The girl in "Dead End" is Lisa something... she's a Swedish pop singer.
I love this album, but then, I love everything this band has done. However, it's nowhere near as magical as The first 6 albums. I think Colony is my favorite, and yes, even Reroute is a badass album. Soundtrack is good, but I like it and Come Clarity for much different reasons than I like Whoracle, for example.
The idea is to take music for what it is, rather than what a band has done in the past. If you don't like it, that's no problem... you don't have to. Some of my best friends hate this album, and do I want to fight them over it? Not particularly.
To each their own.
But I think their next one is gonna be sweet, even though all I've heard was a few riffs here and there on their Studio Diaries videos... one riff on episode 5 was easily the best riff I've heard from them in a while.