Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, The Burning Effigies put the "fun" back in funky. I hate making comparisons to other bands, but imagine an amalgam of Modest Mouse with TV On The Radio. And their pictures make me think of The Hives.

The album is very mellow. Almost too mellow for its subject matter, which I'm going to give the benefit of intentional irony to. There is also something I love about the fact that, considering their sound, they use a drum machine in conjunction with more traditional forms of percussion. I wouldn't mind seeing these guys live.

"Plug & Play" opens like a 70's porno movie theme song. It's all about modem love. You know. . . modem love. Lines like, "I want to do it binary style" brought a smile to my face as I listened. The mood of the album then turns towards a more serious love/hate/heartbreat/revenge sort of theme.

Take a song like "The Count" for instance. A lament from a prison cell with a chorus opening: "I'm gonna make you regret / What you did to me". The song is a loose interpretation of The Count of Monte Christo. The point is that the song is too sing-songy and poppy for what the lyrics are saying. But that works so well for the entire album.

The closing track, "Pipe Dream", is probably my favorite. It takes one of the clichés that I loathe the most: "If it's meant to be, it will be" and basically says, "Fuck that. You've got to go out and get what you want in this world." That's my philosophy and I'm glad someone has written a song for it. Nothing's given. Thanks, Burning Effigies.