Buy this album. Some of this review may put you off, but that only indicates the weaknesses of my  writing style. So to counter this I'll repeat my unequivocal recommendation. BUY THIS ALBUM.

I only seem to be buying LPs these days based on a) habit, b) live gigs or c) tracks on CDs free with magazines. This LP falls into category b) after seeing dEUS at T In The Park.

First impressions of the LP surprisingly aren't particularly favourable. After the exuberance of the live show, this is much more downbeat than I'd imagined. Indeed the first five songs slip by without making much impression at all. Things look up on the second half - "Ideal Street" and "Everybody's Weird" are both familiar from T, and I think that the closing "Dream Sequence #1" is too.

Subsequent plays bring out the differences in the songs more clearly, but had this been a loan rather than a purchase it might have been returned with an "It's alright" type comment. Which is a way of saying that "The Ideal Crash" isn't the most accessible nor immediate album you're likely to hear. In addition the band doesn't appear to have a particularly distinctive style - there's a definite American college rock feel to much of the stuff, but the music lacks a signature of some kind to give it an obvious identity, for example the Rev's use of spooky keyboards . However perseverance is rewarded, once again on the basis of quality of songwriting. There's some really insidious melodies on this LP.

A good example of this is the second song on the record (and second single) "Sister Dew" - to be honest it makes "Goddess on a Hiway"  sound like an immediate stonker of single in comparison. But it's a really good song.

"The Ideal Crash" could therefore be described as a "grey" album in many ways, but I've never had a problem with "grey" albums, although the shades of different textures on this one take some teasing out. Probably the two songs which differ most from each other were 2 played at T, "Ideal Street" is a song of two halves - the first a gentle and plaintiff melodic section driven along by banjos, the second a building rock crescendo. It's easily the most accessible song on the LP. "Everybody's Weird" by contrast is a driving Euro-electro monster, which the band used for their unofficial "encore" and it's quite atypical of the album.

The rest comes somewhere in between. The opener "Put The Freaks Up Front" is almost a Rough Guide to the whole of the rest of the album from its harsh guitar intro (so harsh in fact my wife thought that the car had broken down first time she heard it!) to gentler waters, with wind instruments. The title track is closest to "Everybody's Weird", but  lusher, albeit with slightly sinister undertones.

"Dream Sequence No1" has a cautiously optimistic melody "(it's getting better everyday") which builds from a minimalist vocal and synth backing to a fuller accompaniment. But there's a sting in the tail as the song introduces strings and discordant guitars to produce an unsettling finale to the album.

So this isn't an immediate album, it's not filled with snappy pop songs - it may even be hard work.. But what's surprising is how many of the tunes pop into your head unexpectedly, even if you haven't listened to the record recently. It may lack glitz, but certainly not substance. Did I say buy?

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