Please tell me you've seen the NBC soap opera "Passions." It's the one with the kid midget and the witch. The witch brought a giant doll to life, you see, who is played by this kid midget with rosey dots on his cheeks and white gloves awkwardly slipped over his tiny hands. Naturally, most of the show is family drama posed by the gorgeous, but it's worth sitting through the arguments and kisses to get to the kid midget. Last week, a girl threw the midget behind a couch, where his archnemisis, the cat, tore him apart. This in daytime! It's David Lynch meets "Sunset Beach!" And after a while, those plastic characters and mangled monologues intrigue even more than the "kidget."

Similarly, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci operates on this fascinating dementia versus dogmatic principle. Spanish Dance Troupe bursts occasionally with pixelated pop. "Poodle Rocking" and the title track gleefully purge with Welsh harmonies and halucinations-- like a hybrid of the Super Furry Animals and Belle and Sebastian, who are both blessedly demented in their separate ways. These moments spring from a field of moss- covered acoustic Saxon- ballads. Gossamer guitar and weeping fiddle drift through oddly affecting Renaissance fare. "Freckles" and "The Humming Song" pluck like a druid Elliot Smith. Simon and Garfunkel are occasionally invoked in songs as gentle and refreshing as tissues and ponds. A fog of harmonies hangs over duvet- covered horns and sighing pianos.

Gorky's can commendably serve country and folk flavors to doggedly indie- rock palates. No matter how seemingly innocuous the tunes can seem, they'll subtly float you like chunks of dry ice on hard wood and leave beads of dew under your shoes. Treeless hills and Tolkein spill from their lips. Except, of course, when the disease claws their brains and another kid midget- esque gem tickles your armpits.

-Brent DiCrescenzo