Picking up where Let Go left off, The Weight is a Gift answers questions of lust and deception, greed and love, joy and regret and the rites of passage you weren’t quite ready to pass through. Produced primarily by DCFC rock wizard Chris Walla and the band itself, The Weight is a Gift chips away the grit and pretence clogging up much of today’s rock agenda, leaving only pop in its purist form – the stuff goose bumps are made of.

Harmonies stack up knee-deep as the boys channel their inner Moody Blues in swelling epics like “Do It Again,” “All Is A Game” and the best pop song you’ll hear all year – “Imaginary Friends.” The album’s soft, fuzzy and undeniable centerpiece, “Always Love,” issues a twinkling conviction while “What Is Your Secret” pilots the arrival of a brutal truth. Throughout, even within the more soft-spoken moments on The Weight is a Gift (“Comes a Time” and the eerily beautiful “Your Legs Grow”), it is Caws’ profoundly emotive and angelic voice that makes this album not just something to hear, but something you feel in your gut.

It plays out like the best bedtime story: One that riles you up, spooks you a bit, makes you think, then eases your mind. And when you go to sleep, you might know a little something you didn’t when you woke up that day