I'm about to reinvent the wheel. Seriously, it'll be awesome. Check this out. You know that round, circular shape? Gone! Totally unnecessary. What the wheel needs is a corner. Who would have ever thought of that? I'm, like, a genius! And I'll tell you what inspired me. There was this band, see, and they were called Aspera Ad Astra. They made this really cool, spacy, shoegazer music, sometimes recalling a less bombastic My Bloody Valentine, other times a simpler Spiritualized. They made an album of this music called Peace in 1998, a highly recommended record if you are so inclined to occasionally bask in such sound.

But Aspera Ad Astra lost a member-- namely, their lead singer, Michael Robinson. That's when they got the bright idea to reinvent their sound and themselves. So what was their remarkable change, their reinvention? To what did it amount exactly? Sugar & Feathered, released under the truncated name Aspera, holds the answer: They took their spacy, hypnotic sound, sped it up a bit, added Drew Mills' shaky, whiny lead vocals to the mix, and augmented the tunes with Fridmann-esque orchestral arrangements and production techniques.

So in order to reinvent themselves, they decided to sound more like Mercury Rev, or at least a faux-Fridmann production. Yeah, I thought it was a brilliant idea at first, too. But then I realized it just didn't hold up. They didn't make it better, like my new and improved wheel has done. Granted, they've got a couple enchanting moments on this release. But a couple out of 42 doesn't quite cut it. They use flashy, modern, psychedelic layers and vocal effects whenever they can now, but it feels unsubstantial, and sometimes just out of place. And Drew Mills' slightly taxing vocals don't complement the new sound nearly as much as Robinson's silky, dulcet tones would, and as they once did for Ad Astra.

My biggest complaint, when it comes to production and engineering decisions, is in the drum sound. At least three of the songs here have drum tracks that prominently feature a distracting fuzz tone. It doesn't sound like a conscious decision; more like the engineer didn't know how to get rid of it in noise reduction. Songs like "Another Blue Frisbee," a pop song which features a dull-edged but dreamy melody and heavenly Shields-ish guitars, would be entirely effective if it weren't for the abrasive, misplaced hissing static on the otherwise complimentary beat.

"Another Blue Frisbee" is also the culprit of another crime Aspera commits more than once on Sugar & Feathered. Since their more blatantly shoegazer days, they seem to have forgotten how to flesh their ideas out before moving on to the next. At the end of "Frisbee," a gently plucking acoustic guitar begins, a strategically placed kickdrum hits, and bass notes seem to indicate the introduction to a new, exciting groove. Yet, it simply fizzles out, and changes into "Come and Get It," a minute-long instrumental interlude featuring more of the same booming, echo-laden, contrived psychedelia that still doesn't work here.

In fact, the only time Aspera truly succeed on this outing is with the penultimate track, "Tiptoe Breaker." The song opens with a wall of crashing cymbals, pounding floor toms, and a searing, melodic electric guitar lead, before suddenly changing completely into a trippy, bombastic pop song somewhat suggestive of Eno's early 80's work on the Talking Heads' Fear of Music. It's an unexpected, pleasant surprise, and it finally turns the otherwise boring and ineffective psychedelia into something exciting by simply drawing from different sources. Perhaps Aspera should take this as a clue for the future, in order to instill some of my genius into their potential. Hell, maybe Aspera should have given me a shot at reinventing them in the first place. I mean, I reinvented the wheel, for Christ's sake. You saw it. What more evidence do you need?

-Spencer Owen