With one foot firmly planted in late- '60s psychedelia and the other striding confidently into the next millennium, Gardener, a collaboration between Seaweed frontman Aaron Stauffer and Screaming Trees' bassist Van Conner, swaggers jauntily through its Sub Pop debut, a quietly rambunctious departure from its founders' grunge pedigree. These guys sound like they stayed up all night listening to Beck's Mutations and dreaming of a garage- style battle of the bands between Pavement, the Replacements, Dinosaur Jr. and Elvis Costello. They just may have invited themselves to that enigmatic party with New Dawning Time, a collection of catchy yet quirky rockers and spacy ballads.

Benching the distorted guitars in favor of sitar, flute, tabla and mellotron, Gardener uniquely spices even the album's most earnest cuts and delivers a record chock- full of meaty pop hooks and long on imagination. Remitted with joyful exuberance and the requisite carefree offhandedness of most side projects, New Dawning Time shimmers with an infectious rock n' roll energy. By the time "End Up That Way" rolls into its horn- driven coda, it's nearly impossible not to find yourself waving your arms in the air and singing along with the band.

New Dawning Time is just that-– a celebration and a reawakening, a reimagination and reintroduction. As the album closes appropriately with the Stones' romp, "Come Again," the realization hits: there's nothing new here, it's just that what is hasn't sounded this good in a long, long time.

-Neil Lieberman