On Maryland Mansions, his fifth album since 2000, Cex comes across as a bright youngster who's gone through a month's supply of his Ritalin in one day: intense, occasionally brilliant, and frequently annoying as hell. There's no question that Cex, a.k.a. Rjyan Kidwell, has talent, but his spastic jumps between styles often obscure the details that emerge during the moments when he sits still for a minute. Still, even though Maryland Mansions barely qualifies as an album at only 25 minutes long, ample patience is required to absorb its eight songs.

As he leaps from flippancy to confession, from glitchy noise to acoustic guitar, Kidwell doesn't make it easy to decide what to dismiss as prank and what to hold as revelation. But why should he? Part of Cex's success is a refusal to lead the listener by the hand, though one can hopefully be safe in taking as a joke "Food is disgusting / It's what they make shit from / You're vomiting backwards." Yet his cleverness often sinks into an infantile sense of "look how different I can be," and the constant ambivalence keeps the listener at a distance. When Kidwell does focus for more than a minute, as on the cleanly captivating "My Head," his embrace of ambiguity finds new meaning in old subjects: "My head is spinning / But very, very slowly / I hope one day my singing / Might contain or control it / There's a temporary sanity in this anorexic vanity business / Satisfaction can exist / I love work, I love success." Lines like those, coupled with his ability to fluidly appropriate the best of a genre, be it emo, indie hip-hop, or industrial, and his undeniable sense of enthusiasm and fun, show great promise for Kidwell should he slow down and take the time to develop his ideas completely. (Peter Nicholson)

Paula Frazer
A Place Where I Know: 4-Track Songs 1992-2002 (Birdman)