Remember that couple in high school that broke up just as an excuse to get back together? They must have called it quits once a week! It was impossible to keep abreast of the situation without comprehensive news coverage-- "Checking our top stories this hour, Kevin and Amy experienced major fallout over a fruit cup in the cafeteria this morning. The news comes on the heels of an argument yesterday afternoon concerning the actual date of the one-week anniversary of their recently re-reinstated post-relationship. Wolf Blitzer is live with the story...

In the time since the Posies "broke up" several years ago, they've released a body of work that would be respectable for any band's entire career. If you count their swan song, 1998's Success, you have one album, two live CDs, a boxed set, a best-of disc and now this EP, Nice Cheekbones and a Ph.D. That doesn't even count the touring. Each time it came with the a dire caveat: "We really mean it, this is it!" You know, Jon, Ken, I think that in that fairy story, the wolf actually winds up eating the kid.

But they keep coming back. And so the Posies (of all bands, the Posies!) have become the Jason Voorhees of music, refusing to die and comin' after your ass with a butcher knife. Well, perhaps not with a knife, but with all the die-hard cranking power of a Sears car battery (or Bruce Willis). Now they've quit quitting. That's right-- they've decided to stay together. Or so they say...

Nice Cheekbones and a Ph.D. aims for gentle, tender and understated. Maybe it's their tentative market-test-- dip a toe in and play it soft so as not to frighten off the fans that have grown wary of their Clinton-esque waffling. The result is pleasant, but somehow a little more tame. It's like zoo animals: in the wild, anything larger than a raccoon would seem an immediate threat to your personal safety, but behind cages, even lions seem pathetic. It happens to the best of 'em.

The highlight of Nice Cheekbones-- the Neil Young-ish "No Consolation"-- continues the slightly countrified feel of their superlative Success with acoustic moodiness and spotlight banjo. Lyrics of quiet desperation seem paradoxically both bleak and hopeful: "Salutations from a southern town/ I got tales from the darkside bringing me down.../ I don't mind what the voices say." On the other end of the spectrum, the cover of "Lady Friend" really serves only as a proof that Auer and Stringfellow could pull off a David Crosby-penned harmonizing-fest. Was that in doubt? Their clear-as-glass harmonies have always been among the most streakless and spot-free of 90's pop/rock. They could sleepwalk through this! I am unimpressed.

The rest of the songs all have their shining moments, but a moment is all they are. In each of the originals, it comes in the break, middle-eight, or mini-solo. The first song, "Matinee," features guitar effects dripping like honey from Auer's strings. A shimmering, Doppler-effect piano break in "Chainsmoking in the U.S.A." haunts like a ghost from decades passed. The songs benefit from the contrast, though-- even if the rest of the track is tepid, it seems better by comparison for those brief 30 seconds.

If someone were to pick up Nice Cheekbones and a Ph.D. and attempt to use it as their introduction to the group, it would be a sorry failure. The Posies used to be bigger in scope and ambition than this slight disc lets on. Will their zombie-like postmortem career ever reach those heights again? It may be difficult; the Posies, if you'll recall, used to compose entire songs of understated pop brilliance, instead of just moments.

-John Dark