aleb Mueller earns bonus points for writing a three-page explanation of his album and stopping several times to thank the reader for still paying attention. Tangents on soulless, factory-stamped, modern pop songs, the virtue of human imperfection in art, and our president who “wages ridiculous wars with all of the competency of a strutting whiteboy hip-hopper in a suburban mall” make his liner notes uncannily similar to his music. However, this Canadian lad’s thousands of words end by informing the reader that all proceeds of his second album, At Home and Unaffected will go to a good cause by supporting Amnesty International.

Mueller’s music is a mess of noises that are not supposed to work together but somehow make funky, mechanical sense. He’s at his best when he walks around his apartment and clangs random objects, while crooning in a spit-shined tenor. Pots, pans, books dropped on chairs, telephones, and other random objects around his apartment are clanged, recorded and then digitally stitched together into a brilliant symphony. His math crunching rhythms that skitter and nearly fall off the tracks are much akin to the tomfuckery of Venetian Snares, Akufen, and most notably Hrvatski’s abuse of his household in his sadly underrated 7”, Raume. However, Mueller keeps a good breathing space with his beats that were recorded live, even though the music seems to be on the verge of implosion. Our man also laments over a bar piano and jigs through the meadows with a guitar in hand and the pain from his calluses making him say “ow” midway through the giddy “Guitar/Trivial Pursuit.”

Speculations that Mueller is commenting on the din of materialism in modern habitats is on point. Mueller informs that At Home is essentially a concept album about the life of a bloke who is glued to his TV couch and has no care about life outside—a fate that Mueller fears will be his own. His self-portrait inside the CD’s sleeve bathes his slightly amused face in blue, televised light. He is not an artist of subtlety. In the piano-pop dirge, “Disconnect,” he sings, “The Jesus I know put business over spirit and soul—buy more, there’s no such thing as too much greed / The Jesus I know lobbied the government so his teachings could be enforced properly.” Properly, he puts it.

Opener, “Which Side are You On?” has Mueller singing in a polished tenor about the struggle to think for thyself on ambiguous issues that society claims are black & white. But things don’t pick up until the following, “At Home: Part One” where Mueller’s amazing micro-editing is flaunted when bits of furniture and appliances are scrambled about until the song falls asleep with guitar strums and pops of data making a halo of stars. “Bathroom/Guitar/Piano” and “At Home: Part Two” draw blood with their violent handiwork on the loud beats while the ballad, “The Center of the World” is striking for interrupting its gentle romancing with a maddening street cleaner drone before Mueller returns to finish the tune by the bar’s last call on the piano.

Another highlight is the Tom Waitsian pastiche of chain-gang rhythms and rambling 5,000-word long poetry on “Multitracked,” where Mueller somehow flows the clatter like an ocean tide in a decaying harbor. And then there is “Distraction,” where he indulges in Trent Reznor-gone-bubblegum parody where with a constipated whine, he sings, “I need to buy some happy / I need to be told where to go / I need to stay distracted / Leave me alone.” Quite painful, actually.