"Tried & True," the debut from Tinfed, a Pop/Rock hybrid that incorporates a modest yet colorful use of electronic textures, is a record that is both immediate and enduring. The songs are passionate, patchy and rhythmically playful while remaining identifiable enough to recall after only one listen -- and that's saying something considering the glut of one-hit wonder Pop stars who write an album for two radio hits while the rest of it may as well have been left on the studio reel.

"Immune" is the first song that really reaches out and grabs you in a melodically quirky sort of way -- no surprise considering it first appeared on the "MI:2" soundtrack last summer and features enough hook and groove and emotional lift to fit the part perfectly. While the band's forefront characteristic is to lie on the dimmer end of the spotlight, coming from a soft-spoken angle, their music soothes in a near Adult Contemporary sense, and soars unsatisfactorily with an edginess that gives the oft-explosive guitar break-ins all the more impact.

"Drop" in the one sense is a soft acoustically delivered radio-friendly Pop traveler while the follow up "Never Was Sure" features their more electronic ambitions coming through in an almost Devo-like oddity before completely tangling the wires in a mad rush of power chord suddenness that momentarily jars you loose from your previously transient moment.

Tinfed takes a novel approach to what they do, somehow managing to sound unique in following their own course of things while fitting well with yesterday's Pop and Post-Modern ethics and creating granular new designs within the ranks of modernity.