Although they dress like reject fairies from a failed cowpunk production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and although their latest record comes with a free guitar-tab book and a cutesy comic, and although one vocalist wears a gas mask during live shows and the other sings higher than Yoko Ono doing an impression of a chipmunk on helium, Hank Pine and Lily Fawn are really not a novelty band. Well, not much of one, anyway. There are some cracking melodies on North America — an odd smorgasbord of country crooning, clattering Tom Waitsian balladry and Rocky Horror-esque goth camp — and while they can’t quite negate the record’s slightly forced, try-too-hard vibe, it’s a good effort nonetheless. More songs with the quality of the closing “Long Black Snake Moan” and “Big Plans,” and less — well, less of everything — could have gone a long way.

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