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It's rarely as lively as 2007's Last Light, but the interplay of organ, cello, and acoustic guitar on "Brooklyn Fawn" has a genuinely comforting warmth.
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Pond still fills his lyrics with snark and deadpan cynicism, a move that gives complexity to his otherwise soothing music, but even that has gotten old by now, and The Dark Leaves rarely distinguishes itself from the music that came before it.
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The project's shortcomings are even more pronounced this time out since The Dark Leaves sounds like it's striving and somewhat succeeding in being the band's most rhythmically vital record.
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Twelve years into a career made leaden through a devotion to keeping up appearances, Matt Pond PA finds itself spinning in an ever-deepening hole, where questions of good and bad become secondary to the material's unvarying refusal to do anything but match expectations.
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The Dark Leaves is too uneven to transcend its shortcomings, and that poses more of a conundrum than if it had been simply awful. There are great songs here, but it’s frustrating to see them so outmatched by the lesser efforts.