A meatier and more electric follow-up to the Day I Fell Down's largely acoustic self-titled debut, 1998's Sweet to Be Strange benefits greatly from the beefed-up production. Unlike the later albums by the Posies, another Seattle duo that singers and multi-instrumentalists Robert Dan and Bradley Hooper superficially resemble (although Dan and Hooper unfortunately lack the Posies' pure pop way with a killer hook), Sweet to Be Strange actually benefits from the noisier production of former grunge midwife Jack Endino (Nirvana, Mudhoney). The duo's debut had skirted right off the edge of preciousness, but the chunky electric roar of the opening "Chiaroscuro" helps tilt things back over to the right side. Most of the rest of the album is improved by the addition of drummer Dalton Davis, but the unfortunate reggae and ska beats he adds to a couple of the songs make them sound unnervingly like bandwagon-jumping. The best songs are the ones on which Dan and Hooper blend their love of oddball melodic lines and unexpected instrumentation with relatively straightforward pop hooks, like "Under the Weeds" and "Bird in the Sky."

1. Chiaroscuro
2. Bird in the Sky
3. In Exile
4. Night Is Warm
5. Lovely Jane
6. What I Know
7. Any Other Way
8. Day in the Fray
9. Meet You There
10. Around the Moon
11. Under the Weeds
12. Circus Dogs

QUOTE:

EAC extraction logfile from 16. February 2006, 10:55 for CD the day i fell down / sweet to be strange Used drive : SAMSUNG CD-R/RW SW-248F Adapter: 0 ID: 0 Read mode : Secure with NO C2, accurate stream, disable cache Read offset correction : 12 Overread into Lead-In and Lead-Out : No Used output format : Internal WAV Routines 44.100 Hz; 16 Bit; Stereo Other options : Fill up missing offset samples with silence : Yes Delete leading and trailing silent blocks : No Installed external ASPI interface Range status and errors Selected range Filename C:\Documents and Settings\Rat\My Documents\the day i fell down - sweet to be strange.wav Peak level 99.8 % Range quality 100.0 % CRC 38FF7336 Copy OK No errors occured End of status report