There’s a rare quality to Alt-J that I can’t quite wrap my head around. What was it about 2012’s An Awesome Wave that brought us all together to fall in love with such a sound? What was it about “Breezeblocks” that caused such electric energy in the crowd last year at Bonnaroo? It’s a remarkable thing to say that a group’s live performance is essentially identical to their album and mean it as a compliment.

With An Awesome Wave, Alt-J comforted and captivated us with their angelic harmonies, head-bobbing synths, and somber tone. We were hypnotized. Now with This Is All Yours out today, can we say the same? Does this trance hold?

This Is All Yours reaches far enough so that it can’t fall under a list of B-sides from An Awesome Wave, and its ambitions essentially stop there. The first quarter of the album definitely gives you the sense that the album’s heading in a good direction with its soft vocals and eastern grooves, all of which lead up to the album’s highlight and first jolt of energy, “Every Other Freckle”, where singer Joe Newman’s recitation of the track’s title give the album its only true hook.

The next track, “Left Hand Free”, comes in with a vocal riff ripped straight from Tracy Chapman. The song continues then with a sense of confidence that it deserves all the radio play and licensing requests it’s about to receive. With its lethargic blues guitar riff that sounds like something left off a weak Black Keys album, “Left Hand Free” completely veers the album off course and brings all its momentum to a halt. When the next interlude, titled “Garden of England” comes in to recover with woodwinds, all of which could be recorders by this point with how amateur “Left Hand Free” sounded, we’re still a little thrown off and beginning to come down.

The latter half of the album tries well to make us forget “Left Hand Free”, and it does for the most part. It soon regains its sun bright composition, and with “Hunger of the Pine”, we hear the Alt-J with whom we all fell in love back in 2012. We hear a band progressing and learning not to fear their alt-pop roots. The 4 songs that follow, though, while pleasant and acceptable, hold few memorable moments, with the exception of “Bloodflood Pt. II”, which skirts by by being just a few steps above being a clever remix of An Awesome Wave‘s best song.

There are hints on This Is All Yours of an Alt-J to come, one that’s more cohesive and daring and exciting as they were when they first appeared on the scene. Unfortunately, as for right now, they’re a bit of a mess, scrambling to find the next ladder rung to climb. We were so close to a solid sophomore album, and yet with an underwhelming second half and the inclusion of a track that should have definitely been left in the studio, we’re stuck waiting another two or so years for that indescribably hypnotic and snug feeling again.