may be comfortable within their tradition, but even they recognize the need to shake things up just a bit -- and so they do for their ninth album , hiring producer to give them a fresh coat of paint. It is not a major refurbishment, just a slight touch-up that does the group considerable good, revitalizing the band's post- foundation. All their trademarks are in place -- in particular, there's no getting out of -- but they're clever enough to acknowledge their consistency by having opener hailing back to and spend much of hitting their British prog-folk influences a little harder, letting drift into an English garden and flirting with the bombastic on balance these precious inclinations with a ballast straight out of at their prime (the closer is a virtual distillation of ), giving backbone and momentum, making this an elastic, expansive listen, a record with brighter, richer colors than its immediate predecessors. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine