Really, life for the Webbs would've been so much simpler if they made techno records. Given that their father wrote some of the most enduring songs of the '60s and '70s, all the smart advice should have steered The Webb Brothers towards a gleaming futurism, to float free of history.

Instead, they made 'Beyond The Biosphere', one of the most perfectly realised and shamelessly retro albums in eons. True, it's hardly 'Wichita Lineman'; only the faintest genetic smears of Jimmy Webb's anguished melodicism can be traced in its 11 swift tracks. But the Webb brats' musty, valve-driven aesthetic places them bang in their father's golden era, when Neil Young had just gone solo and Badfinger were everyone's tip for biggest band of the '70s. Even the shaggy bowlcuts and toothy grins are exactly right - these are dorky Beatles kids lost in the aftermath of psychedelia. Only it's 1999, and the whiff of creepy anachronism is all-pervading.

It shouldn't work, then. But in recent years only Jeff Buckley has made such a strong case for rock's gilded youth being allowed near a studio. 'Beyond The Biosphere' was recorded, as a demo, a year ago in the Webbs' adopted hometown of Chicago, a low-budget, hi-fidelity fantasia of clenched harmonies, borderline demented rock melodrama and sci-fi conceptualising.

While it unavoidably evokes another time, what's most remarkable here is how little Christiaan and Justin sound like other groups. The histrionic Bowie-style Weimar glam of 'Sour Grapes' apart, 'Beyond The Biosphere' seems more the product of an era than a homage to one. Like Big Star are being ignored in the studio next door as the Webbs pump out the bar-room power-pop of 'Cold Fingers', instead of being cribbed.

Richly ludicrous stuff, clearly, and you do wonder how an imminent revolution like, say, the advent of disco will affect The Webbs' very particular vision. But as the huge finale of 'I'm Over And I Know It' stretches out across the dimensions, our heroes demanding, "Clap your hands" over and over, it feels like a brand new album your anal record collector friend has owned forever.