Pitchfork

Bishop Allen's career thus far has been non-traditional enough that it feels a bit strange for them to actually be releasing a full-length LP that people know and care about (the forthcoming The Broken String, on Misra/Secretly Canadian/Jagjaguwar hydra Dead Oceans). Their first full length, Charm School, came out to little note in 2003, to be subsequently-- and thankfully, because it's earworm material-- revivified by bloggers a year or so later. These same traders of affect inspired the band's subsequent foray into commercial pragmatism, as they released one EP per month in 2006. Recording and releasing a constant stream of new material over the past year has paid off in a post-Hamburg Beatles way, honing the band through repetition into a finely-tuned power pop machine. Nine of String's songs are freshly budgeted and reworked EP tracks, but lead single "Rain" is a new slice of funk-pop-a-roll. Children's piano is flecked over an accelerated rhythm-guitar bed, and a taut lead line and vocals that cop from Stephen Malkmus are sewn in, creating a song equally as catchy, but perhaps appropriately "slicker", than anything the band's done yet.

[from The Broken String; out July 24 on Dead Oceans]