It's really hot, and the fan is working overtime, and little beetles and moths are finding their way through every nook and cranny in my house to congregate around the fluorescent bulb, crawling up my legs and on my feet. It's humid too. This time last year I was putting on Tulsa Drone for this sort of weather. This year, My Education's similarly-minded concoction of brooding instrumentals, Bad Vibrations, will do the job.

My Education are a sometime-seven-piece, and the larger roster gives them the room to flavor their music with viola, vibraphone, and piano, lending them some welcome individuality. The music on Bad Vibrations, their third album, eschews the standard-issue crescendos and quiet-LOUD dynamics for a winding, restrained songwriting sense that exhibits a welcome awareness of Americana and integrates this into their sound in a way that's unforced and natural. The effect is somewhat similar to the aforementioned Tulsa Drone, or early Grails, but My Education distinguish themselves with compositions that are brighter (and less psychedelic) than those bands while never approaching the bombast or preciousness so common to the post-Mogwai hordes. There's a sense that this is everyday music, meant to be comfortable and lived in like old jeans, a quiet compliment -- not an emotive soundtrack – to a life of normalcy. The music is by turns dark, mature, wistful, distant, and thoughtful without any of those traits ever being overbearing.

Eight-and-a-half-minute opener "This Old House" is the longest cut on the album, and it carefully strolls through the different manifestations of its main descending melody, continually building without ever peaking, the slow changes in arrangements suggesting all the different angles from which one might consider something -- an object, a proposition, a thought. A very similar melody and approach recurs on "Mother May I," this time rendered dreamier by the soaring pedal steel and plaintive vocals. Some tracks on the first half, though never less than pleasant, go on a bit longer than they need to (especially "Arch," the closest the band comes to crescendo-rock), and the viola is overused in places, but things pick up considerably in the second half. "Aria," the shortest track at just under five minutes, calls to mind the country-influenced compositions of Dirty Three and Calexico, before it rebuilds itself as an altogether darker, more foreboding dirge in the second half. The closing title track is the jewel of the album, a gorgeous, gentle slice of Ry Cooder-esque dreamy Americana where the viola takes a break from its up-front role throughout much of the album and drones gently into the overall ambiance.

Bad Vibrations is a solid album that, without doing anything fantastically new or different, manages to set My Education apart from their peers and establishes them as a unique voice. If there's an issue here, it's that it's too solid -- the laid-back approach and overall consistency underscores the lack of many truly stunning moments, a condition further highlighted by the excellent final song. My Education's music rarely leaps out and asserts itself dramatically, but throw it in on a muggy evening and notice how readily it bleeds into to the setting sun, the sweat on a pint glass, and swatting at bugs while the sun disappears.

-Lucas Kane