High Places' second album High Places Vs. Mankind goes to a darker place than their 2008 self-titled debut (and the tracks you heard on 03/07-09/07). From "The Longest Shadows" to the closing meditation on death called "When It Comes," it's also their best, most complexly beautiful material to date. When we posted the eerie desert-scape video for "I Was Born," I said the track felt especially personal with its introduction of Mary Pearson's bassoon playing, Rob Barber's guitar lines, and the less processed vocals and first person lyricism, etc. That song doesn't show up on the new collection but it did hint at what you can expect here. Though High Places Vs. Mankind takes the duo's sound to a more densely atmospheric place. The upbeat, late-night "On Giving Up" offers a good starting point re: the various shifts.

In 2005 Eddie Argos took Art Brut to the top of the pops, lyrically anyway, as indie rock's thick-browed sardonic clown prince. It wasn't about singing, it was talking to the kids, with acerbic cheek and barbed wit, so much so that Berlin University taught a lecture in his lyrics titled "The Depressive Dandy: The Lyrics Of Eddie Argos." Three albums in and the shtick wore a little thin. Cue Everybody Was In The French Resistance...NOW, a side-project that allows Argos free reign to fix his sites on new targets. It's not about hitting the top of the pops, it's about Fixin' The Charts (Volume 1). Eddie's teamed with Dyan Valdes of L.A.'s the Blood Arm on 12 tracks which respond to better known hits: "My Way (Is Not Always The Best Way)" dialogues with Sinatra's "My Way"; "Billie's Genes" talks to "Billie Jean"; "Coal Digger" is in rebuff to Kanye. Get it? You get it. "G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N." is for Avril Lavigne's "Girlfriend," which Eddie says is part of "an alarming new archetype in pop songwriting: 'girl steals other girl's boyfriend.' This is a divisive message to send to young girls everywhere, and songs like 'Girlfriend' (see also 'You Belong With Me' by Taylor Swift) only teach young women that they can derive more worth and status from stealing each others' boyfriends than they can from realizing their own achievements."

The chorus covers that ground in girl-group fashion ("G.I.R.L.F.R.E.N. You know I've got a girlfriend ... In case you had any doubt I thought we'd better spell it out."), the video has Ed and Dyan pulling tarot cards to make it clearer. For those who take their satire with some substance: