**** Tsunami

A BRILLIANT MISTAKE

(Simple Machines)

Too oblique to be a pop group, too melodically attractive to be anything else, Tsunami hit the early-'90s landscape with a smart, subtle vision of indie rock, releasing a string of small gems on their own Simple Machines label. But their fling with indie-darling status and major-label courtship left a mark on the band: recorded after a two-year layoff, their fourth album is both their prettiest and their angriest.

Jenny Toomey's lyrics center on the way the corporate world has co-opted alterna-rock. "Take that old gray mare out and shoot it," she pleads at the outset; "Enter Misguided" details various blows to her ideals and ego; "Great Mimes" notes that "I've seen the best minds of my generation drowning in the best designer medications." But the music is as graceful as the lyrics are vitriolic, with Toomey and guitarist Kristin Thomson leading a reshuffled line-up using horns, keyboard loops, and lush guitar textures. The hooks and harmonies are subtle but grabbing. And the spoken-word departure "David Foster Wallace" suggests that the new, jaded Tsunami still have the giddy invention of the old.

-- Brett Milano