Pitchfork

Seven years into Enon's career, fans should know to expect the unexpected-- which is, in this case, the completely expectable. Let me rephrase: While they've never shied from frothy pop or big guitars-- and done pretty well with both as of High Society and onward-- Enon have come at it from their own direction, trailing their samplers and Moogs in an unbalanced camper just behind the hooks. There's plenty of unexpected and strange sounds on Grass Geysers... Carbon Clouds, but they're far less obvious or apparent, tucked away behind big-rock choruses and spotlight-ready vocal turns. After a four-year gap between records, there's no "alternate-universe" wishing about the songs on Grass Geysers...; they seem radio- and arena-ready, and that's probably where they'd sound best.

By now, Enon deserve any larger audience they get. But the career yardstick becomes harder to avoid when Touch and Go reissues their first album, Believo!, the same day this comes out. While still pretty indebted to the mechanical grind and falsetto of grind and falsetto of Schmersal's former band Brainiac, Believo! boasts gloriously weird and unexpectedly pop moments such as "Come Into" and "Conjugate the Verbs". More than that, though, it felt more inward and somehow private. Hearing songs like the genre- and gender-bending "Cruel" was like peeking into a someone's bedroom keyhole and seeing something you shouldn't have.

Grass Geysers... Carbon Clouds is just the opposite. If the new record has an antecedent, it's High Society, though it's without that record's huge hits or peaks and valleys; this one's more the steady simmering aftermath of High Society's initial blast. Grass Geysers is still full of sleek pop, but with more concentration on textures or accents: The pervasive handclaps of "Mirror on You", the interlude of chirping birds on the otherwise lean "Colette". They've done a such a fine job streamlining, you might not even notice the low electric gurgle of bass on "Dr. Freeze" or the woozy robot growl of "Law of Johnny Dolittle" beneath the song's slinky backbeat and descending vocal line.

The album's centerpieces, and most straightforward rockers, are "Pigeneration" and "Mr. Ratatatatat". The former opens with a drumbeat reminiscent of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" before Yasuda coos a few words over Schmersal's glistening, echoing chords and Yasuda's roof-reaching vocal, while the latter is a tag-team between Yasuda and Schmersal that moves from dissonant guitar crunch to big-rock bluster.

Still, it might be the record's final third that's the most rewarding-- even if it doesn't contain any out-and-out crowd-pleasers. "Paperweights" marries stormy percussion to B-movie keyboards that never repeat the same tone twice. The scratchy drum loop that opens "Labyrinth" grabs just as much attention as the jagged scrape of guitar strings, and "Ashish" has Yasuda pleading over a dub-like throb and minimal atmosphere of early Cure records. Even with the more straightforward tracks before it, it says something that Grass Geysers... still seems like a seamless record throughout.

Leaner and more direct than its predecessor, Hocus Pocus, few fans will be disappointed with Grass Geysers... Carbon Clouds. Four years between records is a relatively long time, however, and to return to business as usual seems, somehow, unusual for a band who have never done things in a very orthodox manner. A little less quirky and little more eager to please than they once were, Enon are looking beyond being a small cult's favorite band; instead, they've simply made a damn solid rock record.