After their 2005 self-titled debut, Asobi Seksu earned a lot of critical praise and a lot of My Bloody Valentine comparisons for its unabashedly shoegaze vision. Of Asobi Seksu's take on the genre, one music writer assessed, "'It's shoegaze.' But it's difficult to emphasize precisely how modern and revived this shoegaze is." In May of 2006, they released the follow-up, Citrus, showcasing, as CMJ noted, a tighter, more melody-driven "balance [of] turbulent shoegazer fuzz with sparkling pop confection," yielding a "more lush organic," and, I would add, more original result. Their latest recording

The album was recorded October 6, 2006 (a good 7 months before Citrus was released) at a show in Los Angeles. Standout tracks include the late '80s-indie rocker Pink Cloud Tracing Paper , a double-time, twinkly NY ballad, Sooner , and the airy Strings (which features lead singer/keyboardist Yuki Chikudate's much-noted penchant for singing in both English and Japanese), and the instant classic Thursday . The closer is a beautifully gauzy cover of the 1960s doo wop classic, Then He Kissed Me -- a sublime choice. Originally, made a hit by the girl group The Crystals, it's feminine, swingy, vintage-pop is a perfect fit for guitarist James Hanna's fuzzy, surprisingly bouncy guitar and Chikudate's sweet vocals. As if to prove the natural connection between '60s pop and hazy dream pop, the band doesn't even break between Then He Kissed Me and the previous track, Red Sed . The two tunes segue seamlessly from the one to the other with a dreamy interlude more than worthy of their MBV progenitors. Red Sed is pretty darn good in its own right -- making the one-two punch a gorgeous finale.

One critic, after seeing them perform live (I presume), compared "Asobi Seksu's dream-pop textures, wistful ballads, swirling guitar, and mini-skirted frontwoman" to "a late-night club in a Haruki Murakami novel, all atmosphere and solitude." Now, I've yet to read a Haruki Murakami novel, but I have seen a film based on a Murakami story, Tony Takitani, and Asobi Seksu's music would have been a perfect fit. Actually, the best way to describe the pull of Asobi's sound might be "cinematic." The best example of this is New Years , which is without a doubt the most dynamic track of the album and the single best argument for why you should pay attention to Asobi Seksu. Their songs are meant to score the most gut-wrenching, blissful scenes of your favorite movies: the ones about high school and memory and crushes. One could imagine Asobi Seksu as the soundtrack to a film part Romeo and Juliet, part-My So-Called Life, which is to say: beautiful and funny and genuinely moving. Listening to Asobi Seksu just makes you feel good.