Amoeba Music

On the cover of Darwin Deez’ Songs for Imaginative People, Deez appears rather bewilderingly with a Grecian-style headband and curls and music notes held to his side as though explaining that what you’re going to hear is music — trust him. It’s a fair assessment given that Songs For Imaginative People isn’t like much else out there. Deez’s cut-up beats, angular guitars and atonal vocal exercises take some getting used to, but the compositions reveal themselves to be intricate, well-thought-out sound pieces with hooks placed in the back — “(800) Human’s” catchy, cooing chorus doesn’t appear ’till the end of the song, and by that time the unadventurous may have turned away (hey, he warned you with the album title). More immediate is “You Can’t Be My Girl,” which warms its audience up with a classic rock riff that quickly devolves into a a strange singalong with everything just slightly off and skewed, disjointed lyrics like “I think I love/You are horrible.” All the genre hopping — it’s ’80s freestyle one minute, Dismemberment Plan-era indie rock the next — might leave your head spinning, but for those willing to go for the ride, Songs for Imaginative People lives up to its title, offering such a plethora of ideas, both melodic and conceptual, it’s a feast for the musically bored.