REMINDER: Stem and Leaf Host The Interest Kills CD Release Party, This Saturday @ Victory Grill

Austin-based rock band The Interest Kills' second album, Capital Flight, brashly defies categorization: while maintaining a strong pop sensibility, they explore everything from dance rock to post-punk. What unites the album, however, is an underlying message in the lyrics; the songs are infused with lucid sociopolitical commentary, often with a tone of vexation that stems from knowing full well just how absurdly unfair our modern world can be.

The opening song, "The In-Between Is Ending", is an energetic number whose feisty kick drums and fervid guitar riffs serve as the perfectly innocent backdrop for the band's take on class strife: "they call it compassion / they redistrict with ease / these partisans aim to please". As much as "The In-Between" is danceable, "Pseudo-Narcoleptic" - track three - is a gentle, urbane piece crafted of beautiful harmonies that shows off the range this band possesses: the song's delicate melody sees lead singer Diego Garcia-Olano navigating the vocal scales with polished aplomb.

Track seven, "Idealism for Cynics", is deliberately unassuming at the beginning: starting with a single guitarist strumming a simple melody, the rest of the band casually slip in a succession of accompanying layers, each building masterfully upon the previous until you're left with an instrumental tapestry that rocks for a full minute-forty five. And just as you're convinced that the track is intended as a purely instrumental exercise, everything cuts out save for the singular guitar, which - much like the heralds in Arthurian epics signaling the arrival of the king - focuses our attention on the spectacle to follow: the lead vocals kick in with an fiery desperation, Diego Garcia-Olano nearly screaming out a trenchant criticism of people inclined to self-defeating apathy: "your talk is cheap / our talk is cheap / but you've got style / you play real cool / we play it cool / cause for the while / your cultivated jadedness / it drives them wild". What follows is a synergistic romp through dancepunkrockland, a magical place that we're all too happy to explore with these boys at the helm.

The penultimate track, "Now That You're Old Enough", is our clear favorite and we think would have made for the perfect ending to this album. Starting with what calls to mind Spanish castanets echoing in an empty chamber, the band constructs a brilliant, touching, and profoundly introspective tale of venturing to exotic lands in search of some intangible, universal truth, which - as we ourselves have grudgingly come to acknowledge from our own fruitless searches - is a construct that only exists in the minds of philosophers and hopeless dreamers.

Despite the fatalistic undertones that often carry across much of Capital Flight, the album at times offers subtle hints that perhaps these guys aren't quite as disillusioned as they seem. One of the most telling moments is the last part of "Now That You're Old Enough", where D. Garcia-Olano sings, "what you see before you / is a choice you withdrew / when you chose to mind / and you've made us proud" What we see before us is a solid rock album by a talented young Austin band - one that portends a promising future for these lads. And that should make anyone proud.