Second Story: Second Story

The Hang Ups' He's After Me and So We Go are both beautiful, Byrds-inspired, gently ineffectual, uniformly compelling pop records. The new Second Story offers the added bonus of production work by Don Dixon and Mitch Easter, the team behind R.E.M.'s Murmur. So it's really no surprise that the result is terrific, a nicely diverse fleshing out of the Twin Cities band's sound that brings in revved-up pop-rock ("Pretty BA," "Party") to go with the usual minor-key minor masterpieces ("Caroline," "Maroon"). Second Story is a bit on the lite side at times, failing to click on "Parkway" and one or two others, but those few near-misses are vastly outnumbered by everything from characteristically bright pop tracks ("The Queen") to the sweetly shambling, 90-second country song "Blue Sky." From Aden to Fountains Of Wayne to Jason Falkner to Matthew Sweet, 1999 has been a tremendous year for pop records; with Second Story, it continues to get even better.