Cobra Starship mastermind Gabe Saporta has progressively toed closer to the pop waters over the course of his band’s first three albums. Cobra’s debut was seen by most as a sharp left turn from Saporta’s previous work with Drive-Thru punks Midtown, but while the brushes may have changed, the palate—big guitars with big hooks, frenetic energy and a heaping helping of sass—wasn’t really that unfamiliar. Even as recently as 2009’s Hot Mess, the band’s increasingly synth heavy sound was still supplemented with plenty of guitar muscle. It has been clear from the start of the Cobra Starship project that radio pop was Saporta’s ultimate goal; it’s only now, with the release of Night Shades, that he’s fully committed.

But pop is, at its utmost, an all-subsuming force; the largest personalities—the Lady Gagas and Katy Perrys and Cee-Lo Greens of the world—succeed most of all in that (nay, because that) they retain some small, visible portion of themselves after delivering the beast its tithe. Woe be to those of inferior stuff; does anyone expect that, say, Taio Cruz’s next twenty years will be any different than Jon Secada’s last twenty? On Night Shades, praise Saporta for mustering up the guts to jump on in; mourn his drowning.

Not that Saporta’s getting much help from the cavalry here. Single “You Make Me Feel…” features someone named Sabi according to the liner notes, but if it were really Cascada or Dev belting the hook instead, would anyone notice the discrepancy? House music has long been the province of the anonymous diva, but we haven’t seen this kind of vocal genericization in mainstream pop since the days of Cathy Dennis and Corina. Meanwhile, third-rate frat rapper Mac Miller drops a rhyme on “Middle Finger” that’s so lame, he’s moved to acknowledge its lameness in the very next line. These folks aren’t life preservers, they’re anchors.

But the band doesn’t fare much better on their own. Saporta clearly has his finger on the pulse; the transition from Hot Mess’s club bangers to Night Shades’s more gently massaged beats and softer sounds are a textbook-worthy demonstration of the subtle-but-sizeable shift in pop’s timbre over the decade’s turn. Unfortunately, what’s “of the moment” right now doesn’t play the band’s strengths. The aforementioned “Middle Finger,” with its loping beat, minimalist lead and “throw it up” chants, sounds like everyone and no one all at once; the rote “#1nite (One Night)” plays like a Dr. Luke toss off, a no-fun party anthem built on near-beer and a volume limiter—in actuality, it’s an uncharacteristically monotone Ryan Tedder joint. For a group that has gotten as much mileage from their personalities as from their actual songs, stripping away the former inordinately effects the latter. It doesn’t help that Night Shades also finds Saporta off his game as a lyricist, which is why “Fool Like Me” is simultaneously the worst track on Night Shades and the most essential; for all its hokum clichés, cringe-worthy verbal gags and lame 1950s retro-futurist blippy swing, it’s one of the few spots where Saporta’s dopey, douchebag-with-a-heart-of-gold essence shines through in his lyrics.

Night Shades’s best moments are those when Cobra Starship cease to slavishly chase the now. “Fucked In Love” picks up musically and thematically where Hot Mess hit single “Good Girls Go Bad” left off but swaps the latter’s bravado for a mopey, touching pathos, a fresh breath of humanity amidst Night Shades’s robot music. And “Anything For Love” rushes headlong into 1980s synth-pop, biting New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” in its intro and verses, mashing it together with a giddy, silly chorus straight out of the Human League and Vince Clarke-era Depeche Mode. It’s bright, ebullient and packed full of personality; it’s one of the best songs this year, in any genre. It’s a song so exceptionally, unequivocally great that the rest of Night Shades can’t help but bear the taint of missed potential; like a fresh swatch of pure white paint on a cream-colored wall, suddenly the rest of the room looks a little dingy.

Closing track “Shwick” neatly summarizes Night Shades’s core dilemma. A straightforward two-step with a go-nowhere chorus, at the precise midway point the band loosens its grip on modernity. Slap bass and funk guitar drop into the mix; alchemy begins. Suddenly, it’s The Gap Band and the Isley Brothers doing lines of Stardust in a Club Called Heaven, a blissfully disarming swirl of perfect disco pop. For two sparkling minutes out of time, Cobra Starship can do no wrong. If only.

★★.5/★★★★★