When we last left the Mary Onettes, the Swedish quartet was diligently channeling the sounds of the 1980s without a lick of the irony that often imbues such revivalism. Their retro moves seemed less about building upon the decade's musical legacy as encapsulating its finer points for consumption by a new generation. Which, hey, was a perfectly cool way to go about things. At their best, the band positively nailed the bruised romanticism and exquisite melancholy that marked a certain strain of that decade's best pop, and besides, most of the signature propagators of said pop were by then long gone or, worse yet, distant shadows of their former selves. Plus it's not like you'll catch any of the old guard in the tiny-ish clubs and early-afternoon festival slots the Mary Onettes are used to playing, so for those seeking stadium-sized grandeur in parlor-intimate spaces, the band has something relatively unique to offer. The self-titled The Mary Onettes from 2007, in fact, turned out not unlike many records from the era it emulated: several excellent singles or would-be singles ("Lost", "Slow", "Void", "Under the Guillotine"), the token slow jam ("The Laughter"), an effective opener and closer ("Pleasure Songs" and "Still", respectively), and, well, some not terribly memorable stuff in between. All of which makes Islands, the Mary Onettes' follow-up, an at once enchanting and frustrating listen. Yes, the high points of the previous record are duplicated here-- but so too are the sa