The Sleepy Jackson - Personality (One Was A Spider, One Was A Bird) (2006)

Remember when Mercury Rev emerged from their early-career noisy haze and presented Deserter's Songs? Keep that event in mind as you hear Luke Steele (a.k.a. the voice of the Sleepy Jackson) intone atop the orchestral swirl, vibraphone, and massed-vocal harmonies of "You Needed More," the opening track of Personality. It's the album's most lush tune, with the remaining 12 repurposing the song's textures at will--and adding pedal steel, more pronounced drums, and wonderful, controlled guitar distortion. Steele's mastery of the Pet Sounds palette is vast, creating a floating ambience that multiplies the bandleader's core strangeness--his fascination with confusion, psychedelia, and--at root--being and nothingness. As a follow-up to the much simpler perfection of Sleepy's criminally under-accorded 2003 debut, Lovers, this is an ambitious mélange of all the sounds Steele loves. Luckily, they play together wonderfully. If you're Sufjan Stevens jones is hungry and you can tolerate a more avant-garde take on orch-pop, then you have to hear Personality. --Andrew Bartlett