Well, this is an interesting item. Paul E. Schuster's your average hairless Olympia-based indie rock scenester. He's worked with a couple of classic Pacific Northwestern bands-- he was the keyboardist in Some Velvet Sidewalk, and he played on Julie Ruin's self-titled album and the Spells' Age of Backwards EP. In short, this is a guy with a lot of rock star friends. And on the aptly-titled Featuring..., he puts his industry contacts-- people like Kill Rock Stars owner and songwriter Slim Moon, Unwound's Justin Trosper, Sleater-Kinney girls Kathleen Hanna and Carrie Brownstein, and Calvin Johnson (among others)-- to good use.

Originally, Internal/External was intended as Schuster's own experimental electronic project. But after recording the stuff for a year, Schuster came up with an excellent marketing idea: he'd give the songs to people from the local music scene and see if they'd be willing to contribute to the project. Now, I'm not one to question motives, but Schuster's tactics are a little transparent. Call me a dick, but anyone knows that recruiting big stars is going to sell records, and get the primary artist's name in the spotlight. And sure enough, there's a buzz on Featuring...

In a way, this disc isn't conceptually that different from Stephin Merritt's the 6ths project. The difference is, the 6ths consisted of material written and recorded entirely by Merritt, with the exception of vocals, which were added by folks like Lou Barlow, Dean Wareham, and Mac McCaughan. On Schuster's album, each song is a collaboration. In that respect, it lacks the cohesive vision of the 6ths' Wasps' Nest, but it's also less predictable and, when it works, a lot more fun.

As it turns out, Featuring... is a pretty solid affair. After eight seconds of disposable "Intro," the album kicks off with "Secret Adversary," a pretty cool slab of dark 80's dance with a shuffling beat and an organ soaked in reverb. Sadly, Joseph DeRouselle of the Newlyweds louses shit up by overdubbing shoddy spoken word ("If we had talked about the scenery/ Instead of our minds' machinery/ There may still be/ An opening/ Or a door or a window or something") while bandmate Angie Hart tunelessly yowls background lyrics like, "Technotronic!/ Catatonic!/ I said I know I know I know I know I know!" But things still come together when DeRouselle and Hart sing in unison: "The lights are on her."

Lois Maffeo (yes, that Lois) offers a silky love song in "Hope." Its glossy production adds an air of plushness to the track while Maffeo croons "Hope, come inside/ I wanna know what I will find." It's definitely the only time I've ever heard something draw equally from a Spice Girls ballad and Massive Attack.

The album's highlight, though, comes on early. Three songs in, Schuster's former bandmate Al Larsen (from Some Velvet Sidewalk) teams up with Carrie Brownstein (Sleater-Kinney, the Spells) for "The Skin." Brownstein alternates between a riff lifted from Donovan's "Season of the Witch" and an effectively distorted minor-key melody over an ominous drone and a base rhythm of quiet hi-hat taps and bongos. Larsen's panicky vocals echo with drug paranoia and hallucinogenic lyrics: "I didn't know/ The skin I'm living in/ Is something I could grow."

But naturally, a lot of these tracks don't live up to expectations. Kathleen Hanna's "Stepping up to the Mic" basically amounts to three minutes of pretentious rambling about how, "I felt like I was in a process of continuum, like some kind of weird historical thing was overtaking me, like I was Patsy Cline or Queen Latifah or somebody really important. And I realized there was no time like now and I didn't care if I was scared." (I think Hanna's melodrama pretty much speaks for itself in this case.)

Sue Fox's "Townes Van Zandt" is far from stellar, too. It's another spoken word bit (yeah, there's a lot of that) in which Fox outdoes Hanna's track in terms of self-righteousness by proclaiming her own excellence ("I put down my mic/ People come up to me/ To tell me how great it was"). How about exercising a little modesty next time, kids?

You know, I hate spoken word as much as the next guy. What makes Schuster's Internal/External project different from, say, Exene Cervenka's solo offerings, is that it's not deep or preachy, and that the music serves as these songs' creative base instead of being something that "sets the mood." I have to be honest here-- if you removed Schuster's work from these songs and inserted standard Olympia lo-fi rock, it'd be a lot less interesting.

But above everything, what makes the album work is that even after several listens, it remains fresh and unpredictable. While I may diss Schuster for such an obvious Santana-like gimmick, I can't deny that Featuring... is a better record than I ever imagined it would be. But as good as it sounds now, I'm not sure it'll age well. But hey, neither will the Magnetic Fields.

-Ryan Schreiber