In 2014, I fell in love with Ought's brilliant debut, More Than Any Other Day, in the midst of finalizing my year-end list and ended up wedging it in at #11. That was as high as I felt comfortable placing such a new discovery at the time, but I've only fallen more in love with it since. Barely a year later, the band capitalized on the adrenaline rush of their unexpected success by releasing Sun Coming Down. Despite its swift creation, the album is highly complex, showcasing a marked growth in the band's skills as both songwriters and performers. What it lacks in spontaneity, it makes up for in precision and laser-sharp focus. Besides, it's still injected with plenty of rambunctious energy, even if there's nothing quite as charmingly uninhibited as "Today, More Than Any Other Day" or as emotionally raw as "Habit."

In any case, it's probably wise of the band not to attempt to duplicate exactly the sloppy, unhinged urgency of their debut because it's an approach that could easily fall flat if forced. Instead, they focus on refining their sound into one that is more calculated but also more sustainable in the long run. Tim Darcy's lyrical rambling is more pointed and his vocal delivery more deliberate. The band's instrumental accompaniment is tighter and cleaner, and while their tendency toward unexpected shifts in melody and time signature remains intact, such curveballs come across as more thoroughly planned, which also means that they're pulled off with greater ease.

While More Than Any Other Day in some ways celebrated the beauty to be found in the mundane ("I am prepared to make the decision between 2% and whole milk!"), Sun Coming Down takes a more critical view, exploring the ways in which social conformity dulls our capacity to live fully. This theme is most fully encapsulated in the eight-minute centerpiece, "Beautiful Blue Sky," which exposes the meaninglessness of small talk by stretching it to its most absurd limits. Over a barely changing musical backdrop, Darcy repeats ad nauseum in his detached nasal drawl, "How's the family? How's your health been? Fancy seeing you here. Beautiful weather today. How's the church? How's the job?" As these phrases grow more insufferable with every repetition, it becomes easy to see how they might obscure us from truly appreciating "the big beautiful blue sky." This realization resolves in a sort of optimistic nihilism, renouncing structure for spontaneity: "I am no longer afraid to dance tonight/Because that is all that I have left/Yes!" The change in Darcy's delivery of this single final syllable, shifting from a robotic monotone to a passionate yelp, speaks volumes.

The album attacks other social institutions in similarly satirical ways, from masculinity in "Men for Miles" ("There were men for miles/Doesn't it just bring a tear to your eye?") to corporate devotion in "Celebration" ("Suit and tie/Fits okay/Don't take much to make my day"), all backed by angular guitars, propulsive bass, and frenetic drums. Yet social deviance comes with its own brand of alienation, an outcome which Darcy grapples with in "Passionate Turn," the most nakedly emotional track on an album that largely makes its point through seeming emotionlessness. At first, Darcy puts on an impassive front, insisting lazily, almost brattily, over equally dispassionate instrumentation, "I have given up love . . . I am digging the silence . . . Goodbye to everyone I know." But this denial breaks open over the course of the song, slowly revealing the cracks in such a philosophy, until Darcy finally admits weakness: "I'm a distance from grace/And I'm losing my face . . . It's too much all for you/It's too much all alone." As a whole, Sun Coming Down can be viewed as the more jaded older sibling of More Than Any Other Day. However, the sincerity and nuance with which the band approaches its cynicism keeps it from falling into any cliched traps, and, in the words of "On the Line," "halle-fucking-lujah" for that.