Le Weekend

Proggy but particularly tuneful, Le Weekend sounds like the offspring of XTC and Built to Spill. You pretty much need bread cumbs to make your way through their multi-movement songs, but there’s so much intrigue and allure to the tracks, you can’t wait to find out where they go next. These woolly excursions recall early Flaming Lips in terms of an adventurous, anything-goes pastiche, but they abut moments of spare acoustic beauty with jerky spasms of post-punk guitar. It’s emblematic of leader Matt Kalb’s two-coamp aesthetic: One features “lots of changes, no repetition, or very little, and all these different parts moving in a sort of linear fashion.” The other tends to be “pop-ish, succinct.” The way they brush against each other throws off heat and sparks.

Le Weekend first came together as a quintet in 2008 and released the six-song Suite EP, but they suffered due to the departure of guitarist Ben Ridings and then-wife Erin (aka The Love Language/ Soft Company’s Missy Thangs). Though that could’ve spelled the end of the band, Kalb and his rhythm section (bassist Bob Wall and drummer Robert Biggers) forged on as a trio because they were so excited by Kalb’s idea for their full-length debut.

Released in October, DBLSCRT is a concept album of sorts, as it’s comprised of mirrored halves. Interested in capturing the different approaches inherent in every song, Le Weekend reprises five of the first half-dozen songs on the album’s second half with very different versions. You have the relatively straight-forward dream-pop of the nearly four-minute “Sym2” culled into a 54-second vocal fugue, or the shambling grab bag angularity of “Wrongs (preprise)” countered with the less disjunctive Archers of Loaf-ish noise-pop “Wrongs.”

“Challenging pop music” might sound like an oxymoron. In Le Weekend’s hands, it’s a fascinating truth that tantalizes even as it tweaks your expectations. —Chris Parker