All was not puppies and butterflies for Call And Response, of course. While their debut was reasonably well-liked by the critics, it seemed that the band couldn’t shake one major criticism: that perhaps the band’s musical outlook on life was a little too rosy. The overly-twee 60s-influenced indiepop the band specialized in seemed too sugary for its own good, and perhaps a little faceless and anonymous—after all, this was territory the Free Design had plumbed decades before, not to mention a bevy of more current bands on the Kindercore label and elsewhere.

Sometime after their Emperor Norton re-release, the band apparently decided the critics were right, for they undertook a fairly sharp change in direction. They parted ways with Emperor Norton and left their rollerskates behind, eventually resurfacing earlier this year with Winds Take No Shape. To compare Call And Response’s two albums is to compare apples and oranges, so obvious is the shift in sound. For one, Simone Rubi has completely taken over vocal duties, and she’s surprisingly well suited to the band’s more subtle and inflected approach. For another, the overall atmosphere is far more downbeat and melancholy, with little hint of the exuberant joy that infused much of Call And Response’s debut. Minor chords abound here, as do gently-picked guitar lines and brushed drums. The arrangements and the higher-fidelity recordings also lend a professional quality to the proceedings.

In short, Call And Response are no longer the carefree adolescents they seemed to be on their debut; it’s as if ten years have passed rather than three. Their transformation into a Mature Band(tm) is an obvious move, but it’s also in some ways more convincing than the Cardigans’ recent Fleetwood Mac reincarnation, and just as successful.