Sputnik In Love's title track is a two-chord ditty with cheesy, poorly recorded drum machine beats and arrhythmic acoustic guitar. The lyrics repeat the song title, almost to the point of causing physical pain. Arad eventually launches into a bridge whose infantile lyrics could well injure you mentally: "I don't know if you love me / I don't know if you care / I don't know if you're sick of me / I don't know if you're there."

It seems that Roy Chicky Arad doesn't play the guitar "very well", in spite of his boasts at the beginning of "Armadillo", in which he offsets his own off-key singing with off-key whistling. Perhaps he feels that his linguistic mastery entitles him to a pass in the singing department -- the record features Russian, Hebrew, and Spanish vocals as well as English. The only respite comes in "Childhood and A Mountain", a boring instrumental that spares us the annoying multilingual vocals and out-of-tune electric guitar.

Splendid's reputation for reviewing everything it receives probably inspires a few skeptics to send in the most half-assed music they can create, just to see if we can find anything positive to say in its defense. Rest assured, Sputnik In Love is pretty much indefensible.