Album Reviews : ** Love and Rockets, “Sweet F.A.,” American Recordings.

Love and Rockets has spent the last decade tinkering with friendly pop structures and arty noise in varying proportions. With its last album, “Hot Trip to Heaven,” the group demonstrated that the suave, gritty pop it’s cultivated is as effective stretched across wide, ambient spaces as it is compressed into more concise, rock-related forms. The trio’s latest offering is a return to a somewhat earthier existence.

The title track is a gentle acoustic guitar ballad, plain and simple. “Sweet Lover Hangover” meshes a similar premise with an insistent, funky groove, and “Fever” exudes a sultry, swaggering cool. But vestiges of their ambient ventures linger in several sprawling tracks that drift in lazy orbits, leaving the occasional trail of distorted sounds echoing in their wake. The rumbling vocal and shimmying rhythm of “Words of a Fool” slowly submerge in a mixture of keyboard sobs, muted piano peals, electronically processed voices and wailing guitar lines, while “Use Me” gradually builds to a carefully orchestrated explosion before winking out of existence.

There are moments on “Sweet F.A.” when Love and Rockets seems to have lost its way amid the bewildering array of sounds and styles, but it’s really just enjoying the scenic route home.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).