The Postal Service

"Such Great Heights" is a pop classic worthy of the Lightning Seeds, and fans of such pretty, ethereal, bleepy pop music will warm to this release. Think They Might Be Giants, Belle & Sebastian and Stephen Duffy all in one. Twee and fey, but also warm and comforting, these songs will take residence in your brain long after summer is over.

Dinky where Death Cab for Cutie are merely wimpy, the Benjamin Gibbard-Jimmy Tamborello collab could be designed to put off not just red-blooded testosterone addicts but anyone who thinks music has to feign strength to make itself felt. What it does instead is display staying power. Tunes whose catchiness seemed annoying prove lovely; tunes whose quietude seemed wan prove catchy. Gibbard's delicate voice matches the subtle electro arrangements far more precisely than it does the folky guitars of his real group, and no longer does he express himself in word clusters or dream-state imagery. A female principle keeps giving him what for--in the background, Rilo Kiley's Jenny Lewis, and up front on the album's centerpiece, Jen Wood--and he needs her too much to mince metaphors. (Grade - A-)