The Story Of, Until The Autumn

Yes, this group's name rings with a certain degree of literary pretense. And sure, the odd lyrical snippet — "We'll go to Mexico and get a job on an organic farm" ("The Flock"); "I save this song for all you have done, bold and brave American son, you with flecks of gold on your green camouflage" ("Veteran's Day") — leans hard toward the earnest side of the aisle. For a generation that watched its parents treat home equity like an ATM and the environment like a playground no one was accountable to care for, it's all just a little too rich for words.

And this is precisely where you'd be wrong about Austin's the Story Of — a quintet whose Bodies of Water-meets-Pink Floyd's Meddle musical vibe, left-of-center populism, and charmingly naive "brothers and sisters" worldview are just the tonic we need for these troubling times.

The band's third full-length since 2003 (with an EP or two thrown in for good measure) was recorded in a communal riverside cabin near its adopted Texas hometown, lending a perfectly pastoral mind state to the affair. The album kicks off with "Berkeley" (the movement's world capital, perchance?), a dreamy empowerment ode that sounds exactly like the times in which it was recorded: before Obama was elected, when those of us tired of the last eight years were either contemplating an expat stint in some far-off country or telling each other in hushed tones to just hang in there, that the sensible among us would prevail and to not "back off, we've got 'em all just where we want 'em." Further down the album's running order, the piano-laced "How It Is" holds forth like Darkness on the Edge of Town as performed by the cast of Godspell: "Here we are in a troubled wintertime, it's been a hard year to be alive/The rains came late and the freeze arrived, prices inflate as worlds collide/Hold me up!" Suspended on a high wire of tension, the horn charts come crashing in and a chorus implores listeners "Don't you stop living!" as the song marches merrily toward its conclusion, carried forward on a wave of optimism spliced with a sensible, pragmatic outlook on life: "If it's good then it's just enough."

Until the Autumn then goes out on the strongest possible note, with two reverb-heavy tracks — "Dodge City" and "Centralia" — that examine our complicated relationship with this country we call America, taking a fresh look at a place that has certainly seen better times but has a whole lot of good days still ahead of it. Not quite Americana, not quite prog-rock, but not too far removed from either, The Story Of makes music for idealists, a new sort of mood for moderns that the old, bitter Elvis Costello would never have approved of, but that the latter-day talk show host would eagerly discuss over a cup of tea.