Kneejerk reaction: a riff taken from Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin 'Bout Love," warped and compressed into a newish song, not too far from the theft that passes as R+B nowadays. Not good. Knee hurts. Much jerk.

Longterm reaction: a fine piece of work. Offsetting the harder tekno-rok compositions employing real guitars and bass, Electro Glide In Blue presents me, the smug reviewer, with enough thoughtfully composed mellow tidbits to say, "Ah," like the "ah" I make when a particularly assertive bowel movement is released into the great white bowl. Ah. "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Dub" can't be too deeply faulted though. It is extremely catchy, has "commercial airplay" written all over it, and the 14 year-old Van Halen- lover inside of me rejoices to hear Eddie's fingerplay further immortalized by @440.

The only downside of the record is that they're still growing. Electro Glide, while a good and advanced album among its peers (though there are few in this hybrid non-category), is still shaky in a few small ways-- meandering songs, meaningless lyrics and a smidgen too much repetition mar a potentially excellent album. It ain't perfect, but it's pretty damn good.

-James P. Wisdom