Even knowing that the songs are pretty decent, the last thing average listeners (and non-Bright Eyes fans) probably want to hear is a bunch of singer-songwriter tunes penned by an angst-ridden seventeen year-old. That's what Handwriting is, but -- and forgive the Clintonian semantics -- it also isn't. There's a hopelessly clichéd album somewhere inside Handwriting, but the young Connor Kirby-Long has bent and muddied it beyond recognition. Telltale lines like "Oh Jesus, won't you hold me?" pop out of the ether, but they're usually consumed in a mammoth sea of distortion and nu-gaze vapor.

Decimating solid pop tunes with plug-in effects is nothing new, but Kirby-Long's talent for it is incredibly powerful considering his age. His chop-and-obscure method of choice is definitely more warm and Endless Summer than Tim Hecker's icy click-drones. And while his voice, a little waffling and nasal, can't touch Julee Cruse's pixie-girl soar, the songs underneath the manipulation are more immediate than those on Pluramon's very like-minded Dreams Top Rock. "A Little Secret" is a driving acoustic anthem that'd be just as gripping without the Casio-like beat and typical Khonnorization. You'll either frown or smirk when you hear the balladic "Phone Calls from You", with lyrics like "I'll call back tomorrow when I find some worth I can borrow" -- but then again, the superb "The Stoned Night" is about pot and spaceships, showing that cornering the wily Kirby-Long is not as easy as you might have assumed.

It's possible that Khonnor's wall-of-static gamble was a necessary cloak to hide his limited resources. He uses an old PC and a mic from a Learn Japanese box set, so releasing his songs unadorned probably didn't align with the epic notions he scribbled on trigonometry notebook margins. But his approach, all of the dense washes and crackly effects, sounds too ingrained and pivotal to the album's appeal. Several of these songs could stand alone, sure, but it'd be like stealing Flying Saucer Attack's reverb pedal; it'd quash what makes Handwriting special.