Pop/Rock/Indie - Some Sweet Relief, the second album of dark and brooding space-pop from young Chicago band Speck Mountain, has the prerequisite cosmic drone, reverb-saturated guitar riffs and also, suprisingly, a languid, narcotic and almost folksy surrealness to it. Nothing is quite as it appears on the trio's "ambient soul" chilled workouts, as on the track "I Feel Eternal" where majestic chimed chords give way to a layers of spine-tingling Stax horns. The key here, as always, is the material and the Speck Mountain-eers have the melodic chops to rise above the fray.

Mary Clare Balbanian's dreamstate vocals seem as much exhaled as sung, floating along with a sea of organ fills, "Dark Star" noodling and rhythms that bob to the surface only to dive below again. As one critic put it, Relief compels the listener to "lay back, turn out the lights and stay awake until the last note fades."

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