Genre-hopping and feeling ecstatic while doing it, Harvey Girls (actually married couple Melissa Rodenbeek and Hiram Lucke) borrow from the best pop and psych, blending it into their own slightly warped but always generous and friendly blare. “I’ve Been Watching a Lot of Horror Movies Lately,” as the title might suggest, features lyrics that dwell on things more sinister than the music, but that is no exercise in irony; these are songs that find grace and hope in both the silly and sad.

The ambient psycho blues hoodoo of “The Body Without Any Eyes” opens things up, trumped by the claustrophobic, droning voice over beerhall percussion and art rock guitar of “FWIW.” The space between these two songs provides some baseline from which the other tracks evolve. Thus, “Puss” adds a hypnotic, trip-hop beat to the psych soundscape, and the gorgeously layered pop melody on “Caerse Muerto” deepens that beat. “Alpha Invasion On Delta Waves Lullaby Of Brueghel,” the closer, is a nine-minute space oddity, occasionally formless, a lonely heartbeat coda that is especially satisfying, coming as it does after a few unsuccessful tracks that lose their way in muddy execution.

Still, this is a fun, if unpredictable and occasionally harrowing, effort. Harvey Girls know the fine line Brian Wilson straddled between pop composer/genius and haunted outsider artist. “I’ve Been Watching a Lot of Horror Movies Lately” mines that dreadful but fertile potential for madness with grace and grit. 8/10 -- Mike Wood (28 July, 2010)