For Joan of Arc's 11th studio album, Tim Kinsella booked a week of studio time with some songs in mind and posted a signup sheet for his many musical collaborators to come and go as their availability allowed. It's hardly the band's first dabbling in oblique recording strategies—previous experiments have included an album featuring one single uninterrupted piece of music (The Gap) and an album of guitar duets arranged by drawing names from a hat (Guitar Duets).

Scheduling shifts sounds like a setup for alienated labor and a scattered, workmanlike record. But sonically, Boo Human is as cohesive as any Joan of Arc record­—take that as you will—dominated by acoustic or gently electric guitars and Kinsella's great, grating voice but accented with drums, studio effects, and the occasional odd instrument. Lyrically, it's as densely tangled as anything the prolific Kinsella has written. Some familiar obsessions show up. "9/11 2" deploys war-on-terror terminology as personal dread (see also In Rape Fantasy and Terror Sex We Trust and Joan of Arc, Dick Cheney, Mark Twain); "Insects Don't Eat Bananas" frames existential angst as tension between science and religion—man is an insect, man is a monkey, god is either a figment or a bug- squashing brat (see also The Intelligent Design of...).

Another theme emerges throughout the album, though: a fascination with those areas that are unexamined, and maybe ultimately unknowable, in ourselves and others. The album-closing solo acoustic number "So-and-So" is a terribly touching riff on anonymity in relationships, the impossibility of really knowing someone, and the inevitability of forgetting ("I'll see you on the street sometime, So-and-So/introduce you to my new So-and-So"). "A Tell-Tale Penis" is deeper than its goofy Poe-biting title might suggest, simultaneously morbid and hopeful, romantic and base, circling around several times before getting to the meat of the matter ("You can end things with your boyfriend/I'll quit chasing you around/but how long will the echo of the tell-tale penis sound?"). That song's lyric about its subject giving in to "her most unlit corners too soon" echoes the refrain of opening song "Shown and Told": "There are corners of your own home that you've never noticed before." Boo Human is full of such dark corners, all well worth exploring.

Joan of Arc play Sun June 1, Vera Project, 7:30 pm, $10, all ages. With 31Knots, Henari Nannon, Alaskas.

Aves recommendedrecommendedrecommendedrecommended

Passeriformes recommendedrecommendedrecommended

Corvidae recommendedrecommended

Corvus recommended