After exemplifying brilliance on their first, self-titled record, and releasing an excellent-yet-not-as-brilliant EP last year, Blue Screen Life was set to be a wild card. After all, how could the boys possibly write another song as delicately magnificent as "Tripoli"? But Pinback always wins--all because their dreamy voices sound like falling in love, they know how to turn minor chords into gravity rather than grimness, and they produce their records like little buckets of paint splashed together gracefully. Blue Screen Life is another studio achievement, with millions of layers of voices, subtle baritone guitars, and wintry-warm melodies like points of light. As an aside, after listening to this record several times, I was nonplussed to learn that my favorite track (eight), full of tangled guitars, slugs of drum fills, and a gleaming, hopeful bridge, is entitled "Prog"--I am so predictable. At any rate, Blue Screen Life is a solid, warm record that's way better than 99 percent of the "indie" bullshit released in the last year. JULIANNE SHEPHERD

MINUS THE BEAR
This Is What I Know About Being Gigantic (EP)
(Suicide Squeeze)
***1/2

Well, the worst has finally happened: Art-rock is back. But judging from Minus the Bear's five-song EP, the worst is actually pretty good. Even if you'd rather eat a King Crimson record than listen to it, you can't argue with the fact that this combo (featuring members of Sharks Keep Moving, Botch, and Kill Sadie) can play its damn instruments. How else to explain five boys with keyboards and guitars making a sound like the howling of a sentient sandstorm on the surface of Mars? Even with wry titles like "Lemurs, man, lemurs" and "Hey, wanna throw up? See me naked," this music isn't Weezer-y cute. It's more like a doomed astronaut floating off into deep space while listening to the strange, mathematical songs the stars sing to one another. It might be cold and lonely, but you have to admit it's beautiful. TAMARA PARIS

THE TIMEOUT DRAWER
A Difficult Future
(someoddpilot records)
***

The Timeout Drawer is yet another instrumental band from Chicago (aka, yet another obvious derivative of Chicago), but hey, I love Tortoise, and listening to music that's even three-fourths as good as Tortoise is still pleasing to me. Plus, the sound of TTD is a lot more electronic-based than Tortoise, with songs ending in needly, drawn-out sounds that you might hear if you could hang out in a bathtub underwater when a television got dropped in. (Of course, you would die if you did this. That's why it's recreated in this album: so you can hear that sound without dying.) Anyway, I think I'll probably burn through this album pretty quickly, but I'll still love it while it lasts. KATIA DUNN