How you start isn’t necessarily how you’ll end up. That’s generally true in life, but seems to take on greater significance in the music world. While it can be a point of pride to stay sonically constant, it’s also fairly common for a band to get an itching to spread their wings. For some it can be a sudden shift and for others, like San Francisco’s The Fresh & Onlys, it’s a shift so gradual that the debut sound becomes a sepia-colored memory. Having emerged in 2008 as a scrappy garage rock–infused band, the group has since cast its gaze elsewhere.

If the first self-titled album has been the only Fresh & Onlys record to grace your turntable then House of Spirits (Mexican Summer), the band’s fifth and latest LP, will be quite a shock. Simply put, at this point the band has almost entirely stripped any bit of garage rock from its sound. In its place is a style that suggests shoegaze and latter day Britpop and tempos very much of the “mid” variety. Sure, there are the songs like “Hummingbird” where the old energy of the original strength Fresh & Onlys peeks through, but largely the record is full of tunes for the twilight hours. Thankfully, this stark contrast to the days of old doesn’t translate to affected stabs at “maturity.” Such pitfalls are avoided by keeping the songs as concisely constructed as ever. So while there is a fair amount of sonic experimenting, it is largely reined in. There are some moments when the codas drag, but they are far and few between.

The biggest surprise of House of Spirits is just how well equipped The Fresh & Onlys are for this approach. Lead singer Tim Cohen sounds like he was born to perform his vocals in a slightly removed, deadpan, and occasionally reverb-soaked manner. If you told someone this was a British band trying to break into America, it’s hard to imagine who would bat an eye. And the band’s adoption of more expansive keyboard and guitar figures is nicely balanced with the jangly style the band has employed in the past. It’s an admirable accomplishment and incredibly well done. The album isn’t necessarily a logical progression, and frankly, it works better than it has any right to. House of Spirits shows that The Fresh & Onlys are new dogs with new tricks.