Funny thing about family: You never really know the full sum of the role they play in your life until they’re gone. For Eisley, the family-centric Texas dream-pop band, that comparison extends to music as well. I’m Only Dreaming, the group’s fourth full-length album, is the first since the departure of guitarist Chauntelle D’Agostino and co-frontwoman/keyboardist Stacy King, both of whom had been with the band since the beginning. And while the new direction is dreamier, sweeter, and more consistent than past records, it’s a little too much of a piece: The music is accomplished, but the songs and production are incredibly repetitive, leading to an album that is pleasant enough to listen to, but not terribly memorable.
The Fleetwood Mac comparisons never fully fit the group, but now it makes almost no sense. Far more shoegaze Americana than the ’70s-influenced pop rock found on previous albums, I’m Only Dreaming dispenses with a variety of sounds and structures in favor of a single mood—yearning and wistful dreaminess—that it spreads across 11 tracks. Remaining singer Sherri Dupree-Bemis has a lovely, fragile voice, but not much range, and her vocal melodies tend to follow the same patterns time and again throughout the record, as do the lyrics. Nearly every song is a variant on “I love you, but you’re like this, and I’m like this, it’s sad but it’s wonderful,” with too many fumbling and easy allusions and metaphors to make it come alive. “I feel so sorry, I feel so sick, I’ve been trying to meet you but I wasn’t in the right place,” she sings on “My Best Friend,” like someone murmuring excuses for their behavior. Too often, that’s the impression left: Dupree-Bemis searching for lyrics and settling for conversation, or worse, generic wordplay (“You’re my everything, my sun, my moon, make me swoon”).