I'm listening to 'The Sand Pebbles - Eastern Terrace' for the fifth time right now. There are a couple of instrumental tracks well blended with vocal tracks. It makes for a good mix overall and moves you through the record at a good pace. A few tracks even feature a well-placed guitar synth. The styles are varied and make for a good dynamic.
The first track, a fully equipped pop piece complete with falsetto vocals, 'My Sensation' leads into the Julian Cope cover 'Out of My Mind on Dope and Speed' nicely - a good contrast ... I don't know the Julian Cope song originally but I like it's placement here, it's almost schizophrenic (like being out of your mind on dope and speed?). From there it heads off to another pop piece - 'Moving Too Fast'. This one has a nice little instrumental outro and the vocal phrasings are reminiscent of Bono when he dresses in falsetto.
Next is a nice instrumental 'One Time at Sundown'. 'The Big V' is somewhat epic. It starts slow, then builds into a heroic composition with a hard crash on every four and angelic vocals behind to keep it soft. The transition to the folky 'Dirty' is nice also. The song starts with just guitar and vocals, goes through a few lonely measures, and then gets some bass to warm it up. Nice composition here, and actually I think this may be my favorite track.
The next two tracks 'The Sundowner' and 'Charmed' are both instrumentals, the latter spiced with all manner of samples, apparently from TV and appliances. Both are over eight minutes long and more or less wind the record down to a shorter, more succinct version of track 3 'Moving Too Fast' only this one with the qualifer (The Directors Cut). The arrangement is nice, string bass and vocals, short and sweet, and sad... The instrumental tracks, on their own, are compelling enough, good composition, and good movement. The vocal tracks are catchy, with nice melodies: overall they're well structured songs. Simply put, this is a good record.

- Taj's cousin who works at T-1