I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord.

Actually, to my dismay and discomfort, the only thing I feel coming in the air tonight is the evening remnants of the day's deployment of pollen. I've been told that this is the highest recorded pollen count in the long, colorful history of counting pollen. All the trees in New York State have apparently blown their wads in unison, rendering my sinuses useless. My chafed eyeballs itch, my nose mimics my leaky bathroom faucet, and I'm stuck in the moment before a sneeze in perpetuity. My defenses are down. Any bit of music could hit me right now and germinate in my mind. My brain is in musical estrus, running around with a big, bright red ass that screams "rock me!"

Someone should send TV and film producer Michael Mann a copy of this latest National Skyline CD. I'm sure he'd be moved to coax Sonny-- er, Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas out of their respective cocktail waitress-groping and roasted nuts-vending retirements. This = Everything is loafers sans socks, pastel sport coats, and a smooth new soundtrack for sullen introspection at the wheel of a Testarosa.

National Skyline is back with yet another anti-life album cover and batch of glassy, post-something or other songs. They did well to heed my advice in my last review (har, har) and ditch those retro pipe dreams they entertained to no good end on their Exit Now EP. They sound less confused and much more focused, too. This full-length displays a degree of cohesion unknown to their prior releases. Cohesion is, in itself, no great feat-- if it were, we'd all be big into death metal-- but This = Everything finds the group benefiting from a unity of style and mood.

"Some Will Say" opens the record with the squishy, canned, "Sexual Healing"-as-reprised-by-Trent Reznor electro-beat and a positively fruity ascending xylophone line over which synth, delayed guitar and sleepy singing are quickly layered. The song is fine-- fairly unremarkable, but useful insofar as it establishes the tempo and mood for the rest of the album. Things pick up on "Reinkiller," both rhythmically and quality-wise. The melody is better and the music is more aggressive, though the whole thing reeks of too many hours spent listening to bad electronica. "A Million Circles" might be the strongest overall; its dancy, mechanized drums are more tastefully integrated with the music than on any other track. Some nice Edge-like guitarwork keep things interesting for the duration.

There are ten tracks on This = Everything, but it's of little or no use to pit them against each other, or single out sections for praise or criticism. You put the album on and let it play through the whole way. When it's done, you'll likely hit play again. Okay, I'll just come out and say it: this album is good background music. That's what it does best and that's how it will best serve you. There are no obvious standouts. But take it as whole and you might find yourself digging it much more than you thought possible.

-Camilo Arturo Leslie