Patchouli and cigarettes are two abominable smells. Approaching the heterogeneous fusion of Aloha is like courting a cutie soaked in both odors, with the added confusion of rank patchouli breath and body perfume scented after ashtray mouth. The band's jazz-to-indie-pop fusion holds as well as Elmer's between a log and an apple.

The ten songs on Aloha's debut, That's Your Fire, stumble along with stunning interminability. Songs arise from bogs of freeform jamming, then drift delicately through your head before deliquescing into jazz soup. Aloha write songs like Taz, swirling in a twister of vibraphone haze while occasionally stopping to communicate. Heavily trained in improvisation, they rush through their debut LP with confusing flash. Only after several listens do the separate melodies and songs begin to limn discernable hooks. Stuck in the limbo between abstract pop and free jazz, Aloha build on the promise of their debut EP, but still remain a work in progress.

For better and worse, Aloha's songwriting rides the waves of tumultuous vibraphone and drums. On "Heading East," repetitious guitar chiming and steady, nautical bass keeps course while the vibes and drums freak out in hypnotic swirls. "A Hundred Stories" imagines a collaboration between Lionel Hampton and Stewart Copeland. Sharp guitar, complete with the rare solo hook, plugs along atop a bed of busy percussion sticks. After a vibe-rich respite, the song bursts in a blur of arms and finally morphs into manic breaks and fat Korg throbs-- all this in under three minutes. Unraveling the Police into post-rock threads, "With the Lights Out, We Sing" showcases the greener possibilities of a more restrained Aloha. Granted, this "more restrained" Aloha still contains double-fisted, incessant vibraphone hammering.

I've made the observation before that movies about suburbia always seems to involve scores laden with vibraphones. American Beauty, Rushmore, and Election feature the instrument. It's the token thing to do in such films. The vibraphone is both banal and exotic, toy-like and hypnotic-- paradoxes that nicely sum suburbia, a place that's an empty shell of civilization with sheltered secrets. Similarly, Aloha is suburban jazz in that it's not really jazz at all. But there's more circling beneath the surface than the exterior would have you believe. Intriguing, and occasionally captivating, Aloha have formed a nice little niche for themselves. From this point on, they can either tighten up into something greater or turn to face the shadowy, bare-bulb-lit corner of such niche. But at least they're not reviving '60s pop or new wave.

-Brent DiCrescenzo