"The National Eye Institute," says Wikipedia (the only true authority left in a postmodern age), exists "to prolong and protect the vision of the American people," which I suppose makes it an appropriate namesake for Philadelphia's National Eye, one of those indie pop bands who hide their 60s pop songs underneath layers of mystery. You've heard enough late-period Flaming Lips material to know how this works: The veils across the songs suggest the presence of a higher reality and position the band as priests pointing to it, however obliquely. Read Maimonides.

          "Ag1," then, becomes something of a statement of purpose for the rest of the album, with the singer (the band has multiple vocalists but are apparently too collaborative and democratic to reveal who does what on what track) oscillating between binaries, exploding, perhaps, the paradox of day-to-day life. "God is love," he sings before shooting back into nihilism, "or it's nothing." The answer to the question doesn't seem to be important, though—his ultimate conclusion is that "you will make the best of nothing." The tapes go halfway in reverse behind him, and the whole thing ends up sounding a lot like if Dave Friedmann had produced Sea Change.

          "Ag1" crashes into "Juno3," whose music and form shift back and forth in a similar fashion to its predecessor's lyrics: The song is deceptively sparse on your first few listens. Eventually, your concentration moves from its simple drum beat and melody to the noises filling in the background, and the mid-song switch to a noisy, Neil Young-style guitar line no longer feels abrupt. "I will hold you gently when you break," says the singer (a different one this time), and you get the feeling he's talking to the listener rather than his lover. The whole song fades out before it's over, and you're left instead with an acoustic dirge.

          The most satisfying pop songs on Roomful of Lions come right in a row. "Silver Agers" is a slippery ode to Marvel Comic Books that boasts the album's most hummable chorus, although after ten-plus listens, I'm still not exactly sure what the lyrics are. ("Yeah, hoses golden agers?” The substance isn't the point anyway.) "Lights" is a shiny 60s number augmented with banjos and horns that ends about two minutes too early. Finger-picked acoustic guitars, sliding synthesizers and "ahhhh" backing vocals make "Halo" the clearest fulfillment of what I take to be the band's mission, movement into sublimity and spiritual reality. The tapes reverse again here, though, and we're tossed into the album's sagging middle.

          "Theft" is an okay song, starting off as a musically straightforward and lyrically oblique strummed acoustic piece and adding layers (synth, banjo, etc.) as the vocal climbs higher and higher. "Invisible Raincoat," however, staggers and plods around, neither going anywhere particularly interesting nor making the journey appealing, and "Drowned in Bed" is annoying as hell, its twee, processed chorus and cloying Rhodes impeding any sort of takeoff. "Left Out Dynamite" is a song in search of an idea, spinning around aimlessly in guitar arpeggios and toms. It's one of the few places where National Eye's deconstruction serves no purpose—instead of suggesting higher reality, it suggests boredom.

          Roomful of Lions' designated "rock" number, "Abwehr," pulls it out of its slump with dishwasher guitars and drums, warm feedback and falsetto vocals, and "The Switch" follows, all sunshiny John Flansburgh vocals, pounding bass and squeaky keyboards. I can't imagine hearing this song blasting out of a hundred thousand cars in mid-May—which is what it seems to be meant to do—but it's probably going to make a couple hundred pop nerds happy for two minutes and three seconds at a time.

          The vocalist sounds like he's mildly hesitant on "Waves of Love," starting and stopping his phrasing at first until the jangly acoustic guitars finally come in and push him along. The melody here is obvious and yet obscure at the same time—it sounds like something you might have heard a million times before in a million jaunty pop songs, but at the same time it sounds wholly new and original.

          "Casimir," reportedly inspired by the patron saint of Poland and Lithuania, gradually lifts itself up out of the flangey haze of its opening and past its prog-rock vocals to become a thing of remarkable understated beauty, all feel and atmosphere.

          The album ends with a restatement of its opening—"Ag2" is in many ways more clearly defined than its sibling, but that's only natural, since the listener is ostensibly more attuned to the mystical reality "Ag1" was draped in. The mantra-like vocals it ends with point back to this reality.

          Roomful of Lions is almost entirely a pleasant listen, a nice addition to the noise-pop and post-rock canons, and I hope it's going to win National Eye a lot of new fans. And yet, I have a hard time believing that's enough for this band. Music this rich and suggestive just seems to shoot for something more than amiability—it seems to beg for sublimity, and while Roomful of Lions has its sublime moments, I think it's ultimately more an album of potential than of arrival. So keep them coming.