Music reviews. CD reviews. Critically hip!

What would be the reference point for IN EAR PARK, the sophomore effort of Department of Eagles? That’s a tough one. Even when you are sitting next to the speakers, or with earbuds firmly in place, it sounds more like music with the source once removed, vague and in places indistinct, as if played from a block or so away from you, or from a park bandstand where there’s an ice cream social going on during the course of a summer afternoon.

Indeed, the appropriately named IN EAR PARK was fleshed out over the course of four years while Fred Nicolaus and Daniel Rossen, who form the nucleus of Department of Eagles, slowly constructed the release from the ground up. Steeped in and informed by nostalgia --- Rossen’s compositions, especially, are influenced by the passing of his father in 2007 --- there is a personal wispiness attached to each of the tracks. One is put in the mind of a Jim White who grew up in the suburbs, perhaps; you have to get past your expectations about what you’re going to hear next, and go with the flow. The third or fourth time through and you’ll be able to start appreciating what is happening here.

And, indeed, quite a bit is happening. Though IN EAR PARK is a quiet, almost still, acoustic piece (percussion is pretty sparse, for the most part) a lot goes on, particularly in the first half of the project. The title track puts one in the mind of twenty-first century carousel music. Time signatures don’t change so much as shift, vocals are lovely if indistinct. It is this introduction that makes “No One Does It Like You,” a parallel universe hit from the early 1960s where Motown was run by white folks, so surprising and in its way jarring. “Phantom Other” could have been ghosted by The Khronos Quartet, though it wasn’t. At least I don’t think so.

Thins settle down just a bit about halfway through IN EAR PARK. “Herring Bone” is almost --- dare I say it? --- commercial, though it is as spare as anything on IN EAR PARK, with two part tenor harmony over a quasi-jaunty piano riff. The strangest --- in a good way --- cut on IN EAR PARK, on the other hand, is “Classical Records,” a song about classical records sitting, unlistened to, in their sleeves. One can almost see the dust motes in the room, illuminated by sunlight, and shelves of phonogram albums sitting undisturbed around the periphery of the room.

IN EAR PARK, while not for everyone (if you’ve got anything by John Reis on your ipod, you probably won’t think much of this project), is very well done, an audio tour down one of those aisles of your brain that you know is there but seldom visit. It’s worth listening to at least a few times, just for the experiencing of the gentle deconstruc tion of song composition which occasionally takes place, before you go back to the three chords and a cloud of dust section of your collection.