ALMOST THERE: Tea for Julie takes one step closer to great.

[WINSOME POP] Even the most casual listener could tell there were some pretty solid pop songs resting under all the hopped-up energy and New Wave influences on Tea for Julie’s ’04 debut, Division. It was, and still is, good stuff, but hobbled by that unshakable feeling that if the young quartet would just rein itself in, it could produce something closer to great.

Tea For Julie must have come to the same conclusion if The Sense in Tying Knots is any indication. The Portland band’s second full-length finds it sounding more comfortable, relaxed and in control with many songs leaning gently on folk and psychedelic influences. This gentler approach has done wonders for the band’s songwriting acumen, as well, with several tracks—the bouncy shuffle “And Winter Calls” and “Salamander Queen,” with its melancholic late-period Beatles riff—approaching near perfection.

None, however, reaches the lofty heights of the album’s finest moment, “Snow Globe.” Atop a shimmering programmed beat and a beautiful bit of Rhodes electric piano, singer and frontman Michael Deresh uses his doleful voice and expressionistic lyrics to glorious effect, expressing a world of regret and melancholy reminiscent of shoegaze forebears like the Go-Betweens.

Tea for Julie hasn’t completely let go of its excitable edge, however, and it’s during those moments that the album falters. The stuttering, Interpol-like “Scape” feels especially out of place, despite some fine disco-esque rhythm work by drummer Jad Simpson and bassist Denver Warner. And the attempt at a bona-fide epic—“Lamplights & The Long Walk”—sounds like a band overreaching its boundaries and falling flat as a result.

Knots is, in this respect, a perfect album for our digital age. Place the disc in your computer, cut out the aforementioned tracks, as well as the superfluous “Intro,” “Intermission,” one minute of silence (“Number 16”) and short coda that follows it, and there you have it: an absolute gem of a pop album.