I can always respect one thing across the board in the records I listen to and review: creativity. The members of Betty Rats are unafraid to tap into their creative wellspring. More importantly, they are willing to run with the unfiltered imagination they find with no regard for convention or an officially licensed pitchfork map of trendutopia.

If there was a recipe, I’d imagine it went something like this: take a slightly less-exico version of Calexico, then add a zydeco Morrissey, drink the pink water (I have no idea personally what this means, but it figures prominently into the band’s “mythos,” so I’m including it here) and you’ve got Betty Rats.

Squeaks Tall Reeds was recorded live in an effort to preserve the dynamic creativity of the live performance. It features a raw, woody sound characterized by a purposeful choice to maintain sparse musical arrangements. Compositions derived from loose, improvisational style are perfectly suited to lyrical abstraction and word play. The result are some memorable songs, more than a few, and very little filler.

However, in blindly following behind such a bright creative spark, Betty Rats make some brave choices that nearly go too far even for me.

The entirety of the record is punctuated by toy piano but featured prominently in a short intro and then again later in another transitional piece–“Lizards”–the heart of the album. Steeped in gratuitous accordion, Vaudeville, ritual murder at a greasy spoon (I think), banjo, squirrels, the ubiquitous pink water, Squeaks Tall Reeds has to have some Rosetta Stone. I’ll posit it’s “Lizards.” Here’s why: The staccato, tinkling, almost playing “Chopsticks,” is interrupted by a child’s voice. Somehow all this rampant grasping in the ether both musically and lyrically has to be filtered through a child-like innocence. The kind of earnestness which underpins the performances on this record, even in its more far-flung moments, builds a cohesion and makes some of those braver decisions OK with me.

This is a fantastic record and one of the best this year.