My introduction to this group came via an old friend who thought that the song "Dog Dreams" was absolutely hysterical. Because of this, I thought The Story was sort of a kitschy, goofy novelty act until I actually bought the album myself. Now I know that "Dog Dreams" is just one of a golden handful of wonderful songs with angelic, soaring harmonies and a wry point of view. "Dog Dreams" is a deft, sly song written as though by a dog--actually, a pair of dogs who wreak havoc on the neighborhood in their dreams: "Me and Rex took the car, Ha, ha, stay home . . . stay. We're gonna run over All the neighborhood cats, 'Cause they tease us from The other side of the fence. We're gonna go in the swamp And you can't hose us off. Dog dreams, dog dreams, Please don't wake us up! No bad dog, no stay, No basement, no way, No choke chain, no dry food, No fetch game, no, no, no . . ." "Grace in Gravity," the title song, is a meditation on a true story of a black ballet dancer who, after a car accident in South Africa, was paralyzed after the ambulance drivers chose to take the dancer's less gravely injured white companion to a better hospital. It's an astonishing story, beautifully crafted here with The Story's usual minimalist grace. That's the case with almost every song on the album. "Over Oceans," though it has its moments, is mostly an annoying, a cappella exercise in wandering, abstract harmonies. "Love Is More Thicker Than Forget" reminds me (not happily) of Suzanne Vega's 1980s hey-day. Aside from these two--the last two songs on the album--this is an album of astonishingly good stuff.