Tough Call this one. First off if you're going to name your band after a Morrissey song that he stole from Jack Kerouoc's book Dharma Bums, you need to be able to bring the goods Beat Poet style. Which is, for me, the biggest problem with The New Romance - musically it has it's moments, (though, often overproduced and prettified) but much of what they have to say is a mockery of the literacy that they have based their name upon. Don't get me wrong there are exceptions, there's definitely plenty of stuff for fans to enjoy here, it's just so bloody inconsistent.

These gals hail from the fragmented remains of a couple different Seattle bands and this record sometimes achieves the pretense that aspires to. There are at least two songs on this album (the names have been withheld to protect the writer) that are almost worth 15 dollars. Built To Spill producer Phil Ek, twisted a few too many knobs on this outing. He throws in everything form the kitchen sink to the bidet with synths and bits of this and that from about every genre you could think of, which I think causes the gals to lose their way a bit. I mean you get everything from Peter Gabriel-esque textures to strung out Courtney Love ranting and much of the time it's like a weird music dream - the kind you awaken from out of sorts. This album succeeds in it's more simpler passages and gets Ekky when the songs stray from the straight on Sleater Kinney approach.

I like to think of this album as an experiment that while not entirely successful, left a mark and made it's participants wiser for the effort.