The Rapture

When “How Deep Is Your Love?” dropped earlier this summer, you would have been forgiven for prematurely penciling In the Grace of Your Love into the 2011 year-end lists. An undeniable Chicago house banger, with a high-tension hook to match its minor-key piano loop, the track appeared to signal a potent new iteration of the Rapture: steelier, more mature, less reliant on well-worn dance-punk tropes. Their five-year hiatus looked like the perfect tonic, and their reemergence seemed well-timed to capitalize on the ascension of dance music in the indie realm.

In the Grace of Your Love isn’t a rotten egg. After a lengthy hiatus and a thunderous, return-to-form lead single, though, the band’s third album fails to follow through. There are a few tracks here that come close to “How Deep is Your Love,” but a good number are punchless if serviceable filler. And then there’s “Roller Coaster,” a brutal misstep that reveals a serious lack of judgement.

With In the Grace of Your Love, they are making an honest attempt to outgrow their early-career punk predilections. Frontman Luke Jenner, who left the band for three years after his mother’s suicide in 2006, focuses his nervous yelp on issues that have clearly weighed heavily on him in the interim. The album’s most immediate and anthemic track, “Children,” aims its Arcade Fire-level angst for the rafters to impressive effect. “Come Back to Me” rides a seductive accordian riff for a couple minutes, then ingeniously downshifts into sub-bass and ominous synths. But elsewhere, the generic stomp of “Never Gonna Die Again” and plodding closer “It Takes Time To Be a Man” want for the raw energy of the band’s debut LP Echoes. Sometimes, the band just needs a more discerning edit: witness the bizarre construction of “Sail Away,” which waits all of ten bars to dive into a propulsive chorus before spending its last minute and a half on a squiggly, aimless sax outro.

It’s hard to fault the Rapture for showing us their ace in the hole early on. The only problem is that “How Deep Is Your Love” wrote a check that In the Grace of Your Love doesn’t cash.