Mannequin Makeout

Too much of the recent keyboard, danceable post-punk has been merely the indie set’s equivalent of party music with little more to recommend it.

Mannequin Makeout, however, aims to be something more interesting.

The jaggedly jittery guitar riffing you’d expect is there, but it’s used more creatively by alternating between those kinds of sounds and wiry leads. The rhythm section is often hectic, insistent and angular but in a way that doesn’t induce an instinct to move to the music. Rather, the rhythm fits into the larger framework of the band’s sound.

No one element of the band’s sound dominates any other and the general orientation of the music is firmly grounded in rhythm and melodies arising therefrom.

Even when Inbar Kishoni’s bubbly, carnival-esque keyboards seem to provide the main melody, it weaves in perfectly with all the other elements. Singer Brittany Gould croons like Suzi Sioux and wails like Kathleen Hanna, but inside that spectrum of vocal tonalities she uses her voice almost as a rhythm instrument as well.

Across this whole release, the band explores beyond the known boundaries of post-punk and even beyond their own concept as a band as embodied on their excellent 2006 offering, "Ex Libris", making this album one of the most consistently fascinating releases of 2007.