Sybris borrow all of their tricks from the best alternative rock albums of the late '80s and early '90s. The disc resembles Isn't Anything, Surfer Rosa and Siamese Dream in its general shape and tonality -- so much so, in fact, that you might mistake it for a throwback on first listen. As songwriters, though, Sybris are their own beast, dishing out one expansive two-headed monster after another. "Breathe Like You're Dancing" opens with crisp Sunday drive guitars, all clean, pressed and smiling, only to mutate into a lumbering colliseum-sized ball-buster, while "Blame It on the Baseball" poses as a Mazzy Star comedown until its melted vinyl guitars seize control and drip pink goo all over the place. These are pop songs, no doubt, but they rebel against stagnation -- which makes it all the more tragic that Sybris's nine tracks sound so similar that the album itself has nowhere to go. Sybris establish themselves as apt pupils on each individual song, but the corpus is limited rockist monochrome. Folks who make no distinction between Sonic Youth and Th' Faith Healers may find Sybris on par with their aesthetic's progenitors, but more acute palates will pray for the band to burst out of their cramped corner and engage in the sort of varied stylistic discource that made their forebears so transcendent.