by Dean Carlson
It didn't take Oraclean abilities to see that the Unbelievable Truth, shrewdly described by David Quantick as champions of "noodly waft folk," had a creditable life span inside those few months couched between memorized Radiohead release dates. Surely this defeated, posthumous collection of unreleased tracks, B-sides, and live clips was far from brother Thom's faux-intellectual histrionics. Hints of flamenco dub and Eastern-European bluegrass might offer alluring notes in the margins of the tedious bastardizing of rock that infested Britain after Travis went supernova, but the band consistently takes such quietly creative stirrings, gets scared, and retreats into a vacuum after the first few introductory notes. "Some of These People" isn't bad, considering: curling into a fetal position like Clint Mansell's soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream, it has an indescribable fusion of acoustical cunning and teetotaled insecurity. That, though, is about as good as it gets. Like their debut album, even the best songs here feel unfinished and tend to shudder into a blur the instant you start paying them any sort of attention. A shame it has to end like this too. Demanded by no one, a pitiable yet inessential nail in the coffin.