Pitchfork

It sometimes seems as if we demand too much from The Aluminum Group. After all, between their attachments to the Chicago arts scene, their chic appropriation of 1960s pop, and their attachment to co-conspirators Jim O'Rourke and John McEntire, the expectations for the band can sometimes seem unreachable. This, of course, doesn't mean that the duo of Frank and John Navin haven't bent over backward trying to match those expectations. Ever since their third album, 1999's Pedals, was criticized for drowning its lilting Burt Bacharach-esque melodies in O'Rourke's over-elaborate production, they've taken a more simple, scaled-back approach to their arrangements.

On Morehappyness, their sixth album, the band has binned the saccharine orchestration of their early work to instead adopt an electronic finery similar to the neon-tinted new wave of the 1980s or The Magnetic Fields' early incursions into synthetic thrift-store pop. The trouble is, on this second installment of their planned Happyness trilogy, the Navin brothers still struggle to sound more than the sum of their parts.

Much of why this record fails to catch fire lies in how-- compared to previous records Pelo and Happyness-- the songs seem melodically indistinct. By ditching their baroque leanings, the Navins' songwriting has become more abstract, oblique, and in line with fellow Chicago pop experimentalists The Sea and Cake. Yet while that band's tunes shuffle and meander their way into your consciousness, much of Morehappyness simply seems slight and unremarkable. On "Snowflake", synths murmur, a deep bassline shudders and McEntire's drumming doles out a near-disco rhythm, but this otherwise competent backing is made redundant by the way John Navin's voice ineffectively grazes above the music.

The Navins' over-reliance on electronics is also somewhat restrictive: Their repeated use of similar-sounding, smooth keyboard lines is tiresome, and a greater variation in sound and structure would have been preferred. Because of this, the tracks which produce a greater impact tend to be those that incorporate organic elements. When John Navin's faint, graceful flutter of a voice blends with the faintly flicked guitar on "Colored Town", the result is a sparse, pillow-soft splendor. Likewise, the penultimate "Wheat and Tare" is an indelibly beautiful fusion of slow piano and a subtle electronic undertow, featuring a divine middle-eight that could have been written for Dionne Warwick in the 1960s.

Morehappyness, then, is a slow stretch of still-motion reverie and contemplation, augmented by attractive, understated melodies and arrangements, but The Aluminum Group's failing lies in their inability to replicate the splendid melodrama of their Bacharach-imbued early work within the confines of a new sound. Unfortunately, this shortcoming leaves both the songs and their presentation sounding a bit slender and a little too powerless.