Additional personnel: Walter E. Sear (Theremin).

Producers: David Kahne, Soul Coughing, Steve Fisk.

Engineers: Bill Emmons, Tim Boland.

IRRESISTIBLE BLISS is an intriguing, textured album that brings Soul Coughing's jazzy edge to the forefront. This is a band able to manage usually unachievable feats. They're sophisticated yet gritty, intelligent yet funny, and, though slick, thoroughly intriguing. The album's jazz-rock hybrid, a musical patchwork evoking tones from Morphine to Mojo Nixon, is full of lyrics dripping with satire.

Soul Coughing's attention to detail carries them from the ordinary trappings of hybrid bands into a lyrically astute and musically eclectic example of modern pop's potential. "White Girl" flaunts an addictive bass line with a raining bass drum beat and is smeared with the mention of an "innocent farm girl/raised by the aliens." When the eerie tape loop and strings dash in for the refrain, you do feel like you've been visited by aliens--the kind that make IRRESISTIBLE BLISS set in.

Personnel: M. Doughty (vocals, guitar); Sebastian Steinberg (vocals, fiddle); Yuval Gabay (vocals, drums); Mark De Gli Antoni (vocals, sampler); Walter E. Sear (Theremin).

Audio Mixers: Christopher Shaw ; David Kahne; Tchad Blake.

Recording information: Sear Sound Studios, New York, NY; The Power Station, Nwe York City.

Photographers: Frank Gargiulo; Marcelo Krasilcic.

Unknown Contributor Role: Sebastian Steinberg.

Opening on the insistent, instantly unforgettable groove of "Super Bon Bon," Soul Coughing's 2006 offering, IRRESISTIBLE BLISS, picks up right where its predecessor, RUBY VROOM, left off, as lyrical poet M. Doughty, with near-impossible vocal dexterity, spouts his John S. Hall-meets-William Burroughs narrative absurdities over the oddest of hip-hop/jazz collages. While many of the intricate rhymes may seem dimestore philosophy on the surface, a Swift-ian grip on language holds the best moments together. The results on "The Idiot Kings" or "How Many Cans?" may not be profound, precisely, but they are attractive and enveloping--or, in other words, irresistible bliss.