1. We’re So Starving
2. Nine In The Afternoon **
3. She’s A Hand­some Woman
4. Do you Know What I’m Seeing? **
5. The Green Gen­tle­man (Things Have Changed) **
6. I Have Friends In Holy Spaces **
7. North­ern Downpour **
8. When The Day Met The Night **
9. Pas De Cheval **
10. The Piano Knows Some­thing I Don’t Know
11. Behind The Sea
12. Folkin’ Around **
13. She Had The World**
14. Form A Moun­tain In The Middle Of The Cabins
15. Mad As Rabbits

**Clear Favorites
The only thing that sounds the same between the albums is the singers voice. Every­thing else about “Pretty. Odd.” is totally dif­fer­ent from its pre­de­ces­sor. It’s so dif­fer­ent that I refuse to com­pare the two, simply because it is like com­par­ing an Air Rifle to a Rail­gun. Sure they’re both guns, and they have trig­gers, but that’s pretty much where the sim­i­lar­i­ties end.

To start, gone are the head-​bopping hyper-​beats of the first album. They’ve been replaced with a much more slowed and con­trolled flow. There is heavy use of acoustic gui­tars, har­monies, and random back­ground noises such as birds and trains. There is even an intro­duc­tion of brass in some of the songs, which I appre­ci­ated. All of the tracks show a stun­ning advance­ment in matu­rity for the band, and it shines through in how tight all of the musi­cal areas are pulled together. The melodies are much stronger, and far more com­plex than before. The singing has been slowed down, and though the lan­guage is still as intel­li­gent as it always was, it’s slow enough that you can actu­ally tell what they’re saying this time.

Through­out the whole album is a very strong folk-​feel. All of the songs sound like they could be sung around a camp­fire (if you had enough alco­hol in you at least) and fill you - or at least myself - with a warm , fuzzy feel­ing. Where the first album was all about throw­ing unique music in your face, “Pretty. Odd.” does a good job of bring­ing you along for the ride instead of being sub­jected to itself. It’s much calmer, par­tially because of the use of ukulele, tam­bourine, and fid­dles. This is not music you are going to hear played in clubs all that often, that’s for sure.

There is still a large influ­ence from music long since past. Many of the songs feel rem­i­nis­cent to early 90’s T.V. themes or movie themes from the 80’s. Pas De Cheval sounds like the band watched every episode of Bonanza before going to the studio.

One thing I noticed was the strong intro­duc­tion and use of har­monies with the band. Other mem­bers are given ample chance to sing their own parts, vary­ing the expe­ri­ence of the album greatly. ‘Behind The Sea’ is a per­fect exam­ple of this. The lead singer only sings backup during the entire track, giving the others a chance to really shine as the singers that they are.

An issue I have with the album is the fact that there are 15 tracks. This is nice, since you now get more music for your money. It’s also a pain because now you have more music on the CD. There is a reason that artists tend to limit the number of tracks of their CDs. If you have too many tracks, people will start to get bored which results in their turn­ing off, or tuning out the rest of your hard work. I can see that hap­pen­ing with “Pretty. Odd.” really easily. I don’t see this album get­ting as boring as “A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out” or at the very least, not as fast, but it’ still possible.

I’m shocked with how much I ended up liking “Pretty. Odd.”. With a com­plete depar­ture from their first album, they’ve man­aged to re-​invent their sound and prob­a­bly earned some new fans (and lost some old ones). You need to listen to the album your­self to really come to a deci­sion your­self, because this is an album that will divide people down the middle. I per­son­ally like this album far more than their first one, and I used to love their first album.

8/10