Portland listeners might already know Randy Bemrose from his time playing bass with the recently disbanded indie-pop group Radiation City. Now he’s stepping out with his project Because to celebrate the release of their debut LP, I Want to Be Your B. These nine painstakingly crafted pop songs are enjoyably all over the place; the first four alone draw from Kinks-esque ’60s pop, ’70s breakbeat funk, bossa nova, and the textural minimalism of a Sparklehorse ballad—in fact, Because’s unifying aesthetic is this same knack for the warm, tastefully experimental production of Sparklehorse's pop polyglot Mark Linkous. Most of I Want to Be Your B grooves a lot harder than Sparklehorse ever did, though, and a grab bag of psychedelia colors the record’s funnest moments. With a band name like Because, anyone wondering why a talented songwriter like Bemrose would try to knit together such seemingly disparate elements already knows the answer. NATHAN TUCKER