A musicologist could probably tell you exactly what makes Straitjacket Fits so different from every other guitar pop band. It may be the creative tension between singers/songwriters Shayne Carter and Andrew Brough, or it may be the fact that Carter never learned how to play guitar conventionally-whatever, it's made for a completely cliche-free rock band, a phenomenon as rare as any in 1991. Like the Verlaines, Clean, Chills etc., SJF hail from Dunedin, New Zealand, and they share those bands' lyrical literacy and leanings toward skewed, unsettling pop, but they dwell in an aerial, rather than a pastoral, intellectual or frolicsome dimension. This album is less raw than its predecessor, Hail, but here Gavin MacKillop's ultra-lush production creates a setting for the band's chillingly beautiful, but oddly unsettling, songs. Carter and Brough's gorgeously panoramic harmonies and awe-inspiring flair for melody have given them the tools to become everything that countrymen Crowded House never did, but the band balances its sensually pure, near-perfect pop with jarring dissonance and a punkish energy that makes them as unnerving as they are winsome. Soaring, exhilarating, unpredictable and deceptively complex, Straitjacket Fits' music is a world unto itself, where all of the band's tension and juxtaposition make perfect sense. Melt is one of the best albums of this year, but we'll pluck "Bad Note For A Heart," "Missing Presumed Drowned," "Quiet Come," "Melt Against Yourself," "Down In Splendour" and "Skin To Wear."

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