AUDIO: communal death duck March 3, 2008 01:16 PM Communal Death Duck. The band's very name suggests a peculiar skew that will likely find little favor among the "American Idol" set. But for that special subset of music junkies who value quirk above raw skill, CDD makes odd music after your own twisted hearts. So what type of surprises does the band's third album hold? You'll have to click the link to find out. Over the course of three albums, the Alice, Texas trio known as Communal Death Duck have honed their ridiculously quirky style of indie into a somewhat familiar brand of eccentric pop that fares quite well between The Talking Heads and "Slanted"-era Pavement in the CD changer. The band has managed to stay active despite the fact that lead Duck, Norberto Gomez Jr., is now pursuing a college degree in Houston while his teen collaborators -- Jacqueline Garcia and Jillian Gomez -- and continue their studies in Alice. As "Fly Exodus Fly" demonstrates, CDD has not lost any of the idiosyncratic flavor that the trio demonstrated on its last full-length release,"We Got Sunshine." Rather, CDD has managed to up the ante on experimentalism by expanding their electronic adventures and the band is all the better for their efforts. Take the track "Yo-Yo." It's a delightfully odd piece of synth-driven atonal pop that bounces across a deliberately unsettling soundscape reminiscent of Pere Ubu that is the yang to the yin of the creepy and noisy opener, "Dogs." From there, the disc hums along quite eccentrically -- as is the way of the Duck -- that is until, we get to "Manipulated X." A solo turn of sorts by Norberto Gomez Jr., 'X' is a bitter hate-soaked diatribe directed at a former lover that features little in the way of instrumentation save a put-upon acoustic struggling to stay in tune. Remarkably, "Manipulated X" is perhaps the one moment of clarity that trad pop fans might connect with. That's not to say the other tracks are any less interesting. Songs like "Mr. Peanut" and "Orange Robot" are defined by the disarming and dispassionate charm of Jillian Gomez's vocals. On "The Muck", Jacqueline takes a rare vocal turn on an accidental jazz number that spits more punk rock tude than a dozen burly tattooed dudes swilling Lone Star by the bar at a Social Distortion show. As with "Sunshine," CDD have trouble sustaining momentum as the album nears completion. The band's outsider whimsy tends to overshadow any melodic possibilities -- which is perhaps a deliberate move on their part; more serious though is the subdued tempos that slavishly dominate the latter half of "Fly Exodus Fly" and gives the disc an overall feeling of remaining stuck in third gear even as fourth and fifth gear beckon jealously. In sum, "Fly Exodus Fly" reveals a band that remains radically predisposed towards the nature of their influences. Communal Death Duck remains an important music venture if for no other reason that they make wildly experimental music like no other band in the area. But will the Duck reach that wider audience they so surely deserve? Amped Up!'s guess is that it's likely gonna take the right balance of quirk and pop to get there. Whatever you do -- don't take your eye off that peculiar Duck just yet. Amped Up sez: ***1/2 http://blogs.caller.com/amped_up/archives/2008/03/audio_communal.html