While it’s great to dive into heady, groundbreaking stuff or brilliantly crafted pop songs, it’s just as nice to enjoy something as beautiful and simple as the music that Jack Tatum is writing as Wild Nothing, and while 2010’s Gemini was a great listen, he’s made leaps and strides heading into Nocturne.

It’s easy listening that doesn’t put you to sleep, but makes you just as comfortable. Songs like “Shadow” and “Through the Grass” play like those seconds between being awake and falling asleep — microbursts of nursery rhymes, dreams and plush comfort.

Much like Beach House’s Bloom, Nocturne is inflicted with each song sort of bleeding into the other; also like Bloom, they are all so good that it doesn’t matter. The peppier “This Chain Won’t Break” is the exception, a smart and sophisticated pop track that I haven’t been able to shake.

Whether or not Nocturne is deemed the best album of 2012 by year’s end, there’s little doubt that it will go down as the prettiest. —Joshua Boydston