics and loops to drive the album's blearily muted melodic clatter. And though McLeod is back at full-strength for the Double's Matador debut Loose in the Air, the group's experience with on-the-fly problem solving continues to hold them in good stead, as they here constantly labor to reconcile the conflicting personality traits inherent in their nettlesome music.

Produced by Steve Revitte, who's recently worked with Black Dice and the Liars, Loose in the Air features several episodes of such pure stray dissonance that one might prematurely conclude the Double are ready to emerge as a full-fledged noise act. But these frequent, consciously misshapen crescendos often stand in opposition to the group's more conditioned 1960s rock movements and wiry dub figures, and in direct contention with David Greenhill's shivery, metropolitan vocals and the occasional undisguised Ray Manzarek flourish from keyboardist Jacob Morris. At peak altitude the album's relentless, destabilized push-pull can create exquisite levels of unresolved tension, but all too often, when their many disparate elements fail to crystallize, the Double can begin to merely resemble a lesser Interpol equipped with a vintage Vox Continental organ and misfiring rayguns.

One trait Loose in the Air noticeably shares with Turn On the Bright Lights is a distinct shortage of laughs, or even courteous smiles, as the men of the Double here knit their brows resolutely towards the skylines. Seemingly every track carries vague messages of some imminent, unnamed trouble, as Greenhill's desperate lyrics struggle to make themselves intelligible above the music's potent static. On the lurching, powerful "On Our Way", such lines as "The radio turns itself up...the continent's turned on its side" intermittently bubble through like transmissions from a bad satellite feed, while on the following "Hot Air", Morris' sinister carnival organ takes over to sweat out an urgent post-punk "Five To One" pulse.

Throughout the album, the Double are at their best on patiently-built tracks like the throbbing, wormwood dub of "Up All Night" or the seven-minute epic "Dance", both of which rise by increments to reach impressive, shrieking heights of amp feedback and distorted electronics. Less compelling, however, are those songs they attempt to drive headlong into more conventional popcraft, such as the perfunctory indie bounce "Icy" or the freeze-dried grunge of "What Sound It Makes the Thunder", an overcooked stomp that simply begs for the type of unhinged performance that the Double seem unwilling (or unable) to give it. These periodic lapses of over-constraint are especially disappointing given the group's obvious talent for making spontaneous mid-air adjustments to their sound; but there's enough evidence here to be optimistic that one day soon the group will gain the swagger necessary to more consistently abandon themselves to their wilder sonic impulses.