Tel Aviv: The Shape of Fiction

On paper, the sleepy, languid, monotonous guitar-pop of Tel Aviv should be as subtly beautiful as the sleepy, languid, monotonous guitar-pop of Low or Rex. But the band's debut CD, 193, just wasn't: It plodded along aimlessly and tunelessly, stopping occasionally to let rip with a really bad punk song. The band's new The Shape of Fiction dispenses with the noise and shows considerable improvement—the first album was a demo by a few teenagers, and it showed—but it still never finds the melancholy beauty that lurks somewhere in its chiming chords. Even with the plickety-placking drum machine, you can hear traces of something greater on tracks like "Honey There Is More." And there probably is more to Tel Aviv, though you'll have to wait at least one more album before the band is mature enough to discover it.