The Aislers Set singer and songwriter Amy Linton co-led early nineties distorto-poppers Henry's Dress, but I mention this only to mislead you, since The Aislers Set sounds not a thing like Henry's Dress. Instead, the band's odd keyboards, rattling reverb, and somewhat unusual song sense at times makes them sound a bit like an American, female-led version of Clinic. Other tracks, though, find the band hurtling through their songs at serious speed, very energetic but not aggressive, as if eighties west-coast punk were utterly removed from its cultural context, stripped of its testosterone, and played by an enthusiastic if amateurish band featuring cheap keys and tambourines. And then there are the unclassifiable tracks, such as a highlight of this CD, "Emotional Levy" (whose title I keep reading as "Eugene Levy"), which borrows part of its melody from the Lee Hazlewood/Nancy Sinatra number "Summer Wine," its structure from no song on earth, and its discordant harmony vocals from an indie-rock translation of a Bulgarian Women's Chorus songbook. "Mission Bells," perhaps a bit too obviously, evokes Spanishness in its chords, rhythms, and trumpet-enhanced arrangement, while "Sara's Song" begins like one of those slow-building Roy Orbison stunners - but instead of building to a patented Orbison vocal supernova, it wanders through its lonely darkened corridor of a chord sequence without ever emerging into daylight - except whatever hint thereof gleams in sleighbells. "Unfinished Paintings" is similarly stunning in its bleakness: nothing but vocals and desultory guitar chords, glimpsed through a sullen haze of reverb. Something in the band's overall sound reminds me of the mid-sixties - not the neon-glowing hippie stereotype, but the dim, depressing sound of missed dreams, a watercolor done entirely in greys. But as the CD's closing track suggests, "Melody Not Malaise": How I Learned to Write Backwards offers both.