4 out of 5

Label: Atlantic

Produced by: Charlie Andrew

Pop?  Folk?  Indie?  Yeah: Alt-J is one of those bands, with shapes in their name and an idiosyncratic lead singer and a song you’ve probably heard when ignoring that movie or TV show for such engaging gaming on your phone.  This stereotyped millenial attitude might be reflected within any given Alt-J album: swooning between outbursts of riffs and expressive melancholy into minimalist doodling, eekeing out a couple of albums of material that hold together well despite there being a vague not-giving-a-fuck sensibility just beneath the surface.  Relaxer, their third, feels both the most and the least arty of their releases, its title vibing with the disc’s slow approach, but that patience – on behalf of our composers, and asked of its listeners – pays off with something rather emotive, and perhaps more consistently so than what’s come before.

At first blush, the album only really has two “Alt-J” singles on it – In Cold Blood (reminding me, to a certain extent, of some of the bright, expressive work off of Zutons final album) and the aggressive Hit Me Like That Snare – but strong melodies are present throughout, from the dreamy balladry of the book-ending tracks to the stripped down folk and harmonies in the penultimate tracks, to the… well, actually, this is only eight tracks, so that’s most of the scope, but that also ends up being a boon: Relaxer is a concise listen, showing off what feels like a passionate amount of focus and intent from a group to which I wouldn’t have previously applied those terms.

Is it their best?  I don’t know.  Their other albums undoubtedly more immediately come to mind, populated as they are with more frequent stand out moments, but I was able to listen to Relaxer for an awfully long time and not have doubts that I was listening to some dudes on a recording lark.  While I think perfection still lies beyond – Joe Newman’s lyrics are both too specific and too open-ended to be poignant, and the disc could probably use one more bit of brightness in its latter half – this is a very strong album, securing confidence in whatever may come next.