Genres can be a funny thing - you can split them or combine them and make up sub-genres, and you can even invent new ones from scratch. Go ahead, try it. Spread the word amongst your friends that Neutral Milk Hotel should be filed under 'trailer park-incest-folk' and see if it catches on. For the Deadly Syndrome, an LA four piece not inspired by Anne Frank and synthetic flying machines but rather influenced by the pop stylings of the Beatles, the folky tones of Nick Drake, and the more indie tastes of bands like Travis, a genre of 'indie-folk-pop' - or as I like to call it, IndOlkOp - would be aptly descriptive. If one were to pick through The Ortolan with a finer comb even more diverse acts would come to mind, but we should try to keep these newfangled genre tags concise.

The Ortolan is the Deadly Syndromes first offering, and it isn't half bad. A nice little collection of 13 songs in which one can hear the above mentioned influences very clearly, there is also a big amount of originality to The Ortolan's tracks. Vocalist Chris Richards has a warm voice, and his delivery makes the songs feel instantly at home on the speakers. The album's welcoming feeling is furthered by its nice mix of tempos; when The Ortolan starts to slow down a tad too much the band is right there to kick up the tempo a notch, keeping things fresh and satisfying and never boring.

Its smooth genre blending and intuitive cadence shifts aside, The Ortolan is completely free of hits. Like a druggy high that abruptly dissipates, thirty minutes after listening to The Ortolan none of its melodies linger. This is a truly out-of-ear, out-of-mind experience, which is disappointing since when it is on The Ortolan is on, but when it is not it is gone, a predicament that will certainly not favor strong airplay or strong album sales. Double shame since the Deadly Syndrome's debut effort is genuinely solid and sounds as if the band has loads of good tunes in them just waiting to come out. This is a band that would truly deserve a barnstorming, catchy-as-hell web2.0 superhit and all the recognition that comes with it, but there is nary a barnstorming, catchy-as-hell web2.0 superhit to be found.

Of its thirteen tracks, "I Hope I Become A Ghost" is one of The Ortolan's strongest numbers, capturing the Deadly Syndrome in a nutshell: great songwriting, awesome vocals, and a melody that is hard to recall later in the day, or the hour for that matter. Seriously, the Deadly Syndrome needs to find just one ultra-catchy tune stuffed up in their hats; they deserve it, and the world deserves it. Without some sort of feeding frenzy there might not be a second album for the Deadly Syndrome, even though The Ortolan is so very solid.