Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

Bongo Poets are a duo, from Massachusetts as near as I can tell (their website tells precious little about them), consisting of Jeff Root and Kim Miller. Miller handles the percussive end, while Root handles everything else, including the quirky compositions. Their music reflects a hodgepodge of influences spanning 40 years of rock and turned upside down. The result is something that works at least part of the time and when it doesn't at least fails to brilliantly.

"Down the Rabbit Hole" consists of the sound of a modem handshake, and segues into "Beyond the Looking Glass," which sounds like Pete Townsend meets XTC; that feeling never really leaves throughout the whole CD, although the myriad of influences bouncing around here strays far beyond those two artistes. There are all manner and sorts of play-on-word games happening, from the title of the CD to the name of their record company to every single track on the CD. "Hypertext Elvis" references Devo and the Beach Boys, filtered through an Everly/Alvin Brothers harmony style, and does so credibly . How many tune crafters have you heard who are able to do that? Not many, not many...

The only thing these gents need to do, really, is to reign in the occasional tendency to become too cute. "The Warmth of Her Desire" is a straight ahead romantic power pop ballad which strays dangerously close to schmaltz. They are not the first to have this failure; Paul McCartney's entire solo career was practically wrecked by it right out of the gate. "21st Century Girl" strays just a little too close to Styx territory for my taste, though they do manage to avoid the excesses of that band. And "Forever You Will Be My Girl" sounds suspiciously like...del amitri. Notwithstanding these misses, however, there are enough hits on ORDINARY GUISE to make this debut anything but ordinary.