I was driving down Sunset, listening to Do Make Say Think's most recent album, You, You're a History in Rust, and I passed a bus with an ad for the next Eddie Murphy movie; it was one where he played multiple characters, one of which was in a fat suit. I came to a conclusion: Do Make Say Think is the exact antithesis of Eddie Murphy. It was a strange juxtaposition that suddenly forced me to take a step back and realize how good the music I was listening to was, especially compared to all the shit that's floating around us in the form of Eddie Murphy movies and Hilary Duff albums. DMST is intelligent, thoughtful, and somehow articulate, even though they shied away from vocals until they used them minimally on this most recent release.

Avid fans shouldn't be afraid of the addition of vocals. "A With Living" proves that it was an obvious progression, and the focus remains on the music; the vocals act more like another instrument than anything else, sitting evenly with the other sounds in the mix. Charles Spearin, member of DMST (band members all switch instruments), said of the most recent album, "It has singing on it, which is a surprise for us... The process didn't change so much. Maybe we opened up the doors a little bit on this record in that we invited some friends."

Spearin explained how the idea of vocals wasn't based so much on a demand, but rather the ample supply of vocalists not getting enough credit. "Alex Lucashevski... is a Toronto singer-songwriter-genius guy, who is also a landscaper... and everyone is kind of tired of him not really getting the credit that he deserves, so we asked him to sing on our record. The same with Tony Decker, who sings in a band called the Great Lake Swimmers."

I would argue that History in Rust is still really an instrumental album because of the way the vocals are treated. This would definitely be the wrong place to look for hooks and catchy choruses, but you may find some strangely, almost Sufjan-esque vocals hovering over the pitter-patter of drums. The vocals are never conspicuous; they don't scream song meanings, but merely suggest ideas, leaving in each song the possibility of various interpretations, which Spearin thinks shows more of a "respect to the listener's intelligence."

"It sort of trusts that somebody knows how to listen to music and is willing to project their own feeling onto it. We get letters or e-mails from people who sort of interpret our music, and I think it's just wonderful that people see things in different ways, and I think it's letting people be themselves a little bit more when you listen to a little bit more open-ended music. Maybe, I mean. I don't want to sound pretentious."

And that is the beauty of Do Make Say Think. These songs are obviously thought about, planned and crafted with care, but the technicality and maturity of the music is never overbearing and never overpowers the humanness. These tracks are accessible because they work on quite a few levels. On the simplest of levels, the songs are just plain beautiful, but they have enough depth to warrant some very concentrated listening.

"I mean, you can say a lot with music. I think the lyrics in a way are a little too confining sometimes because there is so much association with them... You can convey a pretty clear message with lyrics, but at the same time I think music is a little more visceral and a little less in your head and more in your heart, or something like that... There is a sense of combining conflicting emotions in a certain way that presents the human condition in a way that words don't always manage to do, you know?"