Remember this, folks: you may love a band, but the things you love about them aren't necessarily things they love about themselves. To put it less convolutedly, the attributes that make a band appealing to you may be precisely the attributes that band hopes to trample beneath the boots of "artistic progress".

Here's an example from my own experience: in 2003's Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief, Thunderbirds Are Now! brought the spazz to dance-punk. The album was crazed, frenetic, unpredictable, and frequently sacrificed its poppier moments for the sake of sheer weirdness. Now, I don't know about you, but my circumstances require me to listen to a discouragingly large amount of formulaic music, most of it made by bands who are all too willing to conform to rigid stylistic constraints if it brings them a step closer to commercial success. Accordingly, bands who zig -- or, dare we hope, "zug" -- when they're expected to zag are a breath of comparatively fresh air. Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief gave constraints and expectations a good solid kick in the nuts, assaulting the audience with shock, horror and a defiant absence of narrative logic. It was great.

Today, as Thunderbirds Are Now! promote Justamustache, we learn that it was all a matter of circumstance, chalked up to youthful enthusiasm untempered by songwriting chops. The group's big step forward is a satisfying but straightforward dance-punk album; frenzy has given way to melody, and chaos takes a backseat to marketable post-punk clamor. "Better Safe Than Safari" indulges in a momentary prog-rock tease, then hurls itself into a frantic melody -- crazed drumming, nervous bass accents, choppy guitars, strangulated keyboards and Ryan Allen's processed, oddly girlish vocals. It sounds as over-the-top as any previous Thunderbirds Are Now! song, but after a few listens you realize what's missing: the wrong turns and odd diversions that characterize spazz-punk have been removed, leaving only the core of wide-eyed madness. It seems like a sound strategy, a distillation of the strongest elements of the group's sound -- but in practice, something is missing.

"Eat This City" unleashes a tumult of compressed keyboards and jagged riffs, but its success may hinge upon your tolerance of the chorus, which repeats the song's annoying title more times than anyone needs to hear it. "198090 (Aquatic Cupid's)" is far more successful due to its undulating, disco-friendly bass line, healthy measure of discord and abundance of rhythmic switch-ups; it's still far too mannered for its own good, but pleasingly schizophrenic compared to most of the rest of the album.

From this point, you're better off concentrating on inventive elements, such as "Harpoons of Love"'s short but enthusiastic bass solo, than attempting to parse the details, like that song's annoying chorus lyric, "We looked at heaven and we dove into hell." (Seriously, something about it made me want to hit things.) By the time the uncharacteristically downtempo "Bodies ADjust" arrives, late in the game, you'll be so tired of the group's basic rhythm pattern that you'll welcome the change -- and the explosive burst of electric guitar and clamorous drums at the song's midpoint is a definite highlight. At the other end of the spectrum, "This World is Made of Paper" makes such extensive (and hopefully semi-ironic) use of cowbell that you'll hope outgoing bassist Martin Smith, who actually gets a cowbell credit in the liner notes, is channeling Will Ferrell in that "more cowbell!" sketch from SNL.

We're left with an album that, over the course of 34 minutes, revisits a handful of ideas far more often than it should -- and with most of the group's best diversionary tactics removed from their arsenal in the interest of "streamlining", Justamustache's handful of dance-punk tropes are stretched to the point of snapping. The whole Nile Rodgers dance-punk disco thing is compelling in small doses -- but with enough small doses, you can still OD.

Despite my gripes, Justamustache is stronger, more spirited and more random than most of what passes for trendy music these days -- and given the choice of Thunderbirds Are Now!, Futureheads or Bloc Party, I'd choice Thunderbirds every time. Just try not to listen to the album more than once a day, or you'll eventually realize just how much each song sounds like the one before it. Familiarity, in this instance, not only breeds contempt -- it kills what little chaos remains.