Working with the super-producer Steve Albini in the haunted Abbey Road studio, the Auteurs prove they've lost zero edge since their New Wave debut and 1994's grimier Now I'm a Cowboy. This third release is like a rock & roll dispatch from a parallel universe: glam, punk, early Bowie and the Beatles being taken apart and put back together all wrong.

Nothing here should work, but everything does,...

Exuding a barbed, sexy impishness, Auteurs mainman Luke Haines may be the grooviest pop fantasist since glitter guru Marc Bolan. His guitar leads echoing Mick Ronson's, he's plainly a glam rocker at heart. A terrific sequel to last year's New Wave, Cowboy finds him giving further shape to his fascination with all that darkly glimmers: femmes fatales, taboo love, cracked actors ("Lenny Valentino"...