Pitchfork

God, if only these guys performed in costume, like some lo-fi, heartland, guitar-based version of Daft Punk. Maybe they could dress as huge cotton swabs, or upright bean bags. Surprisingly sunny and apolitical considering their nostalgia for the man who pounded Stoli in Gorby's shadow, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin are four Missourians who sound like every strummy bunch of white boys from the 1990s who homaged even strummier white boys from the 60s, but damn if their pop chops aren't convincing. The blogger massive has all but boostered them onto the Unsigned Wonder pedestal, and this fuzzily engineered release plays like a loose warm-up, a tribute to their unrusted "roots" (er, acts which also happen to be their contemporaries). When SSLYBY deliver a polished product in the future, Broom could be considered "the Basement mp3s."

Finesse abounds, though. Even the band's egregiousnesses-- the "bops," the "doots," the Elliott Smith graverobberies-- are forgivable due to the ease with which they perform such difficult stunts. On a collection of 10 songs, four heterodes with girls in their titles that flex enough tendon to sidestep tweedom? Check. Dueling vocalists who manage not-entirely-distracting scale-downs of Rivers Cuomo and Conor Oberst? Check, again. Guitarists who pull off coffeehouse restagings of the Shins and Olivia Tremor Control? Tricheckta. Besides, a peak of hypocrisy is accusing someone of stealing music during this gilded age of downloading. (After the coming Cease'N'Desistageddon, we'll chuckle about the days when instant-messengers would query, "Hey man, is this album worth queuing?" Because clicking a mouse was such streeenuous laaaabor.)

You know what "I Am Warm and Powerful" is? Warm and powerful. You know what "Travel Song" makes one want to do? Travel. That's the thingamabob about SSLYBY: their story checks out. The dubby opening of "Anna Lee" is the only tempo/arrangement surprise, but it quickly reveals itself as acoustic Interpol morphing into acoustic Bloc Party, which ends up sounding like the first Of Montreal CD, and who thought Of Montreal would be around this long?

The audience for these tepidly wonderful love songs would be limited only during a bitter and dissonant Prohibition that forced purveyors of bubblegum to use woodland stills. Naysayers unimpressed with crisp choruses and expert bridges might doom Broom's makers to a subcult-status alongside Western Keys or Home, but something more ambitious is afoot: The songs are fetching ciphers, stowaways on an indie pop mothership, benchwarmers on a charm offense, etc. Their caucasian convenience, their anythingness, expands their range, like how Owen Wilson in Behind Enemy Lines could hide in a mass grave, and then in a crowd, and then in snow. If Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin's local concert hall held a battle-of-the-bands contest with the theme "Ancestor Worship Done Right", I wouldn't envy the members of It's a Shame About Vladimir.