The Postmarks: By-The-Numbers

Originally conceived of as a yearlong series of

free monthly MP3s for digital-subscription retailer eMusic, the second album by

the twee Miami trio The Postmarks is pretty much what the title indicates: a

dozen cover songs with numbers in their titles, arranged in numerical order,

from Antonio Carlos Jobim's "One Note Samba" down to the Pointer Sisters' "Pinball

Number Count," a.k.a. the Sesame Street song that goes, "One-two-three FOUR-FIVE!

Six-seven-eight NINE-TEN! Eleven-twelve." But The Postmarks specialize in

ambient dream-pop in which there are no capital letters, only melancholy, so

everything becomes lullaby-like no matter its source. The band's willow-voiced

female lead singer, Tim Yehezkely, is a bit shaky at times, as on the spoken

bits of the Ramones' "7-11," and their rendition of The Byrds' "Eight Miles

High" veers from dinky to bombastic. But the group's devotion to the

homemade-symphonic bears fruit a few times, most notably with the Bond theme "You

Only Live Twice" and a nicely kitschy instrumental version of The Ventures' "Slaughter

On Tenth Avenue."