Throughout the album, O'Rourke and Tweedy swap vocal duties, each bringing his own peculiar lilt to abstract lyrics like "If I sleep too much/A good Chinese apple/Shines to the touch/Of my sleeve" (from the Tweedy-led "Chinese Apple"). The real action is in the music, which swells with its players' restless whimsy. Garage rock's single-minded drone gives way to acoustic flights of finger-picking; taut power chords unfold over loose-limbed jazz acrobatics. Even the aforementioned "Chinese Apple," which begins with three minutes of acoustic plucking and Tweedy's whisper, goes swimming in roiled waters, with whitecapped guitars consuming each other. But beneath all the slack and rumple, precision reigns.