Some great bands will just never be quite as great as you want them to be. There are loads and loads of reasons this can happen, but when it comes to indie music, it's usually because they aren't trying. And so, like a basement-dwelling stoner's gainfully employed girlfriend, you sit around loving them deeply, not wanting to criticize but knowing they could Do Great Things if they'd only give it an honest shot.

Sometimes I think I feel that way about Vitesse. Here's the deal: they released two gorgeous records before this one. Both revolve around serious mining of early-to-mid-80s British rainy-day indie and synth-pop-- New Order, Electronic, early Depeche Mode, OMD-- which is to say that they consist of moody pop songs constructed from sweepy/bleepy synth programming, shimmery guitar arpeggios, and dour, bittersweet crooning. They also fall pretty squarely into the whole bedroom-indie aesthetic, meaning that these records sound, well, bedroomy-- intimate, a little lo-fi, and a little bit rigged with duct tape. I'll discuss Stephin Merritt momentarily. The first Vitesse record was called A Certain Hostility, and it was great: all twinkly synths and sleepy melodies and an absolute swooner of a track called "A Fine Young Age"; most of it fell closer to Holiday-era Magnetic Fields than those common-ancestor Brits. The second record was called Chelsea 27099, and not only was it great, but it signified a slight attitude shift: same rainy days, but suddenly the synths were colder and buzzier, the drum machines more booming, suspicious squints all over the vocals.

I-- and, full disclosure, the "I" here is shamelessly devoted to moody early-80s Brit indie, the "I" lives for it-- couldn't wait for Vitesse to blossom. There's nothing massively interesting about hearing synthy stuff bedroom-style. It's charming as hell for a couple records, but here's the thing: I believe in Vitesse. They sound fabulous, and sometimes their songwriting is as spot-on as I could possibly ask for. So I wanted to hear these synth symphonies writ large-- I wanted to see them chuck the comfy sweaters and bedheads and get all slicked up and flashy in beautiful suits. I wanted to hear them top My Favorite's "Homeless Club Kids" (incredibly stiff competition in this milieu), or put a pop challenge to the hi-fi electro grcooves of Felix da Housecat and Adult. I wanted ambition. Which is why What Can Not Be, But Is... is slightly painful to me. It's lovely, really, as adorable as either of the last two records. Maybe less, depending-- the songs here seem a tad weaker than before-- but close, anyway. It skims and pulses along on hi-hats and synth pads and Peter Hook riffs and wispy vocals as sweetly and melodically as anything else they've done, which you can probably tell is sort of my problem.

Need I mention the guilt involved in being dissatisfied with something I enjoy so much? But there you have it: this record contains eight Vitesse-penned tracks that, if I didn't like them, I would likely call "re-hashed," plus two covers (OMD's "2nd Thought" and Bruce Springsteen's "Unsatisfied Heart"), the first of which pleases with its immaculate New Order-isms and the latter of which slots surprisingly well into the Stephin Merritt-ish sound they're sliding back toward. The rest swoons pleasantly enough.

They're probably content this way, unambitiously sending out solid bedroom communiqués every year or two. Probably they have other things they're busy with: Josh Klein writes for The Onion, and I imagine Hewson Chen has something stimulating to do-- growing up in America listening to posh British synth-indie used to be a pretty surefire way to wind up reading lots of books, and University of Chicago grads do okay in the job market. Klein's never really dug into a band, anyway: he played drums on the first Toulouse record-- which was similarly great enough that you wished they'd taken on more-- and did a similar bow-out from Aden, about whom ditto. A Certain Hostility was supposedly recorded in 36 hours, and it doesn't sound as if they've started clearing second weekends for their projects. Exactly how fortunate are we that David Grubbs is the only University of Chicago guy who thinks big? Must I really be the high school English teacher who explains that she only grades them down because she can see that they have more potential than that?

Strip away my fretting, though: a simpler way of saying all of this is that if you like the Magnetic Fields' Holiday (or the 6ths' Wasp's Nest, or even Orange Cake Mix, while we're at it), you should buy some Vitesse records immediately. Hopefully, you'll never face the day when you realize you're going to stop caring about new ones if they're not going to show some commitment. A different simple way of saying this is just to quote Hewson Chen, from "Starlight": "Sometimes you've just got to try a little harder."

-Nitsuh Abebe, March 8th, 2002