In Italo Calvino's Memos for the Next Millennium, there's a wonderful essay exalting "lightness". The context then was prose, and Calvino showed the beauty behind lines that hid their genius through playfulness and a grin. Other essays from Memos tackle speed (the travels from one thought to the next) and brevity (the art of a story succinctly told). Each of these authorial traits formed the backbone to Calvino's aesthetics for the future. Books about cocky pilots blooming to 1000 pages? That was not his idea!

It is in the world of indie pop, not serious literature, that Calvino's positions have most vividly taken hold. Two records that support such a declaration are Busytoby's Good to Be Alive, whose pop songs flew from the past to the future to unearth love, and the Boys' Star Library's remarkable If I Was Born a Girl.... Here, in the course of sixteen songs and sixty minutes, the band and some important friends (like Josh Siegel and Will Quinnell) ask a metaphorical question through each pop song. Among them: what if believing in love is unavoidable? What if death is not your enemy? What if you were not born the person you are today?

The latter question is addressed in "Nancy" (also known as the "birth" chapter), and the song's execution shows how the group meets Calvino's aesthetic aims. Lyrically, it approaches the metaphysical question quite lightly ("If I was born a girl, I'd be named Nancy/Piggy tails and curls/I'd be a dancer...and I wouldn't dance with you"), and borders on becoming "condensed twee". The song is not sung cutely, though, but with rapid urgency and conviction, as it is about irritation and jealousy toward the guys that girls now like. It's a revenge song against stupid guys and girls without taste ("I could blow away your world if I wanted to") and, in less than four minutes, projects enough tension to provide one solid answer to the song's metaphysical question: If you were not born the person you are today, you wouldn't be happier.

As with an online review of a mystery novel, it seems like a crime to reveal more than one chapter of this delightful, important piece of musical lightness. Furthermore, it's pointless, as their other songs, aside from the closer, are more or less the same. A philosophical query is posed, and is followed by a lighthearted inquiry -- all set to music and vocals that transform a piffling thought into serious fun. Musically, Boy's Star Library fall between the mindsets of Crayon and Tullycraft; they are tougher than twee, but quite able to woo that crowd. They're also talented enough with their instruments to occasionally suggest Yo La Tengo, with touches of Mick Ronson echoed throughout the heady instrumental lead-in (also known as the "fetus"). Their singer, Jimmy Hughes, sounds a bit like Holiday's Josh Gennett, but he's more punk in his approach; you don't feel like you're flipping through a fashion magazine with him. Overall, the group's talents help produce a record in which the uncharacteristically drawn-out closer, "Being Old", gives you another reason to cheer. And if you like to savor art, you'll be inspired by "Being Old" (also known as the "death" chapter) to close the musical book a few seconds early, proclaiming, "I am still not finished with beauty."