Rock music's interesting. It tends to make you think about the people making it in ways that most other music doesn't. Maybe it's because there's almost always a human voice that begs to be given a face, or because the basic setup is a very simple, visual thing. It's much more entertaining to picture three guys with guitars hunched over their mic stands than it is to imagine a guy conducting a symphony (ooh, is he wearing Armani?). And it's just plain boring to envision the pasty, headphoned, laptop-bound kid who's fashioning your electronica. Some might claim that this inability to separate the music from the musician detracts from rock; I think it's part of what makes rock so visceral. It's hard to listen to, say, Sleater-Kinney and not imagine Corin Tucker's voice in your own throat. And the way guitarists can feel the music they listen to in their fingers can't be compared to any phantom keystrokes or mouse-clicks experienced by IDMers.

It's especially easy to picture a band when they let you in on their personal life. In the liner notes, Pushcar make it a point to invite you into the album's eponymous recording space (multi-instrumentalist Jim Saunders' apartment), where he and fellow contributor Chris Farrell laid down most of this album in three months. Apparently, Farrell left near the end of this process for a 13-month trip around the world while Saunders finished the production work. Saunders was also working on another song, and, lyrically uninspired, he decided to cobble together the words from the postcards Farrell had been writing all the while.

Judging from this scant information, I've put together a rough picture of these two guys. Farrell, I'm wagering, looks Semitic, and a bit waifish, and he usually wears nothing but, oh, maybe a crown of thorns; Saunders has a sort of reddish hue to his skin, two pointy little horns on his head, and the fires of his own infinite malevolence burning within his black, black eyes. Overreacting, you say? Consider this: Saunders' song (the opener, "Out Here in the Sun") is godawful slop, sent to torture the God-fearing. And it tainted my first two listens to what is otherwise a damn good album. From the first "Wish You Were Here"-ish synth washes, there are few breaks in the song's alterna-murk, made even worse by the oddly-treated male/female vocals, which end up sounding vaguely and repulsively Muppet-ish. The conceptually interesting cut-and-paste lyrics are butchered. Remind me never to begin an album with the oddly heartfelt, trailing-off lyric, "We figured you'd appreciate a handmade masterpiece of our [mumble mumble]." Saunders chortles at me from his island of burning flesh, but I have faith; Farrell will come soon, in a beam of purest sunlight, to vanquish the sulfurous beast. Please, Lord, track two!

And it comes. "Six Finger Sonny" is a rough-and-tumble rock number, perfectly complemented by Farrell's endearingly raspy but fully capable voice. I mentally paint a little more scuz into my Savior's beard. The song is a bit lethargic at times, but the bridge pays off. With what sounds like kitchen utensils clacking away in the background, Farrell's infinite compassion shines through in the gruffly intoned lyric, "Your little finger has got more to give/ Than anything that anyone's ever dared to live." Sappy, yes, but the Prince of Peace can pull it off.

Encompassing both good and evil, this songwriting duo has an astonishing range. From this fairly straightforward track, they shift gears into the moody, keyboard-studded atmospherics of "No Waste of Space." Farrell's vocals growl in response until the song itself kicks into a tight lockstep rhythm without losing its dark bite. "Defiant Song" follows, and it's no less of a surprise: a lazy, gentle pop song that floats along on a sea of keyboards and mellower vocals (possibly Saunders'; hell, I can't tell one from the other) as it wryly pokes fun at political songwriting ("Would you be betraying a movement/ If I turned out to be the one?").

A suite of five excellent pop songs appear near the album's end. The Beatles-ish "Manic Depressive (Without the Manic)" bounces along with an affably fuzzy sense of humor, while "Myself to Bits" and "Wasted Again" engage in a breezy, propulsive, supremely melodic sort of self-deconstruction. "Halo Effect" examines a slightly darker, more dramatic angle, building and falling away multiple times before leading the album to another high. From a brooding, murky opening, "Limbo" becomes a dark but almost loungily snappy piece, concluding in a haunting choir of disembodied voices that underscore the doomed, acid-tongued chorus: "It's a one-lane road here in Limbo/ Crossing off the days until we go."

And then, the album concludes with a song called "Garliguy." It's about a guy who eats lots of garlic. He smells bad. Hmmm. At least at this point the song seems like another awful mistake in an album whose awful mistakes are almost completely redeemed by its bright points. It also forces me to see these guys for what they are: two ordinary people, with collective gift, who are really just kind of fooling around. And I think one of them has a beard.

-Brendan Reid