DAWES, “Misadventures of Doomscroller.”

Misadventures of Doomscroller, the latest album by Dawes, captures the mood and spirit of a certain type of “doomscroller”—namely, the well-schooled, privileged, complacent moderate/liberal. These folks are observant enough to pooh-pooh and tsk-tsk the sorry state of world affairs, but they don’t typically get riled up enough to do much about it. Sure, they might talk amongst their fellow privileged types or post something on social media—and certainly, they can be counted on to vote for the “most reasonable” or “least divisive” candidate—but God forbid they do anything to miss tee time, yoga class or happy hour.

Granted, channeling this cohort’s general tenor counts as an achievement of sorts. Also, the album leaves no doubt that these four Angelenos can play their instruments. Doomscroller’s seven tracks—six of which are at least five and a half minutes long—give the band plenty of room for key changes, tempo changes, slick solos and grooves as smooth as top-shelf scotch.

But despite the pleasures of the group’s music—and maybe even because of them—listeners who more actively crave some kind of social justice and progress might find all this a little too smug.

Doomscroller begins with the nine-and-a-half-minute “Someone Else’s Café / Doomscroller Tries to Relax.” Though it sets up the album’s themes and tone well enough, the track’s ornateness and grandiosity seem more fitting for a finale than an opener. By the time that the stately, luxuriously mournful finale comes around, some listeners may feel that the album’s already over just as it’s begun.

In any case, the track starts with some discreet drum fills before shifting to a sprightly jazz-funk groove and a tinkling, three-note keyboard riff that will stay stuck in your head for the next few days. In a breathy, mellow tenor, frontman Taylor Goldsmith addresses an unnamed and vaguely defined meanie. They can “Polish up the prisons/ And put all your critics there,” he warns, but they’re still “waiting tables/ In someone else’s café.”

As Goldsmith explained in a recent news release, this beginning section “could be about tyrants… But it could also be about anyone who thinks that a little more control is gonna make everything OK.” Or, to borrow a phrase from a famously equanimous and even-handed statesman, there are uncool people on both sides.

Anyway, the band skips along for about three minutes and 40 seconds before breaking into a fusion-lite instrumental passage with burbling bass and rippling guitar. Around the 5:25-mark comes the aforementioned finale, in which the band urges people to “enjoy each other’s company/ On the brink of our despair.” The Eagles-like harmonies from Goldsmith and his bandmates make that despair sound about as agonizing as having to buy nosebleed seats for Jackson Browne.

Next up is the comparatively terse “Comes In Waves,” on which Goldsmith moans about feeling like “A boy that grows up in a beach town/ And never learns to surf” over a nimbly loping beat. “Am I losing my intensity?” he asks rhetorically at one point, to which some snarkier listeners might respond, “Did you have any to begin with?” However, even those listeners would concede the prettiness of Goldsmith’s high end as he sails effortlessly through the melisma of the chorus.

Single “Everything is Permanent” follows. The straight-ahead rhythm, ringing guitars and deceptively sunny tune sound a bit like Dire Straits or Elvis Costello. On the other hand, the lyrics’ sniffy, shallow critique of the internet’s impact on society recalls the juxtapositions of Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble” but without that song’s sense of wonder or horror. Also, why exactly should the “you” in the song feel guilty for getting mad at “some controversial stranger/ Who swears the virus didn’t exist?” A good chunk of the million-plus dead Americans would probably get mad too, if they could.

The peppy “Ghost in the Machine” has a pleasant Allman-Brothers-visit-Laurel-Canyon feel, complete with chugging blues riff and elegant guitar soloing. The folk-inflected “Joke In There Somewhere” casts a mopey eye on modern suburbia.

Soothing instrumental “Joke In There Somewhere (Outro)” gives listeners a minute and 38 seconds to cool down from that not-so-rough ride before they come to the album’s closer, “Sound That No One Made / Doomscroller Sunrise.” Some ominous distortion and drones give way to an ambling depiction of the bleary morning after a raging party. If anyone feels unsatisfied even after the polite jamming near the end, they should check out the latest by Alt-J, Arcade Fire or the Drive-By Truckers.

Follow reporter Ben Schultz at Instagram.com/benjamin.schultz1.