The Sleepy Jackson: Lovers

What kind of band is The Sleepy Jackson Lovers, the group's full-length debut and first proper U.S. release, came preceded by faint murmurings of a great alt-country act from Perth, Australia, and fainter talk of Luke Steele, a frontman in the troubled-genius mode, prone to firing bandmates and attempting all manner of chemical and religious excess. It takes five tracks for Lovers to hit the lovely, loping "Acid In My Heart," the album's first song resembling country, alt- or otherwise. By that time, Steele and his current lineup have already touched on heavily orchestrated, Mercury Rev-style psychedelia (the stirring opener "Good Dancers"), catchy garage rock ("Vampire Racecourse"), and harmony-drenched pop ("This Day"). So what kind of band is The Sleepy Jackson The group itself doesn't seem to know, but sounds like it enjoys trying to find out. Lovers makes for an enjoyable, if exhausting, listen; at times, it sounds more like a sampler from a promising label than the work of one band. Maybe it's an inevitable consequence, then, that the album starts to sound exhausted, too. Apart from the Wilco-inspired "Miniskirt" and "Come To This," one of several tracks that borrows George Harrison's signature guitar song, Lovers doesn't have much of a B-side. A ponderous spoken-word track ("Fill Me With Apples") and a stripped-down song featuring a little girl singing about God prove particularly misguided, but even there, it's hard to fault Steele for a lack of ambition. With time and luck, he might even find a focus for it.