Like 2007’s Parades, Magic Chairs can also be likened to its album cover. Where as Parades Escher-esque cover was meandering and intricate and climbing and falling (as was the music therein), Magic Chairs’s steady structure and floating ribbons hits the music on the mark.

Gone are the extended orchestral interludes, the gang vocals, the theatric brass hits. On Parades, Efterklang was an orchestra. Here, they are a band. There are drum sets, chord changes, heavy bass lines, and a frontman. These are songs, not movements. Pop music, not orchestral pop. Unlike anything on Parades, these songs could easily be played stripped down to just a piano and voice.

But I keep asking myself if that means it isn’t good. Needless to say, it wasn’t what I expected when I bought an Efterklang record. But it still has plenty of charm. Who cares if they aren’t writing hymns to human existence anymore when what they give us is as enjoyable as I was Playing Drums or Harmonics, or the Efterklang-does-disco Full Moon? Accessible Efterklang is still Efterklang, after all.