Apollo Sunshine warps conventions just enough to convince you there’s more going on than there actually is. After a few listens, the group’s third album, another collection of mildly psychedelic and self-consciously eclectic folk-pop, actually feels rather modest, more pleasant than exciting, more gently appealing than interesting. It’s as if its members thought the songs were too by-the-book, so they threw in a few weird touches. Summer of Love reveries like the absolutely lovely opener “Breeze” and the hazy instrumental “Happiness” are tempered by the samba-infused “Honestly,” the bald-faced Beatles riff “666: The Coming of the New World Government” and the Beck-by-way-of-Bill-Withers groove “The Funky Chamberlain (Who Begot Who).” That might prove Apollo Sunshine is more than just sunbeams and rainbows—but not much more. There’s no shame in searching out silver linings for inspiration rather than staring up at the clouds themselves, but it would have been nice to hear a bad trip counterpart to the predominantly good vibes. Some lower lows tossed in—more songs like “We Are Born When We Die”—would have made all those highs so much higher.

-- Joshua Klein