It's been a long hard road for former Six Finger Satellite man John Maclean. With his band now long defunct, and his raging drug use finally conquered, Maclean is back in the music world with his new project The Juan Maclean - an electronic project in the vein of labelmate/friend James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, and a far cry from the days of his former group which borrowed much from the best parts of Suicide and Big Black.

For a couple of years now, The Juan Maclean has just been releasing singles on stray DFA compilations, but Less Than Human marks Maclean's full length debut. "Give Me Every Little Thing," which is one of (and the best of) those singles, thankfully makes the cut here. New tunes "AD 2003" and "Shining Skinned Friend" make for a great frontloaded party. Unfortunately however, the other two great comp. singles "You Can't Have It Both Ways" and the self-titled track are strangely missing here. And in their place is an album full of somewhat pleasant, but ultimately mundane tracks. Especially the final song "Dance With Me" which clocks in at a whopping 14 minutes (nearly one third of the album's running time!) but never really finds its groove, though it tries repeatedly to do so. Less Than Human doesn't quite capitalize on the success of all the hype that the DFA compilation singles brought forth, but it's a decent debut from an artist that has made a much welcome return after such a lengthy dormant period.