At the bottom of Happy Traum's press release there's another unfortunate artistic footnote to the events of a couple of weeks ago: a tour schedule for the nearly ten-year old Dutch band Daryll-Ann, who were scheduled a begin four date tour of New York City (for the CMJ New Music Festival) and environs...on September 14th. Let's hope that the band finds it possible to return for CMJ's make-up dates later this month -- it would be a shame to leave American ears wanting for the sunny harmonies and accomplished late '60s/early '70s pop of the band's fifth full-length.

As another portion of the PR material states, with unintentional candor, "Despite their dated influences, the music is timeless, existing outside of any trends." That's over-stating the case a bit, especially given the strong trend in the past few years toward Beatles- and Beach Boys-influenced folk and orchestral rock, led by the Apples in Stereo and the rest of the Elephant 6 Recording Company collective. Daryll-Ann are firmly ensconced in our age; it just happens that we're suckers for the same kind of jangly, gentle psychedelia that wafted from dorm room speakers three decades ago.

Over 45 minutes (it's a packed album, but a comparatively punchy CD), these fourteen songs cover a lot of territory within a fairly constrained aesthetic, from the chiming opener, "Surely Justice" through Byrds-like country on "All By Myself" and the quietly contemplative "Ask Anyone", to the spare "Freedom is a Gift". Songwriters Anne Soldaat (a man) and Jelle Paulusma (whose brother Coen plays percussion and a buoyant organ, and makes up the rest of the band, along with Jeroen Vos on bass and Jeroen Kleijn on drums) tend toward the impressionistic. While the in-English singing is nearly accentless, a surreal wordplay often invests the language with a hallucinatory power, as in the chorus of the lovely closer, "Hope, Love & Happiness": "Empty words/Honeybee, slowly go/Where I'm free/Sorrow sight for lonely eyes/Hummin' all the way."

Influences occasionally overwhelm inspiration: the chorus of "Riverside" echoes Everybody Knows This is Nowhere-era Neil Young, and other moments reference -- uncomfortably closely -- each of the bands mentioned above, as well as contemporary bell-bottom aficionados like the Green Pajamas. More often, Happy Traum (named after Happy Traum himself -- the folk singer, guitar instruction book writer and first interpreter of "Blowin' in the Wind") transcends retro nostalgia for the greater pleasures of, yes, "timeless" pop songcraft.