The Velvet Teen produced one of the best albums of 2004 with Elysium, an elaborately orchestrated mope-pop record that made routine heartbreak sound heroic. The band's follow-up album, Cum Laude, goes in a different direction, lyrically and musically. Bandleader Judah Nagler still sings about sex and separation, but he's lost his regretful tone, and now comes off cocky, bearing pain like a merit badge. He's also singing through filters that distort his otherwise pretty voice, matching an overall sound that subjects bouncy modern-rock songs to scuff, scrape, and batter. The album-opener "333" sets the pace, with its chaotic synthesizer and arrhythmic drumming, and Cum Laude continues the assault with songs like "Rhodekill," which tumbles headlong into its own shrill frequency, and "Tokyoto," a skittering, eccentric, but still melodic exploration of cacophony. Elysium fans may be put off that a band capable of such grandeur has decided to head in the deconstructive direction of The Cure's Pornography and Public Image Ltd.'s The Flowers Of Romance, but while Cum Laude is sometimes aimless and rarely pleasurable, it's frequently brilliant.