We're surrounded by pop music, yet it's rare to find full albums packed solid with irresistible, brain-picking hooks, melodies so catchy you can identify the exact note or syllable that addicts you. How I Learned to Write Backwards is the rare exception. Never merely "nice" or "fun," Amy Linton's songs are chiseled like diamonds, and set to some of the coolest arrangements ever taped in somebody's basement.

More spacious and lighter on the guitars than the Aislers Set's first two albums, How I Learned to Write Backwards shows Linton, the band's writer/producer/singer, in a full 60s pop pastiche. You can find the obvious nods to Laura Nyro's stoned soul melodies and the most mesmerizing basslines ever given to Nancy Sinatra; "Through the Swells" all but rips off the bubblegum classic "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus", and the harmony vocals on "Emotional Levy" have the grace of a choir of French schoolgirls in matching soft blue uniforms.

Here, Linton's indie quintet becomes a pop orchestra. The band's music is denser than ever before, laden with sleigh bells, handclaps and horns piled atop the conventional guitars, drums, bass and keyboards-- and all are drenched in cavernous reverb, providing the ambiance and intimacy of a gigantic, empty concert hall. And yet, this is also a noise-pop band: Beneath the layers of instrumentation, the music is propped up on barbed wire, unsteady and ready to topple.

The tracks are short: The single, "Missions Bells", is one of the few to break two minutes, and "Langour in the Balcony" seems to end before it's even started. And the band cuts quickly from one influence to the next-- the gingerbread candy house of "The Train #1" runs into the rumbling punk guitars on "The Train #2"; the massive, verbose pop of "Attraction Action Reaction" balances the spooky-bleak voice and barely-the-will-to-strum guitar on "Unfinished Paintings". The noise makes the pop spark, and the soul influence makes the nervous energy digestible. Linton mixes and paces all of these elements flawlessly, but what's more, the engineering is extraordinary for its budget, carefully crafted but fun and spontaneous.

The only problem is Linton's singing. It's not that she's not a great singer (well, maybe partly)-- the issue is how she records her voice. On almost every track, she Spectorizes herself in oblivion with effects and reverb added to, presumably, lend a distant and dreamy effect. Sometimes it works (the late-night loneliness on "Unfinished Paintings" is poignant), but at other times, she sounds completely displaced. The most unfortunate example of this comes on the album's closer, "Melody Not Malaise", where the band is recorded with minimal post-production trickery while Linton is mixed far too low beneath the instrumentation, and reverbed into the stratosphere. Maybe she's not happy with how her voice or words sound unaided, but I'd rather be given the opportunity to connect to them than be left guessing.

This, however, may be How I Learned to Write Backwards' only shortcoming, and when stacked up against such effortless, finely-crafted pop tracks, it almost seems trivial. These songs are blanketed in a magnetic charisma, and contain a vigor and effortlessness that projects youthful vitality and a joyousness unhampered by looming adult concerns. It's pure fun-- insanely, immediately likable, and ingenious in how much it achieves.

-Chris Dahlen, February 21st, 2003