The long-awaited "Thunderbird", formerly a rare example of TMBG genuinely rocking out on stage, has less internal justification for its new muted palette, but the old "Thunderbird" wouldn't have fit on this album and it's still catchy. So I suspend judgment on that.
Almost everything else just falls into place. "Prevenge" shows Flansburgh continuing to take cues from Linnell lyrically, mixing Fonzie bravado with a look directly into the void, and Linnell's "Stalk Of Wheat" makes him the new (or rather, the old) Erin McKeown/Nellie McKay in under 90 seconds. (Of the two, I think only McKeown could actually sing it -- Nellie McKay wouldn't swing "I was all out of juice / Like a moose / Like a moose denied" without sounding like she thought it was funny, thereby blowing it.)
The pleasures that have always been in TMBG's music are, lately, occasionally the pleasures of music critics and hipsters -- do you think that Brian Wilson cover was a coincidence? Hard to imagine that a rapprochement is at hand, though.