Bluetile Lounge: Half Cut

Like Low, Rex, and Red House Painters rolled into one, Australia's Bluetile Lounge plays slow, plodding, drawn-out pop music that makes up for its lack of speed with ample doses of brooding drama and tension. More than any of those bands, however, Bluetile Lounge builds to shimmering, crashing crescendos, piling on cascading layers of chiming minor-key guitars atop Bedhead-style mumbled vocals. With nine songs sprawled out over 65 minutes—and two of those, "Shifty" and "Whiner," are two- to three-minute instrumentals—Half Cut is packed with sad, patient epics, each drawing power from variations in volume rather than pace. The album's crucial flaw is that, as dynamic as many individual tracks are, Half Cut as a whole rarely deviates from the same deliberate tempo. Consequently, as much as the songs drift together, often beautifully and eloquently, Half Cut can be hard to digest in one sitting. Fans of Bluetile Lounge's peers, however, should have little trouble appreciating its drowsy expansiveness, though others might want to proceed with caution. (Smells Like Records, P.O. Box 6179, Hoboken, NJ 07030)