**1/2 Remy Zero

VILLA ELAINE

(Geffen)

Comparisons are invidious, but it'll be damn near impossible for Hollywood-via-Alabama quintet Remy Zero to shake their tag as an American xerox of Radiohead. (Even the recipients of this sincerest form of flattery acknowledged the compliment by inviting Remy Zero along on last fall's Radiohead tour.) If tribute bands are your thing, then these Yanks have their Brit counterparts' sound down cold, from Cinjun Tate's dead-ringer vocal resemblance to Thom Yorke's resonant keen to the disc's OK Computer-like beeps and whirs, from the operatic sweep and swoop of compositions like "Prophecy" and "Hollow" to the production that makes everything sound as if it had been filtered through a mellotron.

What Remy Zero don't have is Radiohead's sense of structure (circular and diffuse where Radiohead are dramatic and concise) or lyrical clarity (sample of their sunspot-induced metaphoric wooziness: "I once had marigolds for eyes/That seemed to fade on sunny days"). Still, you can't fault them for their ambitious reaching toward even a vague artistic cohesion (the songs were inspired by the band's stay at the faded Hollywood apartment building of the album's title, once home to Orson Welles and Man Ray), or for a sonic majesty that most of their peers are too small and timid to try for.

-- Gary Susman