Lucius’ self-titled is a milquetoast case study in making an album with lots of expertise, but little courage. 

Even if you haven’t heard of Lucius, you’ve listened to Lucius — frontwomen Holly Laessig and Jess Wolfe are class-act collaborators, contracted to lend their signature consummate harmonies to tracks by Brandi Carlile, Harry Styles, Jackson Browne, and The War on Drugs.

Their project, the synth-folk-indie four-piece Lucius, never reached quite those heights. Specific cuts have gotten flowers: 2013 hit “Until We Get There” is twee excellence, and their last album’s breakout track “Next to Normal” is an off-kilter disco high.

But their new self-titled (and self-produced, on their Wildewoman label) is an excellent example of Lucius’ sort of insistent, airtight solidity that keeps the group from transcending. 

Their last record, Second Nature, bent synth-pop to mixed effect and reviews: many critics pined for a return to the amber-folk form they’re in high demand for. This album seems like wish fulfillment in that direction, but subsequently seems perfectionistic at the expense of experimentation. 

The record never gets weird in the way that “Until We Get There” and “Next To Normal” kind of do. The harmonies layer uniformly across the record, with piano and acoustic guitar brought to the fore for a sense of grown-up hipster folksiness. Instrumental breaks gesture towards something interesting, then retreat back to another staid verse. Apologies to the Lucius harmony-heads out there, but the trick’s appeal wears off quickly, leaving us ambling aimlessly around a lukewarm campfire. 

It doesn’t help that every track is over four minutes long, or nearing that length. 

This album meanders, with harmonies that predictably stack and build but never actually soar. Long instrumental runways ahead of the first verses and breaks between choruses would presumably lend some play to the endeavor. Not so. These tracks seem prematurely locked, the same way sometimes a first draft happens to flow so seamlessly that an author can’t bear to break it apart and put it back together into something more interesting. 

“First Days” gestures at anthemic rock and “Gold Rush” at psychedelic blues, but without any of the pain and gain of those genres. An assist from guitar hero Madison Cunningham can’t even jolt the record awake, though the guitar line in “Impressions”—clearly her handiwork—is one of its most interesting moments. 

There are moments of sage lyrical punch—as on the touching “Hallways”—but with its indefensibly long runtime-to-track ratio, the album proves hard to get through. In shooting for serene, self-assured indie Americana, Lucius has landed in a Millennial-bait Hudson valley boutique, all beeswax candles and flaxseed pants.