The only issue I had with Lake Trout's preceding album, Another One Lost, was its obvious inclination towards Radiohead—most particularly in terms of vocals—and the band definitely comes closer to finding its own voice on the follow-up, Not Them, You.

Their songs are still sophisticated, beautiful and menacing, building complex moods that tend to envelop the listener. By looking at the pictures inside, where they sit in some kind of Old West house probably located in the middle of some hillbilly forest—they're actually from Baltimore—their music sounds like a scream of escape of a group of artsy kids stuck in a town where they don't belong—let's say in Alabama.

Except for a pointless cover of the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man", there are no dull moments here—my favorite track is "Now We Know". Despite the Radiohead passage "King", the rest tends to be closer in spirit to Muse—the type of vocals and a taste for intricate ballads—, the latter's operatic tones replaced here by an inner sense of trauma and darkness.

As a result, this is not your average easy listening CD; this 16-song collection is hard to listen to entirely straight as you need to be in that kind of mood to absorb it—which is not a bad thing because that's what music should be about: an artistic form of expression, rather than a commercial device.

  Ed Dantes

     Lake Trout: Another One Lost


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