I'm only going to type the full title of Australia import The Sleepy Jackson once. Their 2003 break-thru release Lovers was much more writer-friendly than Personality - One Was a Spider, One Was a Bird. As album titles go this one definitely crosses into goofy, pain in the ass territory, but as albums go it's an unqualified winner and one of the most pleasant surprises of the year. Gone are any traces of alt-country that flavored the better songs on Lovers and in it's place is a big, lush, more British band sounding treasure, that's the musical equivalent of a full body massage. Personality swirls with great shimmering, lavishly produced instantly hummable tunes that certainly remind of late 80s, early 90s sound of Lloyd Cole and Prefab Sprout. Smartly crafted background vocal arrangements (a.la Brain Wilson) await the listener at every turn in these mostly mid-tempo, melody-rich nuggets. It's as dramatic a quantum leap as Radiohead made from Pablo Honey to The Bends.

No review of Sleepy Jackson would be complete without at least a passing mention of their talented, but truly strange frontman/singer/songwriter Luke Steele. Watching the band perform is made all the more compelling by the somewhat disquieting non sequitir created by Steele's voice eminating from his peculiar face. He looks like the the Photoshop love-child of James Brown, Prince and John Travolta. A small percentage of you may have seen the terrific Irish indie film "Intermission." Steele looks remarkably similar to the masks that Collin Farrell and the gang wore while driving to the bank hold-up. Also notable is the revolving door band-member history of The Sleepy Jackson. The fact that the band has already seen ten members defect, might suggest that Steele is as difficult to get along with as he is weird to look at. I don't know if it's the spider or bird side of Steele's personality most culpable, but for a 4-5 member band only 5-6 years old that's a pretty alarming turnover stat. In all fairness, if you skim their history it's clear that circumstance was responsible for much of the personel trouble. Steele has suffered major mutinies - one that left him to carry on as a solo act during the 2001 Magic Dirt and Motor Ace tour.

As strong and ambitious as Personality is, one would have to assume that Steele has found the right combination. It's one of those albums that you can just put on and leave it running; as opposed to a high maintenance affair that puts you on constant volume control duty. Personality is also uniformly strong from top to bottom and picking a favorite tune is tough. If pressed I'd probably choose track 7 "Miles Away." It's a slow and lovely, contemplative tune that finds Steele putting on his Lloyd Cole mask, singing in that graveled, whispery, almost talkish way that Cole coined. Melodically Steele's writing occasionally swerves into Burt Bacharach's lane and you'll also notice more than a few traces of George Harrison (circa. All Things Must Pass). As far as more contemporary counterparts go, you could compare this new and improved Sleepy Jackson to Joseph Arthur as well as Ed Harcourt, the latter having a great new release that I'm listening to and I find myself getting mixed up as to which album I'm listening to, there's a lot of similarity.

Plus, having the "The" in the name gives it a David Letterman thing, "Eh Paul, d'ya, d'ya like the Sleepy Jackson?" The Boneman does.