For me, the Tear Garden will always be tied to the chilly winter of 1987. I don't remember many of the details, but I recall dragging their first record, Tired Eyes, Slowly Burning, home from college and listening to it over the Christmas holiday. The collaboration between Legendary Pink Dots frontman Edward Ka-Spel and Skinny Puppy's cEvin Key seemed like something of a supergroup at the time.

Thirteen years down the road, the Tear Garden seem surprisingly mature, though perhaps that's because I missed some of their late nineties output. Edward Ka-Spel's delivery is as distinctive as ever; he sounds like a pinched, adenoidal Momus, though he's no longer as nasal or as gloomy as he once was. While Ka-Spel has always been more of a speaker-to-music than a singer, he has made great strides in varying his delivery. He's still capable of turning every lyric he touches into an Edgar Allen Poe narrative, but it's no longer the first and only option in his performance palette.

It's a good thing Ka-Spel has advanced, because the music has also moved forward. cEvin Key has always had an ear for detail; he helped give Skinny Puppy their distinctive sound, and his participation in early Tear Garden efforts gave them a baroque air far above and beyond the Legendary Pink Dots' starkness. Here, he and his cohorts constantly surprise. "The double spades effect" begins in typically brittle industrial style with a twinkling keyboard melody, then brings in an undulating bass line and dreamy proto-surf guitars. The result recalls Echo and the Bunnymen; it's unexpected, but quite enjoyable. "Desert Island Disc" establishes an almost indie-rock drone which, comined with the "Less is more" lyrics of its chorus, recalls the Velvet Underground at their most intense. "Hopeful", already a likeably grim pop song in Ka-Spel's grand tradition, cements its success with the unexpected arrival of a slide guitar. Its chorus, a mixture of droning organ, bouncy rhythm and loping slide tones, is grandly cinematic.

The sheer normality of "Castaway" will surprise you further. It's a straightforward, classic-sounding piece of folk-rock in which Ka-Spel's vocals initially play as slightly skewed Britpop. However, "Castaway" is ten minutes long, and after its deceptively normal introduction it devolves into a darkly funky dub workout that wouldn't sound out of place on a Barry Adamson record. Likewise, "Feathered Friends" shows Ka-Spel quite capable of the darkly menacing spoken-song narration that Adamson has favored on his last few albums, though Ka-Spel is quicker to lunge towards Grand Guignol. And if U2 ever dumps Bono and goes looking for another vocalist, "Her Majesty's trusted food taster" establishes old Edward as a contender for the position.

Naturally, Ka-Spel's voice remains acquired taste, and though Crystal Mass shows him at his most varied, it's -- you guessed it -- unlikely to convert many doubters. But if you've distanced yourself from Skinny Puppy, the Tear Garden and their ilk as a way of "growing up", you'll undoubtedly be pleased to discover that their music has grown up too. CEvin Key and his cohorts are knocking down musical boundaries left and right, and creating some wickedly good tunes in the process.