One of the more curious aspects of music journalism - such as it is - is the ongoing fascination critics have with The Death of Rock. Rock (or whatever it's changed its name to this week) seems to have been in a protracted dying state since...oh, probably since its christening in the early '50s. What often spurs on such morbid speculation is the apparent exhaustion of styles and genres: "there's nothing new anyone can do with guitars..." Thankfully, the folks who actually make the music pay no attention and cheerfully come up with new things to do with guitars, or keyboards, or collections of tuned Rolling Rock bottles. Most often, the "new" thing is really a crossbreeding of some old thing with some other old thing - just like some of the weird DNA mixing that happens when the most unlikely two people do the nasty, unexpectedly vibrant (or hideously deformed) new things do happen. Creeper Lagoon isn't radical - but they do present one of the most successful crossbreedings of hip-hop derived sampling aesthetics with much older, songwriting-based guitar pop styles. Rather than forcing dollops of undigested "electronica" atop sleek pop songs à la Garbage, Creeper Lagoon's music shows a more subtle hip-hop influence, detailing on the more functional pop surface of solidly written songs like "Tracy," the Cotton Mather-y Beatlepop number "Empty Ships," or the Ben-Folds-with-smugectomy "Dear Deadly." The opening track, "Wonderful Love," presents a good example of that subtle hip-hop aesthetic at work. Running through the song is a rhythm bed consisting of looped tambourine, maracas, and synthetic percussion; it's only at the end of the song, when the rest of the tracks fade out and the rhythm track is slowed down, that you notice the marvelous irregularity of the tambourine rhythm. That programmed irregularity is what gives the track a much more "human" feel than a more strictly mechanical rhythm would - and it's that sort of commitment to throwing the grit into the bits that marks hip-hop use of electronics. (No coincidence that the Dust Brothers, who run the label, produce several tracks here.) And the band has pop production smarts, too - dig the way the percussion accents shift the rhythmic feel on the bridges to "Empty Ships," or the symmetrical drums/piano deployment on "Dreaming Again." All that is Headphone College stuff, though - what really matters is that these songs are clever and catchy and, despite the risk of faddishness, utilize their trendy influences in service of those songs rather than as blaring earcandy for the ponytailed suits in marketing. The last few songs don't work quite as well, though: "Drink and Drive" is little more than an arresting slowed-down and tremolo'd Hawaiian lounge bit with portentous narration over the top, less a song than an idea for a song. "Second Chance" is a bit turgid, and the closing "He Made Us All Blind" doesn't really cap the album off as well as a faster song would have. Still, Creeper Lagoon presents a pretty solid CD here with loads of potential.

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