You know people read your site when record labels come knocking at your door. “Here, little buddy, have an MP3!” Well, alright. But here’s a hint: if you’re going to send me MP3s, do some research first. No, I don’t want a Ryan Adams / John Mayer retread. In fact, if you never want me to post MP3s from your label ever again, go ahead and send me that kind of schlock. Really.

Cinema Eye, on the other hand, I’ll take. This is how easy it is to buy me off—the only thing the people at Sound Virus did differently from those other guys was to look up the words “Pretty,” “Girls,” “Make” and “Graves” on the site. If yes, then fire off email! If no, send them John Mayer CDs move on. Cinema Eye hail from the lovely battleground of Columbus, Ohio, and are essentially early Pretty Girls Make Graves with the synthesizers hiked up to 11. Cinema Eye are fairly new to the scene, and so it’s easy to forgive the relative lack of originality when the songs barrel forth at breakneck speeds like “Not A Word.”

What’s not as easy to forgive, however, is the mix; as I remember yelling during the last PGMG show I went to, “MORE VOCALS!” I hope this isn’t becoming a trend. And the song runs out of ideas a little early, which is unfortunate considering it’s only four minutes long. And apparently the whole album proceeds at the same breakneck pace, leading me to wonder how much range these kids have. It’s not often, though, that you see this much energy from a band, and for that reason alone it’s probably worth paying attention to the Cinema Eye.

Chances are that if you see the word “angular” in a music article, a mention of the band Polvo won’t be far behind. No one can exactly tell you what “angular” means in relation to music, but Polvo’s pitchbending licks and odd melodic hooks are about as perfect an impression as you’re likely to get. In other words, if you like “angular” music, you probably have Polvo or something like them in your collection; no surprise, then, that they’re a cult favourite that pops to most people’s minds if you ask them what math rock is.

Ash Bowie, the lead guitarist of the group, had joined Helium not long before Polvo’s final album and tour, but by 1998 both his projects were all but dead. Fast forward to 2000, when a wave of Helium alumni material came out. Mary Timony’s Mountains was the logical reconfiguration of The Magic City as a solo album; meanwhile, Bowie took out a bunch of old demo tapes and reworked them. The end result was released under the name Libraness, and it sounds like what you’d expect from one of the former songwriters behind Polvo: lots of bendy guitars and runaway melodies in odd time signatures. But just like Timony’s album, Yesterday And Tomorrow’s Shells was a more introspective and toned-down affair; waves of fuzz and distortion dull the edges off many of the more vicious tracks. All in all, a worthy addition to the canon of angularity—and perhaps the last we’ll ever hear from Ash Bowie, as he’s pulled a Kevin Shields and largely disappeared from the scene.

I don’t remember any of the early-80s television shows the Pitchfork review refers to, so I couldn’t tell you if the description of “Panther Dash” as Hawaii Five-O-meets-Speed Racer is at all accurate. What I can tell you, though, is that the faintly ridiculous and apparently kitsch description of the Go! Team doesn’t hold water; it’s not as though the band does covers of theme songs for television shows starring Lee Majors.

If anything, the sextet from Brighton excels in the one thing I haven’t gotten nearly enough of this year: the bright-eyed, full-speed-ahead wall of sound. Drive to it, dance to it, do what you want—whenever I feel like a pick-me-up, this has become my go-to song (no pun intended). The one shame is that Thunder, Lightning, Strike is a UK-only release so far; with the press they’ve been getting in North America, it’s possible this will change, but I’m not one for waiting. This will probably be the second import album on my best-of-year list, which would be cooler if it didn’t cost so much damned money.