THE BOOKS The Way Out 2x LP NEW VINYL Temporary Residence

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The Books have a terrific sense of humor-- and it makes The Way Out, an album built on eccentric vocal samples, a good-natured discovery instead of a cheap piece of mockery. Imagine if a blog had posted these clips of goofball hypnotherapist and meditation consultants, or found a tape of a boy and a girl swapping violent threats with each other: You'd chuckle and move on. But when the Books use these samples, they give them integrity. You find yourself engrossed with people who are alien but also familiar. The flotsam and jetsam of American culture aren't a cheap joke to the Books, but a source of endless discovery and joy.

The Way Out is the fourth LP-- and the first in half a decade-- by the collage art/folktronica/post-New Age/indescribable duo of guitarist/singer Nick Zammuto and cellist Paul de Jong. Their new album is experimental for sure, but just like their early works, it wasn't designed for slow chin-scratching. It works best when it works like a joke: A strange sound or sample clicks in your ears, and then you're on to the next one.

he Way Out is a step forward for the band, as producers and in Zammuto's case, as a singer: dig his glowing lead vocal on "All You Need Is A Wall". But it's not their best record. Even "Beautiful People" can't match the subtler beauty of The Lemon of Pink's interplay between analog and digital sources, where a glitch and a handclap can form a percussion part, and a vocal line can blend seamlessly with bowed cello. The second half of the album flags, and while it has some eerie moments, "The Story of Hip Hop" is a one-joke song. (They start with a children's story about a rabbit, and guess what kind of a beat they add?) That stuff was fun on their debut, 2002's Thought for Food, but today those easy jokes seem like a waste of their skills. Better to seek out the greater mystery of those weird and splendiferous sounds, and those voices that seem so close and so unknowable in the same breath.

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