Is the reign of the neat freaks coming to an end? From retro-rock to new-new wave, many of the biggest alternative bands of the past few years have devoted themselves to tidiness: sharp sounds, arch attitudes, precise songs. The Strokes, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, the Killers - a fistful of bands from the United States and Britain have paid tribute to old styles by neatening them up.
Two great new CD's, by the Magic Numbers and My Morning Jacket, suggest a looser, messier approach to retro-rock. And they may also be evidence of a new kind of revival.
From a distance, the Magic Numbers might seem part of the old retro-rock trend. The group's self-titled debut album was a hit in Britain, and next week the Magic Numbers will become the latest band foisted on American listeners by the British retro-rock industry. The album starts with a chipper love song, "Mornings Eleven." But the upbeat song soon switches gears, mutating into a slow, waltzing lament. Then it springs back to life, collapses again and slowly reawakens; it ends with a melancholy, wordless coda, five and a half minutes after it started.
The Magic Numbers consist of two sibling pairs. The band's sweet-voiced lead singer and guitarist, Romeo Stodart, was raised in Trinidad with his sister Michele; they moved to New York and eventually to England, where they teamed up with Angela and Sean Gannon. Mr. Gannon is the only member who doesn't sing, and the group's first single, "Hymn for Her," introduced British listeners to the vocal harmonies the group is known for.
"Hymn for Her" also introduced listeners to the band's unhurried style. The song is more than six minutes long, and it seems to cycle through several minisongs before arriving at its glorious - and, naturally, harmonized - conclusion. It begins with Mr. Stodart picking at an acoustic guitar and murmuring about "the silly things I do when I'm around you"; nearly four minutes pass before the whole band comes in.
"The Magic Numbers" (Capitol) is one of the year's best rock albums, full of songs confident enough to gesture at musical forebears without fear of aping them. One is called "Wheels on Fire," which can't help but remind listeners of an old Bob Dylan and the Band song, "This Wheel's on Fire." But this new song goes in its own direction. It's a gorgeous, sparse lament, pivoting on a sorrowful refrain: "Wheels on fire/Why don't you say goodbye?" That's not a suggestion; it's a question.
This band can play short and sharp, too: "Long Legs" is three minutes and impossibly sweet, with plenty of hand claps and a nimble guitar line. But even here, the members find time for a quick digression: a brief, countrified timeout, before the beat kicks in again. And in "Which Way to Happy," a sturdy ballad gradually unravels and then, slowly, reravels, as Mr. Stodart finds his way to a conclusion. "Well I don't wanna have to be the one that has to lose you," he sings, and he knows that his plea would be less memorable if it were more direct.
Their music can be purposefully shaggy, but no one would confuse the Magic Numbers with a jam band. The same can't be said of My Morning Jacket, the Louisville, Ky., group whose fan base includes indie rockers and jam banders. The band got its start recording for the small indie label Darla, then moved to ATO Records, the RCA imprint run by Dave Matthews. The group's first three albums were intriguing though somewhat uneven, evidence of a band creating its own singular version of 1970's Southern rock, grand and weirdly peaceful.
The new My Morning Jacket album is "Z" (ATO/RCA), and it's the best and weirdest one the band has made. The first noise you hear is a murky, mysterious bass line, the introduction to a shadowy but propulsive song called - entirely accurately - "Wordless Chorus." As a ghostly funk rhythm reverberates, the singer, Jim James, uses his striking falsetto to deliver an unexpected boast: "We are the innovators/And they are the imitators." Or is it a cryptic joke?
Like the Magic Numbers, My Morning Jacket believes that almost any song worth playing is worth playing circuitously. You can hear that in the album's marvelous lead single, "Off the Record," which starts with a surf-guitar riff, builds to an exuberant Brit-rock singalong, then confidently heads into left field: the song ends with an extended, spaced-out instrumental jam. This is music for alt-rock fans who aren't afraid to love the Grateful Dead; in fact, this is music that may just help alt-rock fans learn, at long last, to love the Grateful Dead.
"Z" is all over the place, but nearly everything works, from stately country rock to the unexpected funk digressions. Now that new Killers songs and old Soundgarden songs comfortably coexist on mainstream rock radio, bands like the Magic Numbers and My Morning Jacket seem just out of place enough to sound fresh. After all the revivals of the past years, it may be time for one that is both obvious and slightly unexpected. Could these albums be signs of a classic-rock revival?