Little Dragon seemed to fall into a rut with the rigid and unaffecting Season High, and started to pull out of it with Lover Chanting EP, a livelier set with post-disco R&B and pacific dub-pop leanings. They brush the remaining dirt off their shoulders with New Me, Same Us, their first album for Ninja Tune and sixth overall. The preceding release proved to be no mere digression. This is permeated with smart applications of soul, funk, and a little boogie, and as a consequence features some of Little Dragon's most inviting and stirring material. It also sounds like the outcome of a group working everything out in the same space, or at least with less tension. Its fluid rhythms and breezy atmospherics complement Yukimi Nagano's metaphorical references to water and wind, and even the moments of uncertainty and potential dissolution -- from a long-term relationship illustrated throughout the album -- are characterized by warmth, consolation, and reassurance emitted by the whole quartet. Some of the standouts, especially "Are You Feeling Sad?," have a serene, tropical feel not unlike that of Lover Chanting's "In My House," but the most resonant songs tend to involve Fredrik Wallin's loping bass lines. The reassuring "Hold On" trucks along with a rubbery line and crisp percussion evoking an underground dancefloor classic from 1982. On "Sadness," actually another up-tempo cut, Wallin makes like a fully energized Keni Burke, bobbing and weaving under toy piano and one of Nagano's most bittersweet and agile performances. Toward the end of the LP, "Where You Belong" bears a slight rhythmic resemblance to Prince's "If I Was Your Girlfriend," with Nagano softly imparting wistfulness and devotion to a union transformed by parenthood and time. In a way, New Me, Same Us comes across as a statement of renewed commitment from the band.