Delirium wears the Beelzebubs legacy like a mantle that it hasn't quite decided how to style. Half of this album is excellent, on par with anything the group has made in the last decade or two. The other half is all over the place. It's not bad — this group is way too talented to put out anything bad — it just feels a little lost. The tuning gets slack, the mix of natural vs processed goes awry. And it's hard to consider in a vacuum because of the ways this album so clearly plays to its roots.

Delirium is not Pandæmonium, the Bubs' 2007 gem, and the Rio that opens this album bears little resemblance to the iconic kickoff of 1991's genre-defining blockbuster Foster Street. While working on this review, just for fun I had a listen to the old one, and it holds up even better than I remembered: Rob Penn's solo soars over Deke Sharon's still-terrific arrangement, a few of-the-era "digga-digga-digga"s notwithstanding. The new Rio's main characteristic is how hard it tries not to be the old one. Instead of opening with the blowing wind, it kicks off with a great big 20th Century Fox-style fanfare. The vocal percussion is so processed there's a whole treble synth ostinato going, and the song just doesn't take off and fly. It's still Duran Duran, there's nothing wrong with it, but the way they bring it here just doesn't gel with the context.

Since You Been Gone — the one by Rainbow, not Kelly Clarkson — has a similar mix of too much computer and natural singing that won't quite settle down. The tuning on Delirium isn't quite what I want it to be on many of the songs — on the one hand, this is good because it means we can hear the voices better than if they were mechanically tuned to perfection, but on the other hand, there's enough other front-facing production going on to make the contrast notable.

Wings, on the other hand, is just perfection at the end of the album. Great groove, great performance, piles of great solos. I wish they'd opened with this one. I also love Would That I, the Hozier cover that caters most directly to my particular tastes. In contrast, Check Yes, Juliet is the sort of loud, noisy '90s song that I used to poke fun at back in the day, but the Bubs pull it off. It was also nice of the Bubs to include a Michael Bublé track, Comin' Home Baby, in keeping with the group's habit of including at least one number that evokes the Great American Songbook.

This album gets more acoustic as it goes, like the fuzzy and sweet Grow as We Go. Jaden Pena's solo makes this a compelling ballad, and the swell of the power chords shows that as much care went into producing this one as the electronics-forward tracks that went before.

Overall, the Bubs still have it. I hope for their next album, they'll wear the legacy a little more lightly and find music that speaks to them.

Delirium, the latest album from perennial powerhouse The Beelzebubs of Tufts University, is good. At times, great. Rarely, if ever, spectacular.

You could actually stop reading right there because that might be as thesis-y a thesis statement as I've ever written.

It's also not a sentence I ever thought I'd write about the 'Bubs.

Such is their legacy and their sustained excellence — if you've read any of my eight reviews of their albums over the last fifteen years, you can hear more about it there — that one just gets used to their awesomeness.

Yes, there have been other albums of late that haven't wowed as much. And yes, the bar for collegiate a cappella — and a cappella in general — has been raised. So what was once innovative or "ear-opening" from the 'Bubs might not be as attention-grabbing as it once was.

Still. I find it really hard to not feel like this album is leaning toward … ordinary.

Not in its sound — that's always masterfully handled by the guys at Plaid Productions, working with Ed Boyer at the mixing console.

But the hallmark of the 'Bubs — their aural calling card, if you will — has (at least for me) rarely been about the material they choose to sing, but has consistently been about a) how they choose to interpret or re-interpret that material and b) even if they opt for faithful translations to a cappella, the innovative ways they find to create those tapestries of sound.

To be fair, bits of pieces of "b" are still found on this album, but it says something about how merely "good" I found so many of the arrangements that I would hang my hat on the 16th-note arpeggiated synth effect in Rio (a variation of which shows up again in Check Yes, Juliet), or guitar slide into the chorus of Since You Been Gone, or foot stomps in Would That I, or the bongos in Comin' Home Baby, or the water droplet in Ripples.

What's missing almost entirely is "a". There's woefully little re-interpretation going on here at all — "my kingdom for a re-harm or an craftily altered rhythm or a layered background that does something unexpected!," I found myself musing far too often. Indeed, what makes Comin' Home Baby the first "5" on the album is surely its stylistic difference from much of the rest of the repertoire showcased here, but also the fact that it's decidedly NOT as straight-ahead as so much of the rest of the album is. We get crunchy chords, we get rhythmic shifts, we get embellishments that evolve and change. It keeps the listener on their toes throughout and it's absolutely delightful. Give me more of that! Or the emotional journey of Forgiven (whereas said journey is utterly absent or obliterated by simulated-plucked guitar strings in Grow as We Go).

Maybe I should have seen this coming. On Prevaill, I noted that my scores would still be most welcome by many a collegiate group. And that's still true. But this is also the first "3" I've given the group in fifteen years. I never thought I'd ever have occasion to do that. (And I very earnestly hope I never have to again. "Average" is generally NOT the Tufts Beelzebubs.)

There's so much that the Bubs excel at time and again — arrangements, soloists, and recording quality, to name a few. The Bubs have kept the bar so high for so many albums that we take this all for granted, but there's another thing that the Bubs do consistently: they are always, always full of surprises. The first one on Delirium is that Since You Been Gone is a Rainbow cover (seriously, don't confuse this with Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone). The Bubs sound great taking on a '70s hard rock classic with all its soaring energy, sing-along choruses, and (of course) a key change leading into the final chorus. With this and Rio providing Delirium's one-two punch, it's an album that jumps out of the gate with energy and will grab the listener's attention.

There are other fun surprises on Delirium as well: the album has an unexpectedly high number of covers of female-fronted songs (Olivia Rodrigo's Vampire, Jordin Sparks' Battlefield, and Little Mix's Wings), and they all work outstandingly well — and are taken on straightforwardly, not cheekily. Wings is particularly compelling, especially as a refreshing change-up to a song that's been covered a bunch by treble groups. Wings has a rotating group of leads, showcasing so many voices in the group (including the bass!), and yet the arrangement doesn't feel disjointed.

While it's fun to talk about all the surprising moments on Delirium, the Bubs should be commended for the all the moments here where one would expect them to excel — and they do. Would That I is one of the most memorable songs on this album; True Becker's arrangement is outstanding. The backs have a beautiful and lulling rippling here, which is beautifully-executed and gives this performance some excellent texture and movement. This is a beautiful example of an arrangement that truly sounds like the original artist; if you aren't familiar with the original song, you could still tell that it's a Hozier cover just from the way this arrangement sounds. A similar comment could be made about Comin' Home Baby — if you don't know this is Michael Bublé, it would be obvious just from the sound of the lead. (Another Bubs strength: picking songs that suit their current voices, both solo and backs.)

Delirium really underscores what makes the Bubs so consistently great: their ability to balance the expected with the unexpected. They deliver the polished performances and top-tier arrangements we've come to expect, while still finding ways to surprise and engage the listener. With its bold song choices and dynamic leads alongside beautiful arrangements and excellent recordings, Delirium is yet another reminder of why the Bubs continue to set the standard in collegiate a cappella.