Doleful Lions have always sounded like a neo-psych band that never did enough drugs. Prone to fixating on fantastical subjects like werewolves, wizards, necromancy, etc., frontman Jonathan Scott's gone soft on recent releases, eschewing snappy hooks and heady auras in lieu of more conventional folk-pop. In the tradition of Rocky flicks, Scott's sequel to 2000's Song Cyclops Volume One, the band's last truly "trippy" release, presents an aging protagonist reinvigorated by the thing he loves best, which for Scott means simple, lo-fi, candy-coated pop.
Then again, Scott didn't have to dust off the gloves for this one. Much of Volume Two was recorded way back in 1999 as B-sides fodder, and it's clear in the opening seconds of the album that this is a different Scott than the wistful crooner on Shaded Lodge and Mausoleum. Shrouded in tape hiss, these tracks fully realize the Olivia Tremor Control inklings lost on their newer material, even occasionally branching out to the rock-minded acoustic pop of GBV or Big Star. Although full of redundancies and a few desultory covers, Volume Two comes packed with ideas that would make it a formidable album with another round of revisions.
For the most part, Volume Two consistently yields pop gems by the barrelful. Dusty, nostalgic melodies spew forth so steadily throughout "The Warriors End Table" and "Freezing Breezes" that the Phil Spector-penned Crystals cover "There's No Other (Like My Baby)" seamlessly succeeds those tracks, devoid of the legendary producer's signature wall of sound but retaining the "gee whiz" innocence all the same. Scott even flexes some genre-hopping muscle on numbers like "Ghost Town in the Sky", a tinny, histrionic number reminiscent of MBV's early proto-shoegaze days. "Oriental Spike" is an unapologetically curt pop song that puts Scott's playful sense of lyrical obtuseness on display, not to mention the cartoonish synth blindsiding the melody midway through the song.
While the highs are high, the lows, although not particularly awful, are plentiful. Scott probably has a thousand songs like "Wallflower" and "Stand in the Colosseum" stored away in the attic of his brain, and much of *Volume 2'*s second half feels like an aimless shamble through the woods. Even the campfire cover of the Misfits' "Astro Zombies" outwears the Lions' idyllic trappings. Considering the typical amount of leeway allotted for odds and sods albums like this, Volume 2 unearths some treasures and is ultimately an entertaining listen-- just one with flaws painfully reflective of the band's LPs.
