About a third of the way through
Roy
's second full-length album, the glorious
lo-fi
pop
charmer
"In My Defense"
comes flying out like a lost
Guided by Voices
nugget circa
Alien Lanes
. With its urgent drumming and edge-of-yearning vocals, it's the first song on
Killed John Train
to shake out of a midtempo
Americana
torpor that begins with the lengthy, forlorn harmonica solo at the front of the album-opening
"Reno, I'm Coming Home."
(The second track, the
Pavement
-like
"So Alive,"
is peppy enough, but disqualified on account of the just-way-too-
sound, which makes it sound like it's coming out of a transistor radio in the next room.) The hits continue with the early
Beck
sound-alike
"Jesus Drives a Trans Am,"
but following that double play, the album's batting average declines again with a long stretch of increasingly dull tunes featuring mournful
Mark Linkous
-style vocal whines and colorless
country-rock
tunes occasionally tweaked with some
My Morning Jacket
distortion.
seems more focused than
's awkward, scattershot debut, but the band still has a way to go before it's thought of as more than the poor man's
Sparklehorse
. ~ Stewart Mason