Part of Ra Ra Riot's charm lies in their ability to skillfully conduct such themes within their music. In their songs lie an intense intermingling of the morose and the ecstatic. They present these dual forces without diminishing the emotional impact of either element, and this impressive co-mingling is best displayed in Dying Is Fine, a song about coping with certain realisations that is set against a happy dance background.

But this masterful command of opposing elements is also found throughout the entirety of The Rhumb Line, Ra Ra Riot's full-length debut. Here, the New York sextet have crafted a swirling mixture of indie-pop dance beats, soulful string arrangements, and catchy, effortless-sounding melodies.

The Rhumb Line starts out with a trio of dance tunes, each with a different aspect of indie rock folded into it. Opening track Ghost Under Rocks elicits a bouncy dance, with chugging guitars rolling along like a steam engine that's punctuated with the short whistles of string accents. Each Year immediately recalls the dance minimalism of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, with bare-bones guitar riffs joining springy hi-hat offbeat hits.

The sweetly bowed strings and the syncopated, stylised drumming on St. Peter's Day Festival justify comparisons to fellow New Yorkers Vampire Weekend, though Ra Ra Riot manage to distance themselves enough from the common ground of Paul Simon's influences to stave off any extensive comparisons to the Vampire boys.

With the heartfelt diversions of Winter '05 and Can You Tell in the midsection of the album, the band's scientific reference in their album's title starts to make profound sense. The "Rhumb Line" is the term for an imaginary curved line of constant bearing that encircles the globe from pole to pole (almost like a stripe around an old barber's pole).

While Ra Ra Riot's album certainly doesn't sound like it develops linearly, it does appear to fit the soundtrack of a wide-curving line. On one bank of the line, Too Too Fast pays direct homage to '80s pop; as the line continues, it weaves into a graceful cover of a rather absurd Kate Bush song, Suspended in Gaffa.

Carefree melodies abound on The Rhumb Line. Reminiscent of The Magic Numbers' Romeo, Ra Ra Riot's frontman Wes Miles spins his words out with a beautiful ring to them, pairing catchy melodies with a glimmering timbre. But like James Mercer's work in The Shins, these beautiful sounding words also have weight.

In the very first song, Miles offers "Here you are, you are breathing life in a ghost / Under rocks, like notes found in pocket / Coats of your fathers, lost and forgotten." He avoids nursery rhymes with smooth enjambment and internal rhymes, giving a nice rhythm to every turn of phrase - a wonderful setting for a song about changing viewpoints and subtle observations.

Despite the fact that Vampire Weekend grabbed most of the spotlight in this niche of indie rock earlier this year, Ra Ra Riot have done a wonderful job crafting their debut. Maybe now they can suck some of the life out of their over-hyped New York peers with this release, which deserves just as much attention.

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end of year feature musicOMH's 50 Best Albums Of 2009 From the nearly 700 albums we reviewed this year, which did our writers love the most? Introduction 50-41 | 40-31 | 30-21 20-11 | 10-4 | 1-3