After aiming for the heavens with the blown-out and majestic concept album All These Worlds Are Yours, the Swedish dreamers Holy return with Ryder, a record that scales the ambition way back, cuts out almost all the guitars, and increases the emotional content by a fair margin. On the previous record, the band's architect Hannes Ferm built giant castles of sound out of layers of echoing guitars, rolling drums, massed voices, and various keyboards -- sometimes so large that they blotted out the emotional content of the words and melodies. Ryder is constructed more modestly, with Ferm's lachrymose vocals out in front of banks of vintage keys, simple rhythmic patterns, and the (very) occasional stray guitar. If All These Worlds was built out of DNA lifted from the Flaming Lips and other like-minded psychedelic alchemists, here the parts are taken from wobbly late-night soft rock, icy synth pop, and songs that sound like what would have happened if Talk Talk had recorded for Captured Tracks. It's an interesting approach Ferm and co-producer Jacob Haage take; they blend a home-cooked, recorded-alone-late-at-night feel with a yearning, almost desperate need to connect with the listener. On songs like "Flames" or "Aries," Ferm yearningly pours his guts out with the help of titanic synths and pummeling drums that sound like they're struggling to break through the waves of a turbulent sea. These mini-epics are balanced against tracks that have a slightly lighter approach, like the swooning love song "Hot on the Heels of Love," which features backing vocals from Nora Karlsson of Boys, and the gentle "ILY wild horse." The synths are a little less omnipresent on these songs, but they still fill every last inch of the sonic spectrum, while Ferm's vocals don't feel as much like they are teetering on the precipice of a breakdown. On the very poppy and sweet "My fata morgana," they almost capture some of the warmth of the previous album, in part because Ferm brings the guitars out of storage. It's a brief moment of airy sunshine on a record that otherwise has the blinds drawn and the covers pulled up tight. The chilled grandeur of the synths, the stately tempos, and, above all, the depth of emotion Ferm transmits with his vocals make Ryder almost the exact sonic and emotional opposite of All These Worlds Are Yours. Though the differences between the records are clear, it's also plain to see that they were both crafted by someone who knows how to make epic music no matter the size of the materials or scope of the sound.