The arresting second album from this five-piece trades the jangly folk rock of their only-pleasant debut for a harsher, more jittery approach. Prodded by clattering drums and scraping guitars, frontman Nick Delffs often sounds desperate, moaning and muttering like someone who’s torn between leaping into the abyss and clinging to hope. On the fascinating “Show Me Your Life,” he mixes awkward romance and cosmic dread, murmuring, “There’s time to kill / You won’t or you will kill it with me,” only to conclude, “Just leave me to rot.” A smooth operator, he isn’t.
