Release #23 on Tennessee’s Gleet & Gumma records, Limeboy serve up quirky synth/indie pop with more than a subtle nod to Stephin Merritt of the Magnetic Fields. The lyrics range from the absurd to the heart wrenching and eventually gut wrenching. Standouts are “Dotted Lines,” “Will be Happy” and “Freefall.” “Dotted Lines”, an obvious reference to many of the songs on Merritt’s album “Charm of the Highway Strip,” manages to pull off the homage without coming across as a complete ripoff.

Like many of Merritt’s tunes, the songs on Epoch are short and sweet, some only serving as intermissions or brief interludes. Songs such as “Will be Happy,” a song about suicide, come across as only a bubble gum synth pop song can. By far my favorite on this 12 song release is the duet with Emily Katt entitled “Freefall.” Freefall is a quirky pop song that involves a man and wife discussing a return trip from the moon in which the wife mistakenly gets “sick” in her husband’s favorite hat. Needless to say the “discussion” is definitely worth hearing and it works quite well with the instrumention/loop.

Overall, this is an interesting release that seems to meld occasionally Merritt-esque lyrics and stripped down synth pop instrumentation with the quirky experimentation and slanted pop culture references of early They Might be Giants. An unlikely combination, yet somehow they pull it off.