Centred around the varied and estimable talents of longtime Elephant 6 collaborator Heather McIntosh, The Instruments' new record culls from such disparate and beautiful influences as Sufi Devotional Music, the old country waltz, Nico's dunn cathedrals of song, and atmospherically harmonic pop emanating from somewhere way out near Eno's weird Green World. "Dark Småland" is resplendent with all the esoteric and sophisticated detail you'd expect from McIntosh and her two different crews of Instruments, though it never loses touch with the rarefied and dynamic melodic sense she's developed through years of performing with heavies like Circulatory System, Elf Power, Japancakes, Kevin Ayers, Of Montreal and Gnarls Barkley. As dense and layered as this album gets, it is at its core an elegantly melancholic folk-pop record sweetly at home in your heart next to Richard and Linda Thompson's most beautiful, hymnic monuments or the vestigial ghost of some ancient lullaby from your longlost childhood.