Hey Rosetta!

The sprawling pop outfit from Newfoundland returns with a third album shined to a high gloss by Scottish producer Tony Doogan (Wintersleep, Mogwai), who packs Tim Baker’s compositions with more sonic noise, blurring the defined stop-start quiet-louds of Hey Rosetta past. That means it takes a couple listens for the hooks to sink in--there’s nothing as immediate as “New Goodbye” from Into Your Lungs or “The Simplest Thing” from Plan Your Escape--but they once they do, they hold tight, as when Baker sings “And we won’t look back/cause we don’t need that” on the title track, or the singalong “She coo-oo-omes” refrain on “Bandages.” There fewer hard stops, weirder patches (such as the rhythmic breathing on “Parson Brown” and a worldlier lyrical view, which makes sense considering the epic touring schedule the band has undertaken in the past few years. These are not complaints---though Seeds is a progression, it’s not a fully realized one--yet. Things are happening here, good ones.