After extensive touring on their self-titled debut album, Shapes and Sizes have refined their brand of experimental pop to create a cohesive, demanding and rewarding listen.

Split Lips, Winning Hips, A Shiner is proof that Shapes and Sizes aim to please the while not pandering.

Imagine a soulful top 40 Thinking Fellers playing songs for the prom. Lyrically Split Lips is at once celebratory and derogatory; among other things, a peculiar but calculated meditation on naive nationalism and potent protest ("Victory in War, oh what a bore").

"High Life" focuses on benign habits turned scabrous, and "Alone/Alive" casts an existential strobe on freedom and dependence minus the pretension that usually comes along for that ride.

Split Lip's harmonious discord is also technical: the band recorded with JC/DC Studios (Destroyer, New Pornographers, Tegan and Sara, etc.) and mixed with Asthmatic Kitty's own Rafter Roberts (Fiery Furnaces, The Rapture, The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower) to forge a pristine decomposition.

Don't try turning it down- the overdrive provides the framework for equally aggressive lyrics that combine sensuality, violence, and social critique.