With only a little more than a year since their previous album, Japanese new wave synth rockers Polysics will come surging back in late April with their newest offering, We Ate the Machine. Their recently released second single, "Pretty Good," is very much a continuation of the sounds of the last record. They forge ahead with their recent pop-oriented styling which was cemented with such crossover gems as "Electric Surfin' Go Go" and "I My Me Mine." The title track for the single is colorful hyper-power fun, with an outrageously upbeat piano line and a smirking guitar riff. Fumi's hard driving bass continues to push Polysics' more accessible sound. She is beginning to appear like the unspoken star of the group, which is hard to achieve with Hiroyuki's charismatic vocals and Kayo's keyboard hooks also fighting for attention.

The use of English lyrics is once again employed in "Pretty Good", albeit less successfully than on the songs from Karate House. Strangely, with the usual vocoder spots and customary ripping guitar solo, the song tends to feel a bit thin. I don't know whether the band is being self-conscious, but the song title essentially describes the listener's impression of the song. It's pretty good, but it's not great. B-side "Super Spin Girl" is a worthy effort, sounding like an album track from Karate House, with bizarrely alien verses and an overly sweet chorus that is sickeningly infectious. "Uno Dos" is a more old school Polysics experimental tune with rambling guitar riffs, swift tempo changes, and keyboard tinkering. They dish out a little rudimentary Spanish as well, going for trilingual Polysics action.

The attached "karaoke" versions of the A-side and B-side offer up instrumental versions that really highlight the skilled instrumentation by the band, who seem to be getting more well-crafted and honed with each record for better or worse, depending on how old of a Polysics fan you are. "Pretty Good" and previous single "Rocket" suggest that We Ate the Machine will follow in the same footsteps of Karate House, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, considering it was one of the better J-rock records of 2007.