Lali Puna - Faking The Books

Lali Puna's love of beauty doesn't grow any weaker with FAKING THE BOOKS -- if anything, they've grown more into the pop rock suggested by earlier albums. The title track merges gentle guitar with Valerie Trebeljahr's plain and processed vocals, while "Call 1-800-Fear" and "Micronomic" have more of a straightforward, but dense rock sound. This album tends more towards upbeat than their other work as well, even if "People I Know" hints at Broadcast-like moodiness. For variation, "Geography-5" goes much more stripped down, and the closing track, "Crawling By Numbers" continues this. But perhaps the best merger of electronica and rock on the album is "Left Handed," which seems to best encapsulate Lali Puna's unique vision of pop.