lo-fi labor of love, the Doleful Lions’ music is a melodic mess of perfect pop and maudlin introspection, full of disparate styles and quirky lyrical traits. A quick look at the bands covered on this album (Beach Boys, Phil Spector, The Misfits, The Close Lobsters, and The Descendants) gives some idea of Jonathan Scott’s influences, for it is he alone (with help from a revolving cast of collaborators) who is Doleful Lions.

Lyrically, Scott is as divergent as his music styles, with themes running the gamut from Dungeons and Dragons rule manuals (“Field Folio”) to professional wrestling (“Oriental Spike”) to that universal theme, introverted love (“Wallflower”). Not that you’d be able to tell without listening intently, as only odd words and phrases are audible. This doesn’t take anything away from the songs: the key here is melody, which is something Scott has in abundance.

A thirty-second snippet showcasing Scott’s harmonic possibilities opens the album before bursting into “The Warriors End Table,” the best original song here. It’s Guided by Voices given a shoegaze sheen; a Mag Earwhig pick played by the Bee Thousand band. Even so, the covers far outshine Scott’s originals. On The Crystals “There’s No Other (Like my Baby)” Scott replaces Phil Spector’s wall of sound with a campfire sing-along approach that’s as warm and sweet as a plump toasted marshmallow. The Descendents’ “Silly Girl” is painted with a heartbreaking Big Star brush, while the Lions’ version of the Beach Boys “She’s Got Rhythm” sounds as though it was recorded inside Brian Wilson’s soundboard, with Wilson orchestrating the whole affair.

These covers highlight the fact that though Scott’s songs are good, they’re not great. Some even grate a little, especially those that ape the Trembling Blue Stars / Magnetic Fields meandering acoustic approach, most of which come in the record’s second half. By the time we get to track 20 (“The Head of the Shade Antichrist”) you feel as though you’ve heard it all before, and by the penultimate “Eskimo Wizards” you have—an acoustic reworking of “The Warriors End Table,” it’s a welcome return of what is the best (original) song here.

Despite its cohesiveness, at 70 minutes, Volume Two is overly long and laborious, which is a shame, as there’s a good album hidden here. “Freezing Breezes” is superb Swedish indie-pop propelled by programmed drums, “Ghost Town in the Sky ” evokes elements of Sarah Records, and “Saturday Mansions” is melancholy at its most melodic. Even the songs that shouldn’t have seen the light of day are fully formed: go ahead, compare them to the Robert Pollard duds that Guided by Voices fans have had to wade through over the years.

In a recent interview, discussing the disparate covers on Song Cyclops Volume Two, Scott stated: “Bands like The Misfits and The Descendents wrote great pop songs, sure they were hardcore bands but they were also great pop bands. No less than The Crystals or The Beach Boys. Good songs are good songs and those are great songs.” As the man said, good songs are good songs, and these are good (but not great) songs that have cleared the decks, emptied the four-track, and, with a new album already underway, given the Doleful Lions ample room to roam.