If the Aliens remind you of the Beta Band, it's because they almost are the Beta Band. When the Betas split in 2004, three of its original members-- keyboardist John MacLean, drummer Robin Jones, and guitarist Gordon Anderson (who had recorded solo as Lone Pigeon)-- decided they still had some creating to do together, and forged the Aliens. The new band, which released its debut album, Astronomy for Dogs, in 2007, like their former band, veers between experimentalism and pop songcraft. Luna, their sophomore effort, is cut from the same cloth.
At their best, the Aliens are clever composers, tuneful harmonists, and positioned in shallow leftfield. At their worst, they cry out for an editor and wander the outfield when they should be keeping their eye on the ball. Clocking in at over an hour, Luna probably would've been best served by a trim to around 45 minutes. Two songs break the 10-minute mark, and neither justifies it. Opener "Bobby's Song" gets good mileage in its midsection from playing with the speed and pitch of the vocal track, but the song takes it too far during a tiresome slowdown near the end. Still, there's a good song swimming in the psychedelic soup, and it pops up in the imaginative harmonica intro and the verses.
The other epic, "Billy Jack", is as unfocused as the movie it's named for. It opens with over a minute of vocals trying to find their way out of a processing morass while keyboards noodle, before finally arriving at a drifting verse that's overpopulated with noise. The song keeps finding its footing, and each time piles on too much reverb and distortion and loses it. They seem to have imagined it as some sort of psychedelic glam epic, but it only becomes that more than six minutes in. In contrast, "Everyone" is a great four-minute slice of sunshine pop-psych, with buoyant piano and harmonies.
Other missteps include the awkward way "Sunlamp Show" suddenly and sloppily shifts rhythms mid-way through, the three spaced-out electronic interludes where one would suffice, or the repetitive and amelodic "Magic Man". On the whole, these songs overshadow the loveliness of the sparse ballad "Theremin" and the diaphanous closer "Blue Mantle." But it's "Boats", a sort of self-cover of a Lone Pigeon song from 2004's Schoozzzmmii, that does the most to redeem the record with its spectral harmonies and spacious arrangement, which gives the impression of traveling through a galaxy as starbursts of piano drift by. Luna is enjoyable enough to listen to, and a lot of Beta Band followers will find plenty to enjoy here, but it's ultimately an album I didn't like as much as I wanted to, and one that doesn't really find its footing until it's almost over.
