About a decade removed from its mid-90s heyday, post-rock has largely succumbed to the same musical limitations it originally set out to obliterate. Torch-bearers Tortoise settled into a predictable, off-kilter groove with 2004's It's All Around You and riff-monsters like Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky sound less triumphant and more manipulative with every touchdown-worthy crescendo. In the current climate, a genuine post-rock stunner like Battles' Mirrored is considered more of a one-off shock than a revitalizing statement. So it's an odd time for cult post-rock heroes Kieran Hebden, Adem Ilhan, and Sam Jeffers to resurface as Fridge six years after their elegant high-water mark, Happiness. The return is especially strange considering the respectable indie success Hebden and Ilhan have achieved as Four Tet and Adem since 2001. Possibly by design, they won't have to worry about The Sun taking off and putting their solo careers on hold. Instead of combining to push their moody acoustic-electronic instrumentals into the future (or at least the present), Fridge come across as a nostalgia act on The Sun-- a hodge-podge of rough sketches dressed-up as a comeback.

While their output ranges from wiry guitar excursions to hypnotic krautrock to Eno wallpaper, Fridge excel most at subtle, scuttling foreplay-- their best work sounds like the first minute of every Sigur Rós song aired-out and deconstructed. As such, Happiness stands as their most complete record, teeming with the meticulously precious production Hebden would later expand upon with 2003's Four Tet effort Rounds. Happiness is a benchmark of homed-in humility, revealing its gorgeousness in shimmers of warm acoustics and careful, cut-up percussion. By contrast, The Sun starts with a track more akin to Hebden's recent scattershot work with drummer Steve Reid than anything in Fridge's catalog. It's a jarring and showy Sun Ra-style introduction adorned with plenty of cymbals and feedback-- a "look what we learned!" moment that plays against the group's taut, minimalist strengths and a telling precursor of what's to come.

Hebden's-- and, to a lesser extent, Ilhan's-- impressive solo material also works against them in this context because we know the heights they're capable of on their own; in that light, most of The Sun sounds like a batch of slap-dash demos for other projects. The pretty-enough "Our Place in This" and Broken Social Scene-esque "Lost Time" lull like in-progress Adem songs, while the rumbling "Oram" and the stumbling "Insects" could very well be sub par left-overs from Hebden's last Four Tet album, Everything Ecstatic. The lilting "Comets", with its simplistic piano chords, loping upright bass, and looping drum machine, has the trio using repetition and tunefulness to its advantage-- too bad it's the exception rather than the rule here.

Free-spirited and Bonnaroo-friendly, The Sun is more of an alternate Fridge history (heavy on the rock-leaning jams of their early albums and EPs) than a progressive follow-up to Happiness. While the band has certainly grown musically, it also seems less patient and focused; much of the record feels like a hastily recorded jam session with a few superfluous electro-bobbles floating above the fray. More than anything, it's the sound of three long-time friends trying to stuff a couple new tricks into old memories and coming up with a discombobulated coda.