Personnel: Verity Susman (vocals, guitar, keyboards, background vocals); Mia Clarke (guitar, background vocals); Ros Murray (ukulele, cello, organ, background vocals); Emma Gaze (drums).

Audio Mixers: Jessica Ruffins; Bill Skibbe.

Recording information: Key Club, Benton Harbor, MI (09/2006).

NO SHOUTS NO CALLS is the most assured and mature album of the Brighton, England, band's career. While it doesn't contain the rawness and improvisatory glee of 2005's AXES, it shows the songwriting and instrumental skills of the all-female quartet to have improved by leaps and bounds, with more immediate pop structures (not to mention more manageable song lengths) and tight playing supplanting the sloppy charms of previous outings. Electrelane still like to work it on out, though, and many of the songs drift off into fuzzed-out, Velvets-like outros, but in general, NO SHOUTS NO CALLS is the most compact and straightforward release of the band's career.

Beginning with their breakthrough second effort, The Power Out, it feels like Electrelane has had a specific focus for each album. The Power Out itself added vocals to their sound, Axes concentrated on experiments in tension and release, and No Shouts No Calls delivers a set of urgent, romantic epics. This may not be their most dramatic album -- the women of Electrelane don't get around to their lock-groove rock until the seventh track, "Between the Wolf and the Dog" -- but its best songs are among the band's finest work. Tracks like "The Greater Times" and "To the East" are direct yet complex, with soaring melodies and lyrics like "I'm just waiting until you say these words/Come back, come back"; the contrast between intimate, almost too-personal words and the swelling sounds around them is exquisite. And while the album is dominated by intense, impatient joy of "At Sea," which rides glorious swells of keyboards and fuzzy guitars, its lightly heartbroken moments are just as lovely: "Saturday" boasts beautiful call-and-response vocals and lyrics that feel like a nursery rhyme about a breakup; "Cut and Run" pairs a lighthearted melody and ukulele with the painful realization that a relationship is likely over. No Shouts No Calls' instrumentals are just as strong as the tracks with vocals, and revel in the pure emotional power of sound. "Tram 21"'s mischievous organ and guitar interplay is jaunty and slightly trippy, while "Five" is the album's searing, insistent powerhouse. No Shouts No Calls might be some of Electrelane's most accessible work, but it's far from safe; in fact, its sweet vulnerability is exactly what makes it so special. ~ Heather Phares