The seven songs on 10 Seconds to Collapse employ deconstructed pop melodies, blown-out folk rock, and woozy psychedelia. A true collaboration Â' Ross and Rutili split songwriting, lyrical, and instrumentation duties Â' it rings with a melodic complexity befitting its skewed, sidewise narrative, black comedy rumination about the end of the world, prisons, desert cities, and errant gods. The two tore into their compositions, rearranging and breaking them down, navigating the spaces between familiarity and experimentation. While the duo shared a vocabulary of pop references Â' you can hear evocative strains of AM gold in songs like Â'ChokeÂ' and Â'The Day Before the Peaches Rot,Â' and gorgeous balladry on Â'Back to the PlowÂ' and album closer Â'Little CarnivoresÂ' Â' it was in the untangling of familiar themes that they found the resonant strangeness that defines the record, that makes it as rollicking as it is apocalyptic. Like the albumÂ's cover art, which features pop art cut-ups by Shane Swank, it recontextualizes fantastical images in surprising, daring ways. Â'We really tried to screw some things up,Â' Rutili laughs. Â'To screw something up that would have been more traditional made it more personal.Â'