Ex-Three O'Clock leader Michael Quercio is back with an ace power-pop quartet in songs ranging from longingly beautiful to punchy and aggressive in seventies style - plus that indefinable extra something that makes the music transcend its genre. Perhaps it's the capacious sense of style and arrangement behind the jazzy rhythms and neo-jetset faux-flute of "Inside (Isis Rising)," or the confidence that integrates the delicate acoustic arpeggios of "Michael and Mary" with a three-ring circus-car pileup of horns, knowing this will serve the song, not break it. Several tracks glow with the psychedelic gleam that sparked the Three O'Clock's best work: dig the sham-orchestral flutes and backwards guitar that introduce "I See the Sun," or the harpsichord with cross-speaker echo threaded through "The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreutz." (The occult-influenced titles and artwork are pretty third-eye, too.)

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