Life isn't complicated for the Innocence Mission. This Lancaster, Pennsylvania trio trouble their folk-tinged minds with wee jaunts up to the lakes of Canada, friends moving away, snow, and the odds that someone may turn around rather than carrying down the road. Where must their time go? I appreciate their relaxed, unfurrowed, rutless outlook, though. My shrink has told me that he and I will work through my problems-- that if I concentrate on my exercises, one night I'll finally be able to fall asleep without George W. Bush's old-money, dirty DKE, Yalie grin leering into my mind's eye.

So, I've listened to Birds of My Neighborhood an awful lot and not just in the hopes that I'll be cured of my neuroses. And what's not to enjoy in simple music simply performed? To rip into this record for not having the same gory frenzy of Deicide or the artful vengeance of And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead would be hideously churlish. On the other hand, I doubt you'd really consider picking this up if you were a big Deicide fan.

There's no use trying to pigeonhole the disc into the Belle and Sebastian category of folk-pop, though the instrumentation-- broken arpeggiated guitar chords, Hammond B3 organ, tambourines-- is similar. But lyrically, the Innocence Mission play it very straight. I do long for the skipping, Princess Diana-obsessed humor of "Curious" from their self-titled debut album.

But why carp if I swoon whenever I hear the lightly waltzing melancholy of Karen Peris' voice during "The Lakes of Canada" or "Going Away?" Peris' voice has all the fragility of a young Sinead O'Connor and all the sincerity of Natalie Merchant. Thankfully, Peris isn't bothered with stardom and the pomposity that notoriety brings with it, nor as a lyricist is she concerned with teeth-rotting twee-ness, ninety-word titles or I'm-a-fairy-freak poses.

Birds of My Neighborhood reminds us that while Detroit DJ Jeff Mills may get us dancing into a cyborg future, or that Primal Scream rabble-rouse us into crushing all Nazis, we ought to occasionally return to an innocent place, to gather up our strengths in readiness for life's unavoidable complications.

-Paul Cooper