This tense, vowel-deficient outfit's last album was called MNML. If anything, this one's even sparser. The first ten of its twenty-five minutes consist of only guitar and bass parts intersecting with alternating vocals from core members Bob Doto and Daneil Mazone. When the drums finally kick in two-thirds of the way through the second track, it's as dramatic as that moment in The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again" when Pete Townshend's majestic power chords suddenly disrupt the endlessly echoing synthesizers.

Taste Like Daughter contains no synths, but all of the telegraphic guitar parts that flavor and define its six songs owe a greater debt to Kraftwerk than Hendrix. Normally, describing a guitar riff as mechanical or robotic would seem like an insult, but for this band, it aptly illustrates what makes their melodic strengths more apparent. In "Look: Explosion! New Spring", the interwoven guitars hit the speakers like sharp jabs to the chest. The vocals follow suit, but by the time they reach the key-changing bridge ("They say we're a team / but I say I can't afford it"), you realize what a great pop song this could be with a fuller arrangement. All you're left with are the skeletal elements of one, but by then you're absolutely absorbed, especially as you become aware of ever-so-slight deviations and shifts (like a riff altered by a single note).

A brisk ska rhythm theoretically seems like an unlikely counterpart for a siren-like tremolo guitar, but "The Sun Provides Vitamin D" juxtaposes the two anyway (without any horns) and the track ends up, temperamentally speaking, somewhere between childlike and menacing. The Mazone showcase "I'm A Motorcycle Drummer in a Moped Band" volleys her half sung/spoken vocals with a guitar heartbeat and an unforgettable, defiant chorus: "You'll never kill me now / even though they told you how / I'll never shed my skin / I like the hell I'm in." That's as lucid a lyric as you're likely to find here; almost everything else enigmatically puzzles and teases. The album title comes from "Give The Beaches To The People", which strings together a Chinese box of linked associations ("Shark in water / Cage in water / You're in my cage / Cage in my shark") over an intricate, arpeggio-laden head of steam that leaves new wave behind and points toward the earliest REM recordings.

For S PRCSS, melodies and rhythms are perpetually intertwined. It makes for music that contradicts its alien, arty qualities with more accessible, unexpectedly comforting ones. In this context, working from a purposely small palette disciplines Doto and Mazone much more than it limits them.