Singer-songwriter duo Sam France and Jonathan Rado – better known as Foxygen – first came to global indie-blogosphere awareness with the re-release with their LP ‘Take the Kids Off Broadway’.

The album reanimated the sounds of golden age rock and roll for the contemporary twenty-something year old, fixed-gear-bike-riding, Wayfarer-sporting, satchel-slinging, music-come-fashion aficionado; cooking up psychedelic folk rock songs in a pot abandoned to simmer, foam and spill over on a lo-fi stove.

The results may have been very pleasing but there was a great sense of anticipation everything falling apart at any given moment, although this was a great source of the charm and appeal of the project. Follow-up album, 2013’s ‘We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace & Magic’ was no less charming, appealing, or neo-retro in aesthetic, but was much more cohesive and pop-sensible and was all the better for it, showing a musical partnership making real progress and signs of maturity.

Interesting then that as we reach the all-important third album mark Foxygen have thrown a real left-hook at us. All preconceptions of the group aiming for a more coherent style, while maintaining their accessible yet obscure beauty, are shattered on ‘…And Star Power’, an opus of sorts that unveils 24 tracks in no less than 82 minutes.

While the band’s willingness to borrow from every band that walked the earth during the ’60s has never been a problem (if it sounds good, play it!), the band’s fondness for sheer, utter ridiculousness while doing so may have been the one off-putting aspect of their shtick – and Foxygen have never been as ridiculous as on ‘…And Star Power’.

That is not to say that nothing on the album is worth listening to. Nothing could be further from the truth, as a matter of fact. How Can You Really is a gorgeous Spector-esque soul-pop ditty that follows, and even makes up for the needless, brainless open chord chugging under spoken word/musique concrete of Star Power Airlines. The first of a four-part series of similarly brilliant songs (Coulda Been My Love, album highlight Cosmic Vibrations, You & I), the song is a mere hint of the excellence that Foxygen are capable of when they try to do less.

The problem with “…And Star Power” is that for every enjoyable moment is one completely buried in cacophony, obscurity and self-indulgent farce. The likes of the Star Power I through IV series, Wally’s Farm and 666, for all their cute quirkiness, are nothing if not filler.

Even the weird and wonderful Cosmic Vibrations is, at first, too weird; what with its oblique opening and flower child spoken word tendency. Listening to ‘…And Star Power’ is at times similar to reading ‘Ulysses’. As soon as you start to enjoy it, you’re dragged down another street and too much happens all at once in great detail, leaving you dazed and confused. By art.

While Foxygen should certainly be applauded for their ambitiousness, ‘…And Star Power’ is a frustrating slog of a listen. It’s hard to tell what they were going for with this. If this is an homage to the double concept album of yesteryear, that itself is the only obvious concept to be found here.

Foxygen have bravely taken a risk by diving further into the psychedelic well they’ve drawn from in the past, but there is a real lack of payoff to be felt from having sampled what they have to offer.