Indie rock has always been its best when it was fun and catchy. When serious musicians could take a joke and make music that didn't seem like a joke. If you were to pick up the new album from the DOE (which is comprised of 3/4 of Grizzly Bear and one of their buddies from college) and jump right to the second song ("No One Does It Like You") you might just need to pull out the Jump-To-Conclusions mat and think this is the next big catchy indie rock band that Apple is going to fall in love with and overplay for your pleasure. Put that mat away little guy cause the rest of the album is not the same - and it certainly isn't all fun and catchy.
There are the sullen ("In Ear Park") and the psychedelic ("Teenagers"). The near unbearable ("Classical Records") to the unbelievable (the banjo tinged "Balmy Night"). And not a whole lot inbetween. The style and delivery sways between quite pleasant to not particularly innovative and more of a downer than anything else. Sure, music doesn't need to be happy, and maybe the mood swings here are clever in terms of releasing an album that isn't just the same old same old but the discrepancy between the quality of the songs is where the problem lies. The DOE seems much more at home playing the psychedelic songs - unfortunately the album has fewer of those than the others.
Half fun to listen to and half fun to potentially weep uncontrollably to, it would be hard to say this wasn't a unique album. Now it's just a matter of deciding whether this is the sort of unique that floats your boat, because if it isn't, you are likely going to sink - pretty quickly.