Ego is a giant, man-eating worm. Keep your brain on Earth, and that worm will slowly imbibe, satiated. But launch your self-opinion into space, perhaps to some desert planet, and that worm will tear shit up like in "Dune." Ego can make a band say such things as, "This one is a true marvel," or "I don't feel awkward in saying that we never recorded a song that we didn't think was good," or "Even the mistakes sound good," or "It warms me every time I listen." Ego can make a small band from Champaign-- a band that made only one good album-- say these things in the liner notes of their posthumous 2xCD retrospective.

Consider for a minute that, not counting their forthcoming live video, Braid have released as much posthumous material as the Pixies. The Pixies! Keep in mind that Braid broke up seven months ago. This self-appointed importance clouds whatever actual musical merit Braid might've squeezed out over their nearly 100 career songs. Their relative unimportance shines when they set forth to cover actual landmark bands on the second volume of Movie Music. The rhythm section struggles to keep up with the Pixies' "Trompe Le Monde" as the guitarists trace the original in shaky, soulless lines.

Braid's music never sounded effortless. And despite whatever theories William Gaddis may spout, knock-offs are never as good as the real thing. So here we're given 36 songs of pretentious hardcore-- which is a bit like making a punch tickle-- and circuitous songwriting dumped on top of overwrought drumming. It wasn't a working day for Braid unless they pounded out a three-minute burner with four time changes, eight drum fills, and lyrics chockablock with puns and maladroit wordplay. "Club starlight where your eyes round brown and shine/ Darted out for the dimes in world record time," serves as example enough.

Frontman Bob Nanna always seemed to favor searching for the Holy Grail of Homonym over striking a real emotional chord. And this was supposedly the archetypical "emo" band! Even Shaquille O'Neal and the guy from "The Real World" can figure out the poetic riddle of substituting "reign" for "rain." So excuse me if I find it difficult to file "the current erode it/ I rode it" and "I'm an immobile mobile" under brilliance.

Volume One packs an EP's worth of killer songs. "I'm Afraid of Everything," "Forever Got Shorter," "(Strawberry Ann) Switzerland," and "Please Drive Faster" swerve through enough unexpected hooks to warrant their collection. Yet, the last three songs Braid recorded portray a band stuck in a comfortable pop rut. Their tarots show that little would have come from another full-length album. "You're Lucky to Be Alive" might as well be the coda to "Please Drive Faster." Top it all off with Bob Nanna's horribly strained vocals and Chris Broach's Sen Dog-like screamed reiterations, and the water ceases boiling the dry ice, and the fake mystical fog passes. We're left with a mediocre hardcore pop band.

The inexcusable slaughtering of two Smiths classics suitably ruins Volume Two. For good measure though, the songs are buried under sloppy early work and an even worse Billy Joel cover. There is absolutely no reason for a band to compile this sort of half-assed material. The mistakes don't sound good. Braid will always be a legend in the house show circuit, but the studio is another matter. A handful of great songs out of almost 100 begins to look a bit like a monkey-and-typewriter scenerio when it's all laid out in front of you.

Braid would like to convince you they're the Jawbox of the late 90's, a mantle already taken by Burning Airlines. But as much as Bob Nanna tried to be J. Robbins, he will simply be remembered as a smudged carbon copy that fell behind the desk.

-Brent DiCrescenzo