WHAT NEVER happened to dEUS? Four years ago the Belgian band had the respect of their peers, the adoration of the indie cognoscenti, and the ears of the inkies. And while all that might still apply, an alternative reality could've produced an act of Pixies-proportions.

The trouble, if you want to call it that, might be that dEUS don't deal in brazenly catchy tunes. Rather, their sound is a symphonic arranging of the most off-kilter elements on the periodic table: post-Pavement guitar parts and clipped rhythms offset by Tom Barman's non-geographically specific (alright then, mid-Atlantic!) phrasing and devilishly inventive string sketches.

Take the title song, which begins with an unassuming chord structure and skittish drum figure before the relentless density of the arrangement increases by such subtle degrees that the listener only twigs the unstoppable momentum a good three minutes in, at which point it feels like you've been unwittingly barrelling down the dual carriageway with a severed brake cable.

Elsewhere, the mood is not a million miles away from the more interesting American left-field acts, like Sparklehorse for instance, particularly on the contemplative 'Instant Street', or 'Sister Dew' with it's Television-like epiphany, "All my senses never felt so clear and stark", or the equally hazy 'One Advice, Space' ("Wasted and wounded/Erased with the night/One man's conviction/Is another man's life"). The prevailing air here is one of blurred disorientation, like studying the vapour trails that seem to steam off people's bodies during a particularly good wine buzz, a sensation reprised in the finale of 'Dream Sequence' ("Of all of the fuck-ups that I do/I've saved all the best ones for you").

Which isn't to say the band don't bite: they do, particularly on 'Put All The Freaks Up Front' and the discombobulated rhythms of 'Everybody's Weird', both capable of tearing the roof off that sucker when the band play the Olympia next month. But mostly, The Ideal Crash is an album that repays avid attention, and is a strong consolidating move from a band intent on protecting their individuality.