Brooklyn indie-pop-rockers Bishop Allen are playing with John Vanderslice at The Social in Orlando next Monday. Coincidentally, I’m reviewing their new CD in this week’s Friday Extra, while music critic Curtis Ross is reviewing Vanderslice’s latest. (Honestly, we didn’t plan it like that; we’re nowhere near that organized.) A preview of the Bishop Allen review: It’s a damn good listen with few flaws, save for some spotty sequencing.

Making a cohesive, multi-faceted album – one that displays musical versatility while still holding together from start to finish as a single, unified work — is a seemingly lost art, but Bishop Allen nearly pulled it off with “Bishop Allen & The Broken String.” The fact that most tracks segue into one another is a conceit that’s easily overlooked when they all feel like they’re “of a piece.”

And that’s the case for the first nine — up to and including the epic “Corazon” (which feels overwrought compared to its original version on last year’s January EP, but it’s still a great song). But things start to unravel toward the end of the disc, with the brash, rollicking “Middle Management,” and the whimsical finger-snapping of “The News from Your Bed.” The thing is, these aren’t bad songs in and of themselves; they just don’t really fit with the rest of the disc.

Of course, 90 percent of you will probably only hear one track at a time when your iPods are on shuffle … so who cares?

Speaking of which, if you dig literate indie-pop that wears its heart on its sleeve, you’ll want to download these two tracks, which are among the CD’s best.

A track by Bishop Allen, courtesy of Dead Oceans:

Bishop Allen, “Rain” (from “The Broken String”) [mp3]

Bishop Allen, “Click, Click, Click, Click” (from “The Broken String”) [mp3]