Dustin Lovelis, leader of Long Beach, California, band the Fling, has some demons to exorcize on his group's debut full-length album, When the Madhouses Appear. Lovelis sings from the point of view of the aftermath of a relationship on song after song, reflecting back on times gone by with his departed loved one. He sums things up on "Out of My Head" when he sings, "I'll never get back what I lost from you," but even before then, his desperate melancholy is clear. The band supports his dire sentiments with slow tempos and a high and lonesome country sound occasionally augmented by a steel guitar or rinky-dink piano, and Lovelis expresses himself in a whiney tenor that falls between Neil Young and Bob Dylan. But the sound is sweetened by group harmonies and by a constant shimmering sound coming from the chiming guitars and the drums' cymbals. It all has the effect of a dream that shifts from scene to scene, while the overall story line remains the same. That makes for a highly atmospheric debut from a young band, one more interested in making its conceptual point than being particularly accessible.