Although Hilarie Sidney's contributions to the Apples in Stereo are among the band's sweetest and poppiest songs (check out the winsome "Winter Must Be Cold" from 1995's Fun Trick Noisemaker), her records with Lisa Janssen under the name Secret Square are chaotic, Pavement-influenced slices of buzzy, lo-fi indie rock. Neither Sidney nor Janssen has a particularly strong voice, and their vocals are more than a little reminiscent of earlier naïve rock ensembles like the Marine Girls, but the at times near-atonal songs (Janssen's woozy opener, "I Love J.S.," teeters on the verge of falling apart for its entire length) are nowhere near so charming. Sidney's songs are marginally better, but even the relatively catchy "I've Been Watching" is nearly capsized by a bizarrely prominent amateurish guitar line that has little to do with the otherwise interesting song. Secret Square is an intriguing album for Elephant 6 devotees and others with an interest in the indie fringes, but there's a fine line between "artless" and "incompetent," and sadly, parts of Secret Square fall on the wrong side. The barebones cover of the Velvet Underground's "Candy Says" is nice, though. ~ Stewart Mason