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Moo, You Bloody Choir, the third album for the Australian indie band Augie March, lays down a lush sound of mellow rock rich in poetry. Led by singer-songwriter Glenn Richards, who croons like an operatic razor blade, the band also includes Edmondo Ammendola on bass, Adam Donovan playing both guitars and keys, Kiernan Box on keys, strings and horns, and David Williams on percussion.

There is an easy, wistful poetry to Richards’ lyrics, like in the kick-off track, One Crowded Hour : “I thought I had found my golden September in the middle of that purple June / But one crowded hour would lead to my wreck and ruin.”

Unfortunately, a few songs, like Victoria’s Secrets or The Cold Acre, are mired in a cloying sing-song melody that not only gets tiresome, but buries gems like: “These dreams are not nightmares but realms I've been choosing to walk / With my little bag, and with my little dog / Who rests on my stomach and barks at the oncoming fog.”

But other tunes make up for the melodic dreck. Mother Greer rings like a post-Dylanesque alarm clock set on snooze: “Rise, rise, rise and tune your pianos, I hear the wind whistle through their teeth . . . ,” while The Honey Month rolls out with the strains of a New Orleans jazz funeral before dropping into an ether-drenched hallucination: “this honey month, the wine on your breath, singing the same stolen song.” Clockwork takes this style a step further, playing like an opium dream.

Just Passing Through cranks things up a notch with a driving beat and apocalyptic echo: “At ten o'clock is when I rise from my grave / And cast my eyes over the ideas that I couldn't save.” But don’t expect things to get too wild on the rest of the album. Ballads like There Is No Such Place, or Bottle Baby back up the poetics with solid, thoughtful melodies, “Obeying a heinous, heinous law / Of an endless, endless love / that governs your poor heart.” This music is better for contemplation than for parties.

The band also deserves kudos for the delicious album title, and the cover’s toga-clad Minotaur. As the cut Thin Captain Crackers puts it: “O tailor my bones what need new clothes / but the lower half loves what the upper half loathes.” Yes, indeed.