It seems like the Chicago scene's reach gets bigger every time I turn around. Since the early 90s, when bands like Shrimp Boat and the Coctails began to make their marks, the Chicago underground has grown by leaps and bounds to become one of the largest, most prolific and inbred indie scenes in the world. It's even begun to absorb bands and personnel from other Midwestern metropolises like Louisville and St. Louis, extending absorptive psuedopods outward like some giant metropolitan amoeba.

And, of course, when these guys aren't recording or touring with their own bands, they're playing on their friends' albums left and right, leaving a string of credits a mile long behind each of the scene's main constituents. Suffice to say that Six Degrees of Fred Lonberg-Holm isn't a very hard game. Hell, he's even on this L'altra disc that I'm writing about right now, along with a few other Chicago scenesters you might recognize, like Charles Kim and Robert Cruz. And then there's the fact that L'altra shares member Eben English with fellow Chicagoans Del Rey.

Naturally, the real reason guys like Longberg-Holm get called to play on so many albums is simply that they're amazing musicians, and selfless ones at that. On the occasions that you can hear his familiar cello on In the Afternoon, he plays flawlessly, never making for the spotlight and stepping aside for the quartet's full-time members. The only problem with this is that the band doesn't seem especially comfortable there, and as a result the album is a bit lacking in conviction.

Though L'altra's penchant for musical understatement is quite appealing, the humility of the vocals doesn't serve them as well. The male/female interplay of Joe Costa and Lindsay Anderson is effective to a point, but they're good enough singers that they could easily make each song more memorable by merely projecting more and attacking the already good melodies with more vigor and enthusiasm. I won't dwell on this too much, as it's likely a concern that many listeners won't have, but for me, it's the biggest reason L'altra's third album doesn't stick especially well.

That said, the band do manage to conjure an alluring atmosphere for most of In the Afternoon, creating a series of rich musical tapestries to back their lazily delivered vocal musings. "Traffic" opens with a wash of aquatic keyboards and finishes wrapped in a veil of swelling guitars. Those guitars stick around for "Ways Out," coloring in the song's dark corners until being overtaken by vibes and violin halfway through. It's the subtle touches like that that really make In the Afternoon worth listening to.

Otherwise, the album is basically just a pleasant, atmospheric diversion. The band nudges the tempo forward a bit on "Black Arrow" and "Broken Mouths," which features a striking, classically bound piano part that manages to dominate everything but the drums. In fact, drummer Ken Dyber (also the owner of Aesthetics Records) is frequently the element that keeps everything interesting, lending steady momentum to even the most ambling moments.

The album ends with "Goodbye Music," a stirring instrumental lullaby that closes the proceedings on a high note. Lonberg-Holm's cello rides low beneath Anderson's piano, framed by washes of mallet-struck cymbals and violin counterpoint. If the production were more prominent on more of the band's songs, they could have something really fantastic on their hands. As it is, L'altra is a band with obvious strengths and talent that ought to be more confident in displaying them.

-Joe Tangari, May 21st, 2002