Entering the lo-fi indie rock scene these days is probably a silly thing to do. Remember that scene in "The Simpsons" where Homer explains to the jean counterfeiters that Levi Strauss was a hero for seeing an overcrowded market and saying "Me too". The fact that Centro-Matic have been doing this for ten years notwithstanding, they're jumping into a really crowded market, where any product has to be phenomenally good to even have a chance of being noticed.

Unfortunately for Centro-Matic, their product is not phenomenally awesome enough to rise about the din of other bands producing this sort of music, even if there's nothing wrong with it. In fact, half of the album even gets agonisingly close to being able to be labelled as "classic", but unfortunately it's the second half of the album that is good, and its dragged down by a rather plodding, uninteresting first half.

Calling Thermatico is a good example of the deadweight that this album has to carry. It's crunchy, crisp, and utterly unmemorable. There's nothing that's actually wrong with it, but there's not much there to distinguish it from other songs by other bands either. Patience for the Ride shows that the band has a few pop hooks here and there; it has a very catchy chorus, but again, it gets a pass mark without being anything special. At this point on my first listen through the album, I was afraid that this album might turn out to be a clunker, the sort of boring album that's really hard to actually write 400 words about.

Luckily for me then, along came For New Starts, a considerably more interesting piece that bounces along in an odd time signature, bursting out in glorious abandon, as compared to the quiet restraint of the previous half hour. Monument Sails features squalling guitar distortion, but it somehow seems more alive and vibrant than the noise on earlier tracks. Triggers and Trash Heaps is a simple beautiful piece of old-fashioned indie rock with the focus on good songwriting rather than whiz-bang tricks and gimmicks, and Take a Rake, with its gorgeous sweeping harmonies, is a truly inspirational way to close off the album.

If the first five tracks weren't here, then I could call this an EP masterpiece, but unfortunately in its current state, the first half of the album acts as an almost intolerable drag. Then again, I keep coming back to the second half of this album again and again, and it's not getting old, so maybe these guys do have something to put them head and shoulders above the crowd after all.