Pitchfork

In the 15 years since their first single, Kurt Heasley and his rotating band of shapeshifters have been called many things: shoegaze, dream-pop, Kinks klones. The Philadelphia-based Lilys have usually separated their genre leaps by album, with 1992 debut In the Presence of Nothing a fine testament to Lovelessness, 1995's Eccsame the Photon Band a hallucinatory revelation, and relatively more recent work, particularly 1999's The 3-Way, diverging into crunchy '60s British Invasion revivalism. Finally, on Everything Wrong Is Imaginary, Lilys' various iterations coalesce convincingly into a psychedelic quirk-pop summary.

If shoegaze is about to become the new garage, as Playboy recently predicted (duh, the articles), Lilys may also finally be timely. Don't get me wrong: Their latest isn't as cochlea-crushing or easily labeled as songs like "Collider" and aptly titled "Tone Bender" from the band's first full-length, which hit just as Britpop and grunge were dislodging the original shoegaze movement. But the biggest differences longtime listeners will notice from 2003's indistinct comeback album Precollection are the intermittent detonations of vibrato-afflicted volume. On opener "Black Carpet Magic", wavy guitar noise sears almost distractingly through bright Pernice Brothers melodies and Grandaddy-ish electronic sun-splashes. Swoony, layered "Knocked on the Fortune Teller's Door" leans hard against the whammy bar and reveals the album's M.O.: "I heard your words," Heasley whispers through clouds of feedback and flute-light vocal effects-- then thinks better of it-- "Of course not: your voice." It's a subtle testament to sound on album that both reaches sky-tingling sonic heights and scratches occasional gummy shoe-bottoms in its attention to subtleties.

Again, though, this isn't your older brother's shoegaze. Far from it. While the best songs aren't as languid as on the band's subsequent Eccsame the Photon Band, they combine the melodicism of that album's "Day of the Monkey" with the rhythmic denseness of Precollection, playing the wall-of-head-liquefaction card only sparingly. "With Candy" relies on peppy, repetitive hooks, sparkly synths and candy-factory overstimulation to distract from a lovelorn plea of "Come back, darling." The instrumental title track borrows scratchy guitars, primitive electronic beats and a bassline one bets would look good on a dance floor. But the song that gradually unlocks the album's more obscure passages is "The Night Sun Over San Juan", which despite its Thrills-like title is wistful, edgy pop, with Heasley's high wobble at one point evoking Robert Smith. The album swims in gauzy details, and this track's weird catchiness floats like a life preserver.

While much of the record's beauty lies its dizzying production, other songs become submerged, emphasizing all-too-vague mood over articulation. "Still in All the Glitter", with its fractured piano and drunken chord changes, almost gets lost in its own veneer. "Push off who you are/ It's time to go," Heasley sings, but the song hangs onto its swaying drone a minute or two too long. So too, "Where the Night Goes", with jackhammering beats, indiscernible vocals, and guitars that pound boringly where they should prod.

For all that, Everything Wrong Is Imaginary never quite feels like the career-culminating record it should be. "A Diana's Diana" bumps to a funky rhythm somewhere between Midnite Vultures and Remain in Light, though it's not quite as fun as either masterpiece. More successful is witty closer "Scott Free" (as in "This is where I get off..."), which clatters with multi-tracked acoustic guitars and murderously fey harmonies like the best of Oh, Inverted World. Either could represent the next incarnation of a band that, in its right turns and (per the album title) its wrong ones, has always brimmed with imagination.