"Half Hours with the Lower Creatures," recorded with Portland audio guru and Jackpot! Studio mainstay, Jeff Stuart Saltzman (Stephen Malkmus, Menomena, Sleater-Kinney), is a piano-based creep-pop album. Though hard to describe, names that come up are Rufus Wainwright, P.J. Harvey, Kate Bush, and "Frankenixon (Sword of Exactly) conjoined with Charles Ives and Benjamin Britten." Rachel Taylor Brown's complex, polyphonic arrangements also conjure comparisons to Elliott Smith, Sufjan Stevens, Jeff Lynne, Laura Nyro and The Beatles/George Martin, and smart/poignant lyrics bring to mind Randy Newman.

The title of Brown's new album, "Half Hours With the Lower Creatures," comes from a 1918 marine biology textbook she picked up at one of her favorite bookstores. The title and its implicit declaration of species superiority was the perfect umbrella for a collection of songs about the centuries-old, tragic-comedy of human desire to be king, and to rule over something, anything.

Expanding on the vision and scope of 2006's "Ormolu," Brown�s third full-length and first to really capture what she heard in her head, Brown's latest originates with her curiosity. Call it a fascination with people watching or just plain interest in understanding what makes not only herself, but also her fellow man, tick. This is music cloaked in intelligent lyrics, dissonant forwardness, and out-of-nowhere pop sensibilities.