Finally, six years on, we have the answer in All is Love and Pain in the Mouse Parade, out on 17 October. There isn't a ‘hey’ or ‘ho’ in sight, little or no brass and only a sprinkling of electronica. Instead we have cinematic folk rock, utilising stomp, clap, hey’s greatest trick of mixing personal minutia with widescreen emotion. Sparse acoustic guitar- or piano-accompanied verses leap into big choruses full of instrumental layers and echoing percussive splashes.

The drumming is a highlight, crashing through the walls of sound. Recalling Larry Mullen Jr.’s heavy stuttering syncopation on U2’s ‘Bullet the Blue Sky’ and ‘Trip Through Your Wires’, it contributes to the album’s theme of emotional dislocation. As ever, the shared vocals between Nanna Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar Þórhallsson add depth to the storytelling, dramatising lyrics into conversations. And the band have added a number of big choruses to their impressive collection, most notably on 'Ordinary Creature’, ‘Television Love’ and ‘Tuna in a Can’.

But not all is inspired in the mouse parade. Things take a bit of a dive on the fifth track ‘Fruit Bat’, which clocks in at an overstretched 8.17. The four-minute coda, circling around a sweetly melancholy piano figure, might have worked at a quarter of the length but as it is, it is too spare and repetitious and simply drags. The following track ‘Kamikaze’ is amongst the album’s most forgettable.

There are other more widespread issues. The gear change from quiet, stripped-down verse to grand chorus is a powerful one, but used too often it becomes formulaic and even wearisome. For a band capable of writing hallucinogenic fairytales like ‘Dirty Paws’ and kooky-clever lines like ‘I want you to sleep on the good side of me’, it is a shame when the lyrics lose their bite (as with ‘I wish I was happy’, repeated over and over in one refrain), or fall into paraphrased cliché like ‘the road is paved with good intentions’ on another. Inspiration has also gone missing on some vocal performances, which lack conviction, so that what was intended to express sadness comes across as ennui. In combination these factors wash parts of the album beige. And the collection, frustratingly, ends on a bit of a whimper. ‘The Block’ and ‘Mouse Parade’ sound like a band running out of ideas (and tunes).

At their best, OMAM create compelling intimacy and rouse fist-pumping emotions. Come next summer, festival crowds at Coachella, Glastonbury and Lollapalooza will no doubt be singing along to ‘Tuna in a Can’. But the album leaves you feeling the band’s obvious talents could have yielded more. Largely self-produced over a period of two years, an outsider’s consistent presence, ears and insights might have pushed some of these songs in more interesting directions, and got something more out of the vocal performances. All is love and pain in the mouse parade. But that love and pain doesn't translate often enough into compelling music.