If you've followed Brian McBride's work as half of drift music all-stars Stars of the Lid, you were probably really excited by the prospect of a McBride solo project. The idea appeals for two reasons. First, Stars of the Lid are a really great band. Second, it's really interesting to imagine what kind of music McBride might make, outside the unique context and genre restrictions in which he and Adam Wiltzie collaborate. For the same reasons, When the Detail Lost its Freedom is at once disappointing and wonderful. On one hand, McBride is very good at what he does. On the other, solo McBride sounds a hell of a lot like collaboration McBride -- there's no fresh experience here.

It would be unfair to punish McBride for failing to meet our arbitrary expectations, so we're just going to have to get past that. He does what he can to make it easy to forget our disappointment, weaving the sort of slow, subtle, sleepy but emotionally satisfying soundscapes we've come to expect from Stars of the Lid. The primary difference is a more discrete sense of song -- it's relatively easy to tell where one ends and another begins, as opposed to the drifting, sprawling sameness of records like The Tired Sounds of Stars of the Lid. At just one hour long, it's also considerably more concise than that other band's albums have been.

The primary deviations are a pair of vocal tracks. "Our Last Moment in Song" highlights the haunting pairing of McBride and his former wife Cheree Jetton. His affecting, breathy vocals set the mood, preparing us for her entrance; the tone is foreboding, like a strange wilderness in moonlight. Deep, resonant chords entwine with a sluggish beat, while various electronic doodads and ambient noises combine in fascinating patterns and textures. Eventually, a ghostlike Jetton floats in on soft, beautiful, prolonged notes. Considering the song's title, it's impossible not to read this as a comment on their doomed marriage -- but describing it as a mere song of mourning would be a serious mistake. Perhaps the more nuanced view is that it sets up an event that's about to happen -- something that might be very scary. McBride's life without Jetton, perhaps? It's easy to get caught up in a record's mythology in a case like this, so we'll avoid committing ourselves to such an interpolated interpretation.

"The Guilt of Uncomplicated Thoughts", the album's other vocal track, is actually built around contributions by The Morgan Park Step-Up Trumpet Section, who play more or less the same bar of music over and over and over again. A heavily processed trumpet begins to explore and elaborate on their theme roughly five minutes in. Perhaps as a thematic counterpoint to McBride's ex-wife's contribution as much as a musical decision, wife-to-be Cheri Keating makes an appearance, much like Jetton's exit. Her voice is angelic, but this mostly seems to be due to McBride's obsessively brilliant textural fiddling. We are increasingly aware that Keating did not force her way in -- he put her there, and he controls the precise way in which her presence expressed itself. Combined with the insular feeling of McBride's music in general, this creates a sort of character sketch, positing a man who keeps a rich internal world, cut off from the physical existence that surrounds him. Whether this is the case for the artist himself isn't the point -- at issue is the richness of composition and production that allows him to suggest such complicated ideas to open and imaginative minds. The usual doodads, plus some serious sound processing, make "The Guilt of Uncomplicated Thoughts" one of the most resonant songs you'll hear all year. You'll feel this one at least as much as you actually hear it, experiencing McBride's skillful engineering as a faint tickle in your inner ear.

The rest of When the Detail Lost its Freedom is just as worthy of discussion, but considerably more difficult to actually discuss. Perhaps the most special thing about McBride's style is the way that he successfully defuses so much of the tension inherent in classic minimalist music, imbuing it with the power to really and truly soothe. "Latent Sonata"'s pure, dreamy tones will massage the work day right out of you. "A Gathering to Lead Me When You're Gone"'s surreal, almost magical instrumentation will take you to a better place.

Lush, constantly surprising in its intricacy -- listen closely and you'll discover a hundred new things on your second listen that you barely perceived on your first -- and too damn good to sleep to, When the Detail Lost its Freedom is in no way a disappointment. As much as we'd like to see what other kinds of music McBride can make -- and we'd really, really like to -- we'll freely admit that he's damn good at what he already does. We wouldn't be so hungry for new ideas if we didn't already know that McBride could deliver the goods.