It's last night, and I am not where I want to be, because I am not in Rochester, attending the Umphrey's McGee concert. How often does your one of your favorite bands release its new album and play a show in a nearby city on the same day? But alas, the constraints of time and wallet kept me in Buffalo, and I'll bet that the show I missed was one for the ages, considering the occasion: Death By Stereo, UM's sixth studio album, hit record stores Tuesday. Instead of sitting and doing nothing, though, I did the next-best thing. I bought the album on iTunes to review it for buffaBLOG.

This band is not the prog-giant we saw on the last UM offering, 2009's Mantis; instead of playing extremely technical riffs, grooves are established, and the band efficiently travels upon them for as far as they were meant to go, and no further. This is especially apparent on two of lead-guitarist Jake Cinninger's offerings, "Booth Love" and "Deeper," both of which evoke some serious funkiness. The former uses a horn section to casually dub things out, while the latter is a serious funk monster, a combination of George Clinton, 2001 Dr. Dre, a creatively used string section, and hypnotizing vocals.

The other singer/guitarist, Brendan Bayliss, is no slouch, either. The second track, "Domino Theory," is perhaps the most clever, straight-ahead rocker that UM has ever come up with. The huge riffs, tough-guy vocals, and bass-only main-riff reset bring The Hives, Queens of the Stone Age, and Wolfmother to mind. After first track and lead single "Miami Virtue" falls slightly short, this is the song that truly gets Death By Stereo started.

Other album highlights include a beautiful bass solo that morphs into a guitar solo via some wisely employed studio effects at the end of "Search 4," building into a characteristically epic UM climax. Also, penultimate track "Conduit" has been rightly described by band members as a quintessential Umphrey's song, containing proggy riffs, metal guitars, jazzy keys, and a section with reggae influences - all the while sounding like one homogenous song.

Most of all, Death By Stereo sounds like the band had a clear objective to create a unified album, a task made more difficult because the 10 tracks span from being brand-new to being played at UM's first-ever show back in the late '90s ("Hajimemashite"). And though I may not have completed my objective of making it to their show last night, Umphrey's McGee certainly completed theirs, and because of that, I had a great night anyway.

Rating: B