A distant and quivering male voice; guitar-led music; usually sounds small, like you found the music under a rock; often catchy, though not in your typical poppy sense; sometimes fast; always down, down, down... No, this isn't Bright Eyes, but the comparison is unavoidable. Beltline, who hail from Portland, Oregon, have saved some of these tracks since 1998, waiting for the chance to release a CD in the midst of incessant touring.

Beltline's sort of music is the small, intimate type that gets you down. It works best when you're listening during one of those post-midnight hours, and you're depressed for some stupid reason. While a good bit of the music is actually upbeat, the lyrics are intimate and sometimes quite self-centered. It all comes down to what type of person you are; do you see spending twelve bucks for a depressing album as paying to be down, or as finding art that you can relate to? Sad sappy sucker that I am, I reside in the latter camp; this is much more than self-indulgent, pretentious crap.

That said, the songs on These Things You Do At Four AM vary quite nicely, from hushed voices to enticing acoustic rhythms, to melodies that would make the Magnetic Fields proud. "Bis Minki", in the spirit of Death Cab For Cutie's "The Face That Launched 1000 Shits", has that nice strobe-light sound, which slows everything down as we hear of the "things you do / 4 am / sounded like a good idea at the time..." "Make-Out Music (For the Emotionally Impaired)", acting as a sort of instrumental intermission, gives us a break from Beltline's outlook on life; it sounds a little like The Sea And Cake's "You Beautiful Bastard", but the song title makes it all the more fun. Other, faster tracks, like "It's Inevitable" and "It Will Break Down", will get your adrenaline pumping into the band's insecurities.

Basically, if you decided to read beyond the second paragraph, you're probably the sort of person who'd buy this album. The songs, for the most part under three minutes, never wear themselves out, unlike the epic efforts of more self-important depressed artists. And while they rely heavily upon rhythms and acoustic guitars, many of the cuts have an organic feel that helps to make their climaxes seem less forced. Beltline, most likely, will not blow any of us hardcore sad sappy suckers away, as music of this sort can get much more intense; rather, These Things You Do At Four AM will simply melt your heart...away...