ornopop’s members (the brothers Einarsson) are trying to shock you. Before Pornopop formed, Pétur’s first band released a record with a cover depicting both the Icelandic president and Hitler. Ágúst was in a band with a name that translates as “Boiled Violin.” The shock tactic employed on And the slow songs about the dead calm in her arms, though, is in its willful ignorance of cliché. I mean, seriously, imagine what you think a record titled like that will sound like. Got it? Good. Now add some tasteful electronics and you’re there. Review over.

So, why are we here? Our “fearless” editor-in-chief loves this record and demanded a review, for one. The other reason is craft. The Einarsson’s have it in spades. When you listen to a Morr Music release, say, there’s always going to be an obvious dud—the one track whose chord progression or beat programming reveals their just-past-the-presets naïve ineptitude. Pornopop took five years between their previous album and this—and the maturity shows. These songs, while loose and airy, are tight, (sad) pop constructions.

The Morr Music metaphor is also apt in sonic terms: Pornopop sounds like what might happen if the German and English artists that made up that label’s roster lived in Iceland. (The songs would get frostier, the tempo would slow to a crawl, the choruses would transform from dispassion to desperation.) In fact, while listening to “Sleep,” you might be forgiven if you had mistaken it for something on the label’s Blue Skied An' Clear compilation. The cavernous production is a ringer for late-era Slowdive, as is the track’s lengthy digression into packt, brittle beats and dreamy cooing.

Lyrically, it doesn’t work. But, then again, why should it? The Einarsson’s claim it “sounds better” and they might be right—it sounds better, but when you come face to face with “It doesn’t mean a thing / His face was old / He got in his car / And he drove away” and “Today I will change / I will make you forget / It’s OK now,” you start to value obscurity. The finest vocal moment comes on “Little Kafka,” when the programming breaks up phonemes into chunks of melodic information and recombines them to evoke a melody that most likely was once left wanting. Now, it’s a lovely jumble of chortling lilts and jumps.

That sort of moment eventually comes as a welcome surprise: slow songs suffers for its slavery to thematic and sonic unity. Each song’s dragging tempo helps make the album’s 41-minute running time feel far longer than it actually is.

That said, our e-i-c has decent taste, even if he is a sad bastard. Pornopop is one of the rare groups that pull off the acoustics-with-electronic-garnishing trick well. While the slow-motion suicide is a bit of a slog, you get the feeling that there’s not a moment of waste on slow songs. In the filler-laden world of electronic pop, this might be the greatest shock of all.