Can't that wily old Paul Newman keep his greedy hands the hell out of just a few vital pleasure industries? Sure, he managed to glide into the American cultural consciousness innocuously enough through the hundreds of movies about pool and the navy that he's appeared in over the past 40 years. But the lingering aftereffect was that he was able to establish a stranglehold on the sex market by becoming a perpetual sex symbol. The tawdry bastard is 75 years old! Not content with merely owning the hearts of middle- aged housewives worldwide, he just had to get into their pocketbooks, too, through vending various salad dressings, cookies, popcorns and such.

I was content to let my discontent with Paul Newman's devious meddling ways simmer harmlessly and silently until this odious offense. Now Mr. Newman has tried to bully his way into a piece of the highly lucrative indie post-rock pie. I must admit that I'd never envisioned the septuagenarian as a Tortoise fan, but... wait... oh. Disregard all that. Revered eight-time Academy Award nominee Paul Newman is not actually in the band which shares his name. However, the Austin, Texas quartet's bass player is, in fact, named Paul Newman. Hence, the confusion. I apologize. Really.

Machine is Not Broken, Paul Newman's third LP release, doesn't deviate much from the post-rock norm. It sports the average post-rock musical ensemble, consisting of drums, guitar, bass, and Instrument X, with very frugal vocals when necessary. On Machine is Not Broken, Instrument X is the Bass VI, a sort of hybrid of a guitar and bass which sounds quite like a guitar processed through a garage sale effects pedal. Like their musical forebearers, Paul Newman construct instrumental works based on peculiar modal patterns that either turn out curiously interesting or dreadfully repetitive and boring. Thankfully, most of Machine is Not Broken falls into the former category.

Amongst the groups that Paul Newman most resemble, we can draw a few comparisons: they're not as bass-heavy or rhythmically diverse as Ui; not as hard as Don Caballero; not as compositionally skilled as Mogwai; nor as inventive as Tortoise. Machine is Not Broken most reminds me of the sort of music you'd hear in a space-age computer game from 1993. Not that I would know, of course; I'm just going on a hunch. The eight tracks on this disc are packed with circular 5-8 note pentatonic guitar figures, complimented nicely by skilled drumming. Besides the intriguing drum patterns, their timing isn't that impressive, as note placement sometimes appears a bit arbitrary.

In all, Machine is Not Broken makes for good background music, but fails to retain the attention of the listener for long, especially during its second half. Paul Newman have seemingly been unable to escape the influence of more successful post-rock bands through establishing their own unique sound. This fact is evident in the title of the first track, "Eight-Day Wait." I'll eat my weight in alfalfa if that's not either a nod to or subconscious imitation of "Ten-Day Interval" off of Tortoise's TNT. At any rate, let's be sure to stay alert for the real Paul Newman's foray into the musical world (hopefully in rap-rock), so that we may foil it immediately.

-Taylor M. Clark