The Spinanes are Scott Plouf (The Beat) and Rebecca Gates (The Music), and together, they're two talented kids. Not since Tori Amos' Little Earthquakes has quiet, pretty music rocked out in such a hard way. Not that the Spinsters are going to be writhing on piano benches anytime soon.

Their music is like sleeping to avoid conflict. If you're manic depressive, you know what I'm talking about. "If I sleep, I can avoid the pain of life. Zzzzzz..." (Not that I've ever felt like that, but everyone knows someone who frequently does.)

The songs on Strand are similar to those on their 1993 debut Manos, but they're more complex now. There are more instruments on this record, for example. You may occasionally hear a piano, organ, tympani, or mellotron in addition to the Spinanes standard of drums, guitar, vocals.

It may have been set up so that the first thing you hear are the changes. "Madding" (the first song and single off the record) comes in with sound effects and machine- like percussion. They aren't the deafening, annoying sound effects that have so cheesily become the new trend in rock (replacing feedback as "more alternative"), but more like one of those Sounds of Nature tapes if it had been recorded in somebody's garage. The sound of electric waves crashing into the shore, and a distant, tribal pounding from the island you can see way out on the ocean. Then "Azure" kicks in with its trademark Spinanes mellowrock groove. The ocean is suddenly very far away and your house is on fire.

Rarely are sophomore efforts better than debuts, but Strand kicks the already impressive Manos' ass up and down this courtyard.

-Ryan Schreiber