Three years ago, Fleet Foxes arrived on the scene with beards down to their knees and harmonies arching skyward. Their eponymous debut album found an immediate following and a lot of critical love, earning a spot on many year-end best-of lists.

But while the album was a charming surprise and certainly managed a sort of hushed prettiness, it also came up a bit light in the songwriting category. While Fleet Foxes certainly achieved the intended pastoral feel, there weren’t a lot of individual tracks that made much of an impression aside from the beauty with which they were sung.

Give credit then to this Seattle-based group, recently grown to six members with the full-time addition of multi-instrumentalist Morgan Henderson, that it managed to fix what many fans didn’t even realize was broken. Fleet Foxes' second album, Helplessness Blues, retains a lot of the qualities that captivated fans in the debut, but it adds enough songwriting oomph to convince skeptics that there is more here than great voices.

Robin Pecknold is the lead singer and songwriter for Fleet Foxes, and the dude has a serious case of aging before his time. On the opening track, “Montezuma”, Pecknold frets about the responsibilities of adulthood while simultaneously scolding his previous, selfish self: “Oh, man, what I used to be.” Mind you, Pecknold is 25 years old, so that would mean that he’s looking back to what, junior high?

But his premature middle-aging can be forgiven, and so too, for that matter, should we allow his flights of fancy in terms of quasi-mystical adventures like “Sim Sala Bim” and “The Plains/Bitter Dancer”. If it’s Dylan that Pecknold is trying to ape, at least in terms of subject matter, it’s Desire-era Dylan for sure.

Even if he overreaches at times, the bottom line is that Pecknold is at least reaching for something in every song. No longer content to pen well-meaning but toothless odes to nature, he has given his band a purpose, and Helplessness Blues is all the better for it.

Sound wise, the album doesn’t differ much from its predecessor, with a few exceptions, like the slinky violin that gives an exotic feel to “Bedouin Dress”, or the stomping drums of Josh Tillman on “Battery Kinsie.” For the most part though, Fleet Foxes still provide mostly acoustic, folk-based numbers that rely heavily on the melodies that Pecknold spins, and those tunes are often beguiling.

The title track is a lovely two-part suite that shifts from frenzied strumming to a meditative second section on a dime, as Pecknold relies on the simplicity of love to get him past the “men who live only in dimly-lit halls/and determine my future for me.” “Lorelai” features lovely fluttering guitars and a melody that rises and falls along with the inclinations of the titular girl.

“Lorelai” also features sighed harmonies that perfectly compliment the song, which is something that doesn’t always occur on Helplessness Blues. At times, the combined voices of Pecknold, Christian Wargo, and Casey Prescott come together in a massive wall of sound that’s meant to be awe-inspiring but instead comes off as overbearing.

In fact, it’s a testament to how far Fleet Foxes have come that the finest song on the entire album, “Someone You’d Admire”, is mostly just descending guitar chords and Pecknold testifying his doubt about his ability to be what his lover expects him to be. It’s the kind of simplicity and beauty that need not be embellished, and it’s something that can be found in long stretches on Helplessness Blues.

This is an album that reflects what it sounds like when a band that could have sat on its laurels instead strives for something more ambitious and, for the most part, nails it.