It seems like only a few months since Barcelona's ZeRo-oNe-INFINITY was released. That album, you may recall, included the breakthrough retro-new-wave hit "I Have the Password to Your Shell Account" -- which, in MP3 form, had already found its way onto thousands, even millions of hard drives. Dragging the Scorned Woman aesthetic kicking and screaming into the server room, "I Have the Password to Your Shell Account" earned the band a healthy fanbase among the User Friendly set, many of whom had never bought an album without Boris Vallejo cover artwork. It also set a very high bar for Transhuman Revolution to clear.

So let's get the important bit out of the way now: nothing on Transhuman Revolution will be the next "I Have the Password to Your Shell Account". It's a fun record, to be sure -- Barcelona's usual vibrant mixture of indie rock awkwardness and new wave technophilia -- but the group has clearly realized that surprise hits are a matter of serendipity rather than planning, and they aren't pushing the issue. Even so, there are some marvelously catchy tunes here. "Everything Makes Me Think About Sex" takes full advantage of Jason Korzen's average-guy nervousness, while the hacker anthem "Watching You Watching Us" occasionally recalls the punchy, funky energy of early Devo. Though its lyrics are vague, "Fleeting Fame" might be applied to the band's own brush with a broader audience, while "Teenage Popstar", perhaps the album's catchiest song, lobs sugarcoated sarcasm at Britney, Mandy, Christina and their ilk. Either that, or "Brainwashed and selling softdrinks" and "washed out, messed up megalomaniac" are intended as compliments.

The group's lone female member, Jennifer Carr, now has her own anthem, "The Power of Jen". While it'll undoubtedly be viewed as an indulgence by anyone not named Jen, the song reinforces the power position asserted on "I Have the Password to Your Shell Account". Once again, she's the lone techie girl, and she knows how to work it; she has the mad skillz and her pick of eligible men (if there are any), but is mature enough to know that words like 'L33T are actually pretty stupid. And needless to say, for the next twenty years every college radio DJ named Jennifer will have an obvious choice for her theme song.

For Transhuman Revolution, the group extended their relationship with producer/pulCec honcho Trevor Kampmann, making him more of a hands-on collaborator on these new songs. Perhaps that's why these eleven songs get a little more oomph out of simpler melodies, but de-emphasize their lyrics in the process. You'll hum along with Transhuman Revolution, but you might not hear as much of the message. Or perhaps you'll be distracted by Nicolas Lampert's excellent collage art, which combines indigenous tribesmen with robots in a bizarre mixture of The Gods Must Be Crazy and Silent Running imagery.

While it's definitely superior to most twee pop releases, both in overall production quality and in variety of subject matter, Transhuman Revolution is still a lighthearted, cheerful record. But that's nothing to be ashamed of. Indeed, sometimes it's really, really good to have a simple, happy record close at hand.