** Kid Silver

DEAD CITY SUNBEAMS

(Jetset)

The freaky stoners in Kid Silver got their start earlier this decade as three-fourths of the Irish shoegazing band Roller-Skate Skinny. Leaving behind Skinny's penchant for noisy psychedelic guitars, they now latch onto the three-year-old coattails of Beck's Odelay. The disc updates the casual psychedelia of Roller-Skate Skinny with punchy, dissonant horns, cute loungy "la-la-la" refrains, drum loops, and white-boy funk bass lines. Singer Ken Griffen dominates this sophisticated mix with a deep-voiced space-age Neil Diamond bachelor-pad routine, adding a heavy and appealing dose of shtick to the shuffling syncopation of songs like "Devils and Demons" and "67 Cities of Light." But the laser-gun guitars of "Breadcrumbs" and warped organ tones of "24 Last Days of a Lilac" offer a reminder that for better or worse Kid Silver remain firm believers in the power of drug-induced pop.

-- Mike Bruno