Remember when you were a kid, and your parents took you to those crappy local carnivals and for whatever reason entrusted your life to people who had six teeth and looked as though they'd just emerged from a dumpster? (If you're reading this anywhere but in the US, please bear with us here -- Ed.) If you do, you might also remember those freaky halls-of-mirrors, into which your parents would hurriedly shove you, with full knowledge that you might never return, just so that they could have a few minutes to chug down cold ones at the beer tent. I ask you to unearth those horrifying repressed memories only because those frightening funhouse mirrors share a strange kinship with Strings for Satellites. Allow me to elaborate.

On Strings for Satellites, Fiver take traditional guitar-based rock and run it through a series of shape- and structure-altering funhouse mirrors. The result is an album of beautifully melodic guitar soundscapes that manage to bend, twist and stretch themselves into shapes unlike most music being made today. This becomes instantly apparent as "Turning Your Back on the Bull"’s chiming guitar interlude transforms itself into swaths of translucent sound, laced with elegiac organ, a seductive electric strum and Dave Woody’s soaring vocals. Or perhaps you’d prefer to position yourself in front of the mirror that is "Fun Summer Drinks" and watch the music bend itself into a My Bloody Valentine-inspired shimmering guitar tornado, armed with a pared down rhythm and slippery bass line. But like any good funhouse, Strings for Satellites saves its most impressive and mind-bending mirror for last. The sprawling "Theme From Lo-Down" is a dark and expansive soundtrack to the most stunning of sunsets. Its initial electro-gurgle eventually dissolves into a Radiohead-like mantra of squalling guitars and building dissonance, then silence, then reinvents itself as a bleeping, buzzing slice of perfect sun-drenched pop. And with that, your journey through the funhouse is over and you emerge to find your parents waiting for you; they're rather tipsy, and wearing matching sombreros.

This is the point at which you ask your parents for more tickets, so that you can take another trip through the musical funhouse called Strings for Satellites. You might also want to ask them why they smell like cough syrup.