The streamlined melancholia of the recently released full-length Misery is a Butterfly reveals a musical evolution for the New York-based, multiethnic rock trio Blonde Redhead. Fronted alternately by the semi-intelligible Japanese ultra-soprano Kazu Makino and the nasally Italian Amadeo Pace (identical twin drummer Simone Pace rounds out the band), Blonde Redhead’s first albums from the mid-’90s were favorably compared to the Sonic Youth. Sonic Youth’s music, a shotgun marriage between punk rock and art school experimentalism, often eschews melody and structure in favor of erratic guitar bursts and general noisiness. Misery retains little of the purposeful dissonance and unpredictability of no-wavers like Sonic Youth. Instead, Blonde Redhead offers up a more traditional, internally consistent album of lush, indulgent—even delicate—songs that shimmer like polished pennies.

Blonde Redhead was moving toward a dreamier sound on their previous two albums, 1998’s In an Expression of the Inexpressible and 2000’s Melody of Certain Damaged Lemons. At the same time, both LPs are decidedly guitar-driven affairs, slightly distorted, angular and punctuated with bleeps and oddball intros that keep the droopy-eyed listener from snuggling in. With no bassist and what might accurately be called hyperactive, yet restrained, “tapping” from the polite drummer Simone Pace, the rhythm skitters like a Honda on a gravel road. Many songs on Misery, on the other hand, are backed by subtle bass lines that grease the chord changes and less elaborate drumming, producing a sleeker rhythmic effect. Particularly on the Makino-fronted tracks on Misery, lush strings and dainty keyboards dominate and replace the jumpy guitars. Even Makino’s high-pitched yelps are reigned in on Misery as she coos and laments amid the music’s smooth flow.

Overall, Misery trades a feeling of youthful irreverence for one of atmospheric yearning. Coolly detached, it is not music to dance to, or really even music to relate to, but more music to swim in. It is more listenable than their previous albums, which, for me, is both its advantage and disadvantage. It is lovely and accessible but, at the same time, one can listen to the whole thing and afterward feel like she has heard only two songs: Amedeo Pace’s more manic, guitar-driven romps and the more ethereal numbers that Makino fronts. There are certainly no tracks like “Ballad of Lemons” from Melody, a jolting mid-album instrumental oddity of digitized throbbing and carnival music sampling. Which is fine unless, of course, you’re in the mood for somewhat more of a spectacle.