Pitchfork

Pedro the Lion's David Bazan goes Postal Service with this electronic side project, and please don't stop reading. Lap-pop is to emo-tinged indie rock as emo was to third-wave ska, aren't you on the listserv? Where Service-man Ben Gibbard found digital bubblegum (and offline gold!), Bazan trawls through his usual narrative-driven mope-rock balladry, for better or for worse. But never worse than the name Headphones, so emo kids, it's almost finally safe to show your bespectacled faces and stop pretending you like Death From Above 1979.

After the bland misfire that was last year's Achilles Heel, Headphones' debut offers some hope for lapsed Pedro-philes. On "Hot Girls", Bazan and co-'phones Tim Walsh (Pedro the Lion, TW Walsh) and Frank Lenz (Starflyer 59) come their closest to the Postal dudes' "Such Great Heights". It's as perky as Bazan gets-- think an electro-pop "Indian Summer"-- and the lyrics smile sidelong at the notion that "style is taking over" and "songs are on their way out." If Headphones have any shot at The O.C., this is it.

Yet Bazan's latest is much more Edgar Allan Poe than Phantom Planet. Headphones turns dark early, with the opening murder/arson and insomniac synths of "Gas and Matches". On "Hello Operator", a cuckold strangles his ex-lover through the telephone to live, pounding drums and ghostly sonar signals. Bazan may be indiedom's second-favorite Christian, but as adultery-laden 2002 concept album Control proved, he's at his best moaning slow-motion stories about sin. "Slow Car Crash" closes the disc with futile airbags and touching last I-love-yous, glacial tempo befitting its title.

The disc's two most blatantly political tracks stick out like severed thumbs, each pointing a different way. Veritable Bush bio "Natural Disaster" lays into Dear Leader with the album's second-sprightliest melody, but oh fuck Saddam what a refrain: "Maybe a couple of airplanes/ Could crash into buildings/ And put the fear of God in you." You know, I once used that as a pickup line. By contrast the previous track, "Major Cities", is as subtle as "Natural Disaster" is preachy. As (terrorist?) attacks decimate an empire, Bazan's doomed narrator admits, "This doesn't favor me/ Still bullies ought to get what's coming." Bazan's vocal sounds almost like Stephin Merritt's near-cracking lower range from "Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin", and spare, orderly keyboard accompaniment only highlights the similarities. It's a deft representation of the current political climate's many terrifying paradoxes. Against all expectations, my vote's for the dude from Pedro.