Three years in the making, “Helplessness Blues” can hardly be called a lazy effort by its band, Fleet Foxes. After scrapping the greater part of a first album, the band buckled down with producer Phil Ek (The Shins, Band of Horses) to turn out their sophomore effort after they exploded onto the indie scene in 2008. However, fans of the first album, beware; if you’re looking for a bright, folksy album like “Fleet Foxes,” this is not it. The album is somber and introspective, more invested in recreating the quality of memories and contemplation than the pastoral atmosphere of their first release. The vocal harmonies are subtler; instead of building a platform for Robin Pecknold’s lead vocals, they sound more like ornamentation for the main melody line. Not to say that they are not beautiful — they are. In fact, the whole album can be described as movingly beautiful. But does that intrinsically make it a good album? The argument can go both ways, but it cannot be denied that there is something to be admired in Fleet Foxes, be it their harmonizing, their role in the resurgence of folk or Pecknold’s songwriting flair. After all, there is something to be admired in a band like Fleet Foxes, which is heavily influenced by folk classics like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young, but manages to retain enough of its character to create its own distinctive sound.

With its opening, “Montezuma,” the album sets its soul-searching tone. Pecknold’s stream of consciousness lyrics try to make sense of what fades and what remains: “Gold teeth and gold jewelry/Every piece of your dowry/Throw them into the tomb with me/Bury them with my name.” Framed in the most polished vocal harmonies of the album, Pecknold’s voice sings as if lost in thought, with the instrumentation serving as the background of his mind. It’s a beautiful opening for an album structured around the laboriousness of its creation.

“Helplessness Blues,” the single and arguably the best track, is the pensive epitome of the whole album. It’s the finest example of Peckold’s songwriting ability, a vivid description of the emotional turmoil following self-interrogation regarding one’s place in the world. Through a quick, driving melody on acoustic guitars, soft percussions and minimal harmonies, the song manages to capture the dreamy quality of the worlds of introspection and personal thought. It’s impossible not to associate the tune with the introspection every Stanford student goes through at least once during his or her education: “What the heck am I doing here?” Thankfully, the weight of the song is alleviated by the bucolic instrumental “The Cascades,” a short, sweet track that serves as a middle marker for the album.

An interplay of the fragility and strength of memory, “Lorelai” comes on next. With an opening upbeat, finger-plucking melody, the song builds on soft percussions and a delicate flute line, culminating in Pecknold’s discreetly sorrowful vocals. In contrast, in “The Shrine/An Argument,” he lets out a bellow in the first minute that is stunningly honest, a vulnerable facet of the front man which he rarely, if ever, has revealed before.

While “Helplessness Blues” most certainly delivers a more sophisticated sound than their past releases — the voices are crisper, the melodies more intricate — there is still no denying the Arcadian quality of the music Fleet Foxes makes. Underneath the philosophical questioning in the lyrics, their acoustic music still stands as a welcome departure from the highly electronically focused popular music scene. And regardless of whether beauty makes an album, there’s no denying it makes the listening experience all the more enjoyable.