David-Ivar Herman Düne and Cosmic Neman are so acclimated to nonstop touring that more than a dozen years after releasing their first album as Herman Düne, 2011's Strange Moosic marks the first time they've gone into the studio without having played the songs in front of an audience first. It also finds the French-Swiss duo working with an American producer, Adam Selzer, who has previously collaborated with the Decemberists, M. Ward, and Jolie Holland, but while these factors make a difference in the final product, Strange Moosic sounds very much like a Herman Düne album, and the new working methods complement the band's music rather than distracting from it. As a vocalist, Düne recalls some continental cross between Jonathan Richman and Lloyd Cole, and on this batch of songs, he sounds witty, conversational, and clever enough to express a great deal in a few words, working one smart turn of phrase after another on "The Rock," "Magician," and "Tell Me Something I Don't Know," and his guitar work is concise but full of fire. Neman's drumming is steady, inventive, and gently implacable, a model of calm insistence that can rise up when needed but stays in the middle distance most of the time. Ben Pleng, the duo's frequent collaborator, lends elegant basslines to these tunes, and Selzer has brought in a handful of friends to add backing vocals, keyboards, and steel guitar on several songs, and though the album still has the spare and intimate sound of their best work, the songs feel full-bodied and well detailed, and the result is one of the strongest albums of Herman Düne's career to date. Strange Moosic adds just enough new flavors to bring out what's best in Herman Düne's music, and what they have to offer here is refreshing, satisfying stuff.