You could say that the French Kicks write songs marked by, if not about, distance: former D.C. natives move not only from their hometown to Brooklyn, but from post-punk and hardcore influences to mod and new wave. Similarly, in a scant three albums the French Kicks have worked to effectively remove any of their meager history from their music. Their debut Young Lawyer EP (2001) and album One Time Bells (2002), both semi-raucous declarations of musical roughhousing, were jettisoned in favor of this more self-aware version of the band. Two Thousand continues a melodic retooling kicked-off with 2004’s The Trial of the Century, an album that posited keyboards, drums, and vocalist/drummer Nick Stumpf’s newfound falsetto around each other as sparse yet mobile elements. Where the band’s debut took cues from an affronted nineties mentality, their latter-day efforts sound more calculatedly melodic and produced (something which, if revisiting trends proves to be linear, I guess could make them the next big thing). The repetitive two-chord refrain, double-step-and-hi-hat drum beat and mewling chorus of opener “So Far We Are” sounds like War-era U2 (1983) while the chorus-drenched guitar in “Knee High” sounds optimistically Johnny Marr. Everywhere else, Stumpf’s Tears for Fears rendition either makes it or breaks it for you.

Rejoining with Trial of the Century’s producer Doug Boehm was a smart move; much of Trial could have seemed starved for its emaciated guitar and understated (often absent) bass except for Boehm’s knowing and steady ear. Two Thousand, like its predecessor, asks the listener to invest in the sound of a keyboard, drum tone or, most likely, Stumpf’s voice, and there’s something admirable about letting those things hang clear of sleight-of-hand production or excessive arrangements. Still, despite Boehm’s best work, Two Thousand can’t help but sound slightly bereft. Matt Stinchcomb’s guitar dumbly picks one-two chord arrangements or even single notes throughout “So Far We Are” and “Cloche” and, given that Stumpf’s melodies here are simply not as memorable as they were on Trial, the lack of a supportive cast is quickly debilitating.

In other places Two Thousand sounds too reminiscent of the band’s restated purpose and not enough like a new album. The opening drumbeat to “Keep it Amazed” is almost identical to one of Trial of the Century’s best tracks, “Oh Fine.” The defining keyboard bends in “No Mean Time” evoke the same trick in Trial’s “Don’t Thank Me.” And the overall adherence to Trial-style minimalism drains from the album the personality of confrontation or the mirror relationship between anger-in-lyrics and anger-in-music more naturally explored in the band’s earlier work. Despite its self-aping, where the French Kicks were refreshing on Trial for their complete One Time Bells reboot, Two Thousand finds itself needing to revisit some of their debut album’s more ragged moments. The French Kicks have become too smooth and repetitive; they have been polished featureless and barely resemble four distinct personalities contributing to one idea.

But then, bobbing homelessly beyond the point of listener interest, “England Just Will Not Let You Recover” may be the band’s finest song. Combining all the stylistic features assembled by the band thus far into semi-electronic Postal Service pop, “England” slips sublime string samples and spare claps where necessary to elevate its deliberate and effective key shifts. And only where necessary, a feat many bands seem to have trouble with (there’s an essay to be written somewhere about the novelty and perpetuity and tiredness of the handclap in post-punk indie). “Hey I Wait I” switches up now familiar keyboard tones and insistently hi-hatted drums to affect a return to central (though not overbearing) guitar strums and cohesive, song-wide melodic sea change. As a result, “Hey I Wait I” forms with “England Just Will Not Let You Recover” and closer “Go On” the continued distance that Two Thousand as a whole should have put between the French Kicks and what can barely be described as “their roots.”

“Go On,” specifically, is a teaser. Occasionally atonal and indirect but cohering into something beautiful, the song moves indirectly toward the hidden agenda of its final pretty, cresting minute. The song is a reveal: Trial of the Century, and much of Two Thousand, maintains the minimalist’s assumption of authenticity and the supremacy of melody, but sometimes needs to get more complicated. That these three songs are appended to an album that’s easy to see as Trial 2.0 is less than visionary -- the songs are the album’s best and measure up to anything on Trial. It may be difficult to draw clearly the line between Boehm’s production and the band’s songwriting, but the album’s closing trio is still easy, confident musical prose, gathering opening gestures and repeating details and moving them together with the songs’ other pieces in interesting and unexpected ways towards central melodic statements.

As students of minimalist pop, the French Kicks might benefit from study of Spoon’s “I Turn My Camera On” from last year’s Gimme Fiction or “Paper Tiger” from 2002’s Kill the Moonlight. Minimalism is, in many ways, more perfectionist than endless postscript, but only if what’s stripped is good enough to bear naked exposure. May the band’s next effort pick up quite literally where Two Thousand left off.