Pitchfork

Dance-punk. Freak-folk. Crack-rap. Blog-house. Those were some good times, right? As the first decade of the new millennium hurtles towards a closure, those movements may seem like indie milemarkers growing ever more distant in our rearview, but compared to those, a time when quiet was the new loud feels like ancient history. All the better for Turin Brakes-- if you're coming to Dark On Fire after dusting off their surprisingly enduring debut for nostalgia's sake, be forewarned: they're intent on proving they don't sound like that anymore.

Not really, anyway. Though "Last Chance" spends its first 45 seconds staring at the obelisk, in that endearingly nasal voice of his, Olly Knights lunges for a note that scrapes the boundaries of his range and soon thereafter, Gale Paridjanian throws in a dousing harmony while moving open chord shapes up and down his fretboard. It's hard to mistake it for the work of another band, "band" being the key word. If Tony Hoffer's Wembley-courting production on Ether Song suggested the homespun arranging of The Optimist LP was out of financial necessity as opposed to aesthetic choice, Dark On Fire ditches all pretenses and confirms Turin Brakes as having completely moved on from their roots as an acoustic duo.

The problem is, it's pointless to hire backing musicians if you're not going to let them do anything, and on their fourth album, Knight and Paridjanian struggle with a sense of egalitarian obligation. The more successful tracks merely toy with their signature sound; the languid slide guitar of the moonlit "Other Side" is more in their wheelhouse than "Ghost" or "For The Fire", which pinch "Brown Sugar" but ultimately reimagine ZZ Top as spending the 1980s being fronted by Brett Anderson.

When it comes down to it, there's a very poorly kept secret about this band that will likely determine what you think of Dark On Fire: some of these lyrics are just borderline retarded, combining rhyme-first, ask-questions-never couplets with more arson imagery than a Thursday album. "Stalker" threatens with annoyance rather than menace, as in the span of two lines, Knight is a shark and a razor blade. That will destroy all of the friends you've made. Not that this is much of a surprise, seeing as how they introduced themselves with "Cub Scouts are screaming/ Needing ice creaming" and nearly ruined their biggest hit with "My love giving me head/ Feeling very guilty breaking the bread" (delivered in harmony, no less!). Within the context of those dog-eared melodies and scrappy acoustics, that was acceptable and, at times, downright adorable. But now that they're the most upfront element of their planetarium/coffeehouse hybrid, it comes off like the bloviating of someone taking themselves way too seriously for you to possibly return the favor.

And that's a shame because even the most verbally awkward songs bloom with hooks that likely benefit from being limited in their word choice. Sounding like an In Rainbows outtake, the title track builds an elegiac chorale out of its unorthodox open-tuned strums and reverbed percussion before Knights recalls being almost "drowned," before he was "found" on the "ground." To say nothing of the most anthemic track ("Something In My Eye"), which hopscotches around its twisting chord grid while dropping dewy-eyed pap about newborn kids.

If nothing else, Dark On Fire at least triumphs in a "last man standing" sort of way. Turin Brakes are of a high enough quality to outlast the I Am Kloots of the world, but it's easy to understand why there's already a last man standing, since the best and most important album from the New Acoustic Movement all but refuted it completely (Erlend Øye's DJ Kicks). So when "Last Chance" begs "don't ask too many questions," it's best seen as Turin Brakes' mission statement about Dark On Fire.