The Luyas, a Canadian four-piece (assisted by Owen Pallett and Arcade Fire’s Sarah Neufeld), have just about surpassed most of what we have heard this year. Bowlegs is not taking this lightly – we don’t just open the over-eight trophy cabinet for anyone – The Luyas deserve all we are about to shower upon them. The reasons being they are as inventive as they are tuneful, as melancholic as they are energetic, as experimental as they are, quite frankly, essential. Hear the electronic keys falling fast, opening ‘Too Beautiful to Work’, soon accompanied with the small strung-out violin notes and mounting drums – leading out with dirtied up effects. These varying sounds and instruments slowly congregate, hand-in-hand, slowly circling the boundless energy of vocalist Jessie Stein.

The drawing board is forever changing for The Luyas. There’s reverberating guitars in ‘Worth Mentioning’ – cracked rhythms crash and burn. ‘Moodslayer’ bangs and thrashes, ghostly warbles open for Stein, broken down strums and broken lines. Slipping into something more comfortable ‘Cold Canada’ jolts forward, glued together with deep low notes and a heavenly yearn from the front-lady.

This is Pop music twisted and bent out of shape, yet their silhouettes offer glimmers of straight-up, melodic beauty – together they create the band’s graphic and vibrant noise. They harness a fine collection of instruments too, colouring their vision, ranging from saxophones, clarinets, violins and cellos to bassoons, flutes and something called a Moodswinger (which is a zither if that makes it any clearer).

Closing the record on the emptied ‘Seeing Things’ provides a soothing play-out, the calmed rhythm guitar and solemn vocal almost alone. When a band stretches, shapes and re-shapes music into something as random and picturesque as The Luyas’ debut, Bowlegs is only too pleased to shape a score to suit. WB