"It's my sick decomposition"**, spits opening track 'A Grave To Go To' through an early-Oasis/Primal Scream guitar haze. All muffled attitude and sniffly nose underneath rolling eyes. **

Ok, so this album gets straight to the point, you think, the dancers take their tops off and you realize that is the sort of bar you're in.

Well, not quite. Because said dancers then sit down to recite poetry. Or, back to the record, track 2 comes over all Sparklehorse beaming at **Neil Halstead**: Glockenspiels. Acoustics. Flutes. Hmm...a bit of a split personality, this one.

The softwash-fairylight treatment pervails for a lot of the album, while the heavy guitars come in and out of rock'n'roll consciousness. The result is great in places, like 'The pursuit of pleasure' or the beautiful _'Burning Stars'_, and a bit falling-all-over-the-place in others.

It's not that Lupine Howl can't rock out, they evidently can. But it doesn't have much character on it's own.

Equally, they can lose themselves in too much athmospherics, although they manage to create some stunning tracks on that alone (Breathtaking final track 'All I Can do' shows off the kind of wide-screen sound that's the musical equivalent of standing on top of a mountain and slowly turning around).

But in the end, they seem at their best mixing both sides, then letting those wry cynical vocals snake around in them, cooing and hissing and sighing. _"I may be lost but I am not worried."_ whispers 'Don't lose your head'. Exactly...