Until now, A Sunny Day in Glasgow was a band that dealt in fragments, ephemeral melodies concentrated upon for mere moments then tossed into the aether before moving on to the next. Scribble Mural Comic Journal (2007) and Ashes Grammar (2009) were whimsical fever dreams, but as their titles suggest, were made with base elements or unfinished thoughts. They were visionary, but disjointed to a minor fault. That’s not to diminish their impact, they just felt like a band building towards something even more grand, expansive, and distinctive.

In our hyper-connected universe, four years without an album is a lifetime, but it’s precisely that lengthy retreat that makes Sea When Absent (Lefse Records) such an ambitious and profound statement. It’s an album that is bursting at the seams with melody from the first blast of “Bye Bye, Big Ocean (The End).” That kinetic energy doubles as the band barrels into “In Love With Useless (The Timeless Geometry in the Tradition of Passing),” the pitch-shifted refrain so ecstatic it clips into the red. A Sunny Day in Glasgow is still a heady mix, taking the noisier tendencies in shoegaze, especially the grotesque bent of the Swirlies and the most crystalline of dream-pop a la the Cocteau Twins, to an ultimate tilt. Yet this time around, lead Glaswegian Ben Daniels weaves much of that influence into his own kaleidoscopic perspective, barely giving one texture time to come into focus before careening into another saccharine earworm. Sea When Absent was constructed in parts, with members exchanging ideas across time zones, and that patchwork of tones and voices gives the album its whirlwind feel. Unlike on previous efforts where the stitching showed, Sea When Absent is absolutely seamless, and its unwieldy nature now defines the band.

It would be too easy to tag Sea When Absent as simply “twee,” though Daniels does prop up a lot of the record in aesthetically pleasing modern rock motifs. Synths and guitars co-exist like ’80s Top 40 manna on the precious “MTLOV (Minor Keys),” falling somewhere between OMD’s “If You Leave” and Nu Shooz’s “I Can’t Wait,” but it doesn’t sound like either. Much like Gang Gang Dance, A Sunny Day in Glasgow are a polyglot that pulls from every angle imaginable. “Crushin’,” for example, melds the computer-world programming of Japanese citypop, with the deep beat-driven groove of ’90s R&B and caps it off with some Prince Rogers Nelson–esque shredding. “Double Dutch” is equally neon-tinted, with looped arpeggios and an earthquaking low-end. For the duration, even among the somewhat drifting wash of “Never Nothing (It’s Alright),” Sea When Absent shifts shape, spins the FM dial, and revels in a sensory overload of joyous pop. If this isn’t an album of the year contender, I’d love to hear what is.