Perhaps the title of Tortoise's latest album, Standards, optimistically suggests the future of popular music to come. Or maybe it's somewhat of a band mission statement as Tortoise continues to push the envelope of musical innovation to just within reach of anyone open to something exciting and different.

Whatever the title is though, it certainly isn't a statement about how the album fits into the state of today's MTV-driven popular culture of teeny-bopping Carson Daly legionnaires. Or is it?

Indeed, much to the delight of pretentious anti-radio post-rock mongers who scoff at the thought of an album selling more than 900 copies, Standards challenges, redefines, deconstructs, slices and dices convention, cataloguing the results into just 45 compact minutes of musical protein shake. But chin up, Britney and Backstreet lovers, because this group of anywhere from four to seven band members led by producer/drummer/vibes player John McEntire is also delightfully accessible.

Well, if by accessible, one means a hearty lyricless mélange of jazz, electronic, Kraut-rock, dub, classical minimalism, ambient, prog-rock, jam band and kitchen sink-rock. Then yes, Tortoise is quite accessible.

It is no question that the band is riddled with musical influences ranging from A Tribe Called Quest to its own Chicago free jazz progeny, Isotope 217. But successfully bringing them all together on an at least mildly cohesive record hasn't always seemed as effortless as Standards suggests. Simply put, the album is brilliant.

Standards opens with a bang. The hailstorm of percussion and bass in "Seneca" cleanses the musical palate like Drano-flavored sorbet, properly leaving the mind an uncluttered and receptive tabula rasa for absorbing the more easily digestible majority of the album. The dueling bass lines that kick in midway through "Eros" just can't get any smoother, transforming any casual listener into nothing but head-bobs and smiles. With its expressively staccato and armchair electronica-like rhythm, "Eros" might very well have been the reason why England's Warp Records, home of electronic stalwarts like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, and Autechre, decided to sign the group to their label for release overseas.

The second half of the following track, "Benway," is just plain funny, conjuring up images of early '80s freeze-frame sitcom character introductions a la "Three's Company." "Firefly" broods in stark contrast as a brief and properly placed comedown track to preclude "Sixpack," an echo of 1997's incredibly make-outable TNT, the band's previous album. The muffled wah-bass and beats of "Eden 2" savor of Beastie Boys beneath a few free jazz guitar riffs that could have been straight out of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, while "Monica" follows as the album's most impressive and beautifully constructed track. Incredibly mature and mildly erotic, "Monica" blossoms with catchy complex rhythms, melodic hooks, some delightful imperfections beneath heavily-vocoded, unintelligible voices and a great bass line at the end.

The album climaxes with the quick-paced and adventurous "Blackjack," and finally chills out in a pleasant denouement with the final two tracks, "Eden 1" and "Speakeasy," which contain nothing more profound than some courtesy pillow talk.

Too subtle to be rock, too premeditated to be jazz and with too many members in the band to be considered electronic, Tortoise successfully dodges classification and judgment, leaving the music to simply speak for itself. As their best album, Standards is moving, elegant, down-to-earth and quite possibly clairvoyant.

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