Let me set the scene. Imagine you are sitting in a lightly wooded forest of deciduous trees swollen with summer leaves. The sun is at your left, slowly drifting behind a hill, always meshed in layers of verdant foliage. To your right, a gentle slope winding down to a large, warm lake. The blue sky blows a slight breeze. Is that music you hear? Or just bird song and rush-hour traffic?

Not only is this a good description of the grounds surrounding my palatial mansion, it also lends a little meat to my review of the new Thee Moths record.

This is the kind of-well, almost music-that lends itself to sitting around in the summer shade, though I wouldn't try to nap. When should one listen to Nature? Listen when you want to be pleasantly agitated by esoteric noise.

Basically, it comes down to succulent loop glitches, made with care for mysterious and tragic reasons. The emotion of a powerful pop song is retained, but the musical structure becomes totally unrecognizable. So much so, that the record begins to sound like it should be full of pop, but instead has been torn apart or perhaps captured before it can properly materialize.

This incomplete or perhaps deconstructed format comes off, for me, as charmingly adolescent, vulnerable, etcetera. Occasionally, the album's acoustic intrusions even create glowing musical warmth. Passionate vocals question paradoxical nature of the electronic music's mechanized romanticism. Oh now I get it, Nature.

These, "mind-forged manacles" of synthesizers sometimes combine with equally sinister repetitions of bizarrely transfigured bird calls. This can be fairly haunting.

A word of caution: this is not good driving music. Fans of ultra-slick pop songs and smooth dance beats should probably stay away. Otherwise, hunt down a copy and decide for yourself if this is music or just noise.