Only given it one cursory listen and I went from being immediately disappointed with the slightness of the tunes to ultimately thinking it had a pretty unique quirky air I quite dug. The lyrical thing seems completely overblown in this thread. It's clearly, clearly tongue in cheek- which isn't to say it isn't rooted in some smidgen of opinion. Most musicians I know loathe the fact that so many critics and armchair critics focus so much on the lyrics, anyway. Lyrics are tangible and there to be dissected, which is why critics make such a brouhaha over them and their readers in turn think they're a bigger deal than they really are.

Here's an excerpt from a Lester Bangs interview with Brian Eno:

"The problem is that people, particularly people who write, assume that the meaning of a song is vested in the lyrics. To me, that has never been the case. There are very few songs that I can think of where I even remember the words, actually, let alone think that those are the center of the meaning. For me, music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones of those, or point up certain others that aren't really in there, or aren't worth saying, or something. It's like David Byrne said to me the other day: 'Sometimes I write something that I really can't understand, and that's what excites me.' I felt such a sympathy with that position."

As to the quality of the music, I do once again question whether Cope would be all that big a fan of his own stuff. Disregarding every folky act in Japan in Japrocksampler then loading his new album with protest folk anthems. I reckon I'll warm up to them much more with a few more plays. The sombre air definitely distinguishes it from the Black Sheep album and makes it its own beast. There are some really disarmingly pretty moments (like X-Mas) which I'm looking forward to seeing unfold into Cope favourites in the future.