Soul Coughing pisses me off. On one hand Soul Coughing is a great slip- and- slide ride, a quick bout of intercourse in public, a convertible on unshaded, infinite pavement, a saturday morning cartoon. They could be consistantly good. On the other hand, Soul Coughing is marinated with overpowering ostentation. Whenever you're not dancing to the groove and smackin' dat azz on the dance floor, you may want to use that free hand to smack the band around.

After a listen to the first album, Ruby Vroom, one got the impression of gazing forward into the entrance of a tunnel; it was a somewhat new direction in music. It was shrapnel from pre- War sounds poured over jazzy, funky, arty hip-rock. But El Oso just gives the impression of a giant sponge, slurping up the past few years of electroniwhateva. It's a glance over the shoulder, looking back into that same tunnel we already passed through.

El Oso has its shining moments. All of these come directly when Soul Coughing rips off Roni Size basslines and breaks (in fact, "$300" sounds exactly like Roni Size's "Visiting Angels" from the "Avengers" soundtrack) and when drum-n-bass wizard Optical steps in to produce. Had Optical produced the whole record, the result could have been an impressive hi-fi, bottom- heavy romp and a return to form after the uninspired Irresistible Bliss.

Also a disappointment are M. Doughty's increasingly annoying vocals. I'm not saying he sounds like Popeye, but... imagine if Popeye spoke, rapped and sang in a band. Doughty, tragically born with his vocal chords attached to his nasal septum, repeats lines like "Roller boogie mutha fucka" and "I can be your baby doll/ I can be your doll, baby," ad nauseam. It's unclear whether the sincerely delivered "Let me get up on it" is an attempt at parodying true, chocolate- city funk, or if it's just some whiny white guy thinking he's "dope." Whatever the case, Doughty is better suited to the vocals of "Monster Man," which whiz and twist so fast that their weightless meaning has no time to sink in.

And alas: the great Armanied giants of the Major Label Marketing Department parted the jungle, gathering over "Circles" and "So Far I Have Not Found The Science," slid slacks down thighs, squatted, and thereupon did shat, twice, songs of alt-rock radio gleam. These turds hath taken shapes, scents, and manners resembling Sugar Ray's "Fly."

Of course, the main reason El Oso pisses me off is that the band forces me to say things I hate for critics to say: "These guys could practice more 'songwriting'; they could use a wise editor." I mean, not everything has to be verse/ chorus/ verse. However, Soul Coughing has become enraptured with "the loop." Their songs never progress or change anymore. Everything is linear, hard and direct. And let's face it, after four minutes, the same little sample and lyric gets mighty old.

Sadly, Soul Coughing has stooped to making music for the Phish and Dave Matthews crowds that want to get more into that "phat" jungle sound, but are too afraid of Roni Size or Photek, because "dude, they have no vocals!" And it's frustrating because they remind me of those guys in art class who were far and away the most talented, but who just sat in the back, hunched, drawing comic book sketches of buxom valkyries slashing dragons.

-Brent DiCrescenzo