Usually, records this obtuse and dense don’t end up being very significant, let alone making any sort of appearance on the Billboard 200 (this peaked at #65). And while it may not necessarily sound weird sonically, like the acoustic guitar that accompanies mastermind David Longstreth’s tenor on the intro of Temecula Sunrise, whatever is going on here is enough to confound, like the rhythmic detours that same intro takes between measures, or the lyrics that pay no mind to the meter of the line singing them.

There’s a story about Grizzly Bear’s founder Ed Droste mentioning in an interview that he loved this album. The interviewer then asked him to describe it, and I just stopped dead in my tracks and literally didn’t know how to describe it.“ And he’s not alone there–as familiar as I am with this record, I still find it entirely impossible to parse. Of course, I could make an encyclopedic list of the instruments that appear and what they do, but anyone could look up this album on Wikipedia and get a similar result. It also wouldn’t communicate just how playful and ingenious the record is. It’s pop music by a band who isn’t afraid to flex their musical know-how and technical skill, and it’s brilliant.