Electric President -- Electric President

Ben Cooper and Alex Kane have loaded their iPods with nothing but Postal Service and '70s French Art Folk. As Electric President, Cooper and Kane fill s/t with Electro Pop gems that stand out for their ambitious arrangements. Take a track like "We Were Never Built to Last," which opens with a spare drum track, introduces an acoustic guitar melody, ups the tempo with a driving electric guitar line, breaks down to a different acoustic melody and closes with power chords and cymbal-bashing -- all in less than four-and-a-half minutes. It's less herky-jerky than it sounds, as Cooper and Kane display a confidence well beyond their years (23 and 21, respectively) in creating hooks and linking passages. That same confidence allows Electric President to return to fatalistic themes without resigning to them; when Cooper, in his Corgan-meets-Gibbard voice, sings "We're all just part of some giant grand machine ... we'll do our jobs 'til we break down and fall" on "Grand Machine No. 12," it's followed with a "doo-doo-doo, ba-ba-ba" bridge and wrapped in a satiny Pop bow. In the sometimes paint-by-numbers world of Laptop-Pop, Electric President deserves credit for assembling familiar parts in new ways. (Matthew Fenton) Grade: B+