Actually, they did break up and pursue different ventures. Robin Pecknold recorded at least one solo song and posted it to Facebook (IIRC, removed it quickly), went to college, and played with some other bands; Joshua Tillman released music as Father John Misty just a few months after the Helplessness Blues tour finished. I don’t know enough about the other band members to comment, Robin and Joshua are the ones that I know about off the top of my head.
I was “eh, ok” with Helplessness Blues, too, but I found that, if you change the playlist so that the songs are in alphabetic order (and for my taste, remove “The Shrine/An Argument” altogether – the first six minutes are great, but the final two minutes of free form jazz kill the rest of the album) it improves the entire experience.
Needless to say, I am very excited for the third album 
