Don’t be fooled. Though Gainesville, Florida’s Merchandise have warned us that they have “blown up” their former selves, version 1.0 of the band, and have opted to go for broke as a “pop” band, they’ve been making dark elegant pop the whole time. They’ve just been creating sonic illusions along the way in order to maintain their stridently independent and hardcore roots. I would place their excellent second album, 2012’s Children of Desire, right alongside their new foray, After the End (4AD), in terms of hooks and sweeping choruses, only the former was obfuscated with static and extenuate atmosphere. It was an album that forced deep exploration of imagined layers that weren’t there and a suspension of time, as singer Carson Cox and company played odes to the inflated melancholy of ’80s Brits without an ounce of forgiveness.

But all said, After the End does shed every bit of skin from the past and enters into the grand luxury of shimmering, slick, and hugely sophisticated statements that could undoubtedly shift the focus of where pop is headed. While the record was recorded in the same DIY spirit as previous albums (by the band at their communal home and studio), the gloss comes courtesy of mixer Gareth Jones, famous for producing Depeche Mode and Tuxedomoon, among many others. Surely, though, most of the vision is that of Merchandise. But the bells and whistles and the ear for radio-ready baubles must be the product of Jones’ direction, and his influence here should not be understated. And though throughout most of After the End it’s an entertaining game of spot the pilfered effect, as a whole it could easily be confused as a lost masterpiece by one of many sub-stardom ’80s archetypes like The Church or the Waterboys.

In fact, it’s Merchandise’s maximalist approach in culling from extremes of a particular era that makes After the End so rewarding. Plastic arpeggios plucked from Duran Duran’s “Rio” start the effusive “Enemy,” as the crisp, meadow-meal guitars of an Aztec Camera song dot the melody. On “Green Lady,” woodblocks that could’ve have been lifted from Level 42 butt up against massive low buzzsaw waves that recall everything from The Mission UK to (gasp) U2. But the latter is exactly the kind of reach Merchandise is aiming for with After the End: anthems that have just as much impact weeping in a darkened dorm room circa 1987 as they do at Wembley Stadium. “Little Killer” has that impact and it’s also the album’s most original track, much more believable as a paean to the past and a thrust into the near-future than something rote like The Horrors.

After the End, though, is only almost there. There are still a few nagging qualities of Merchandise that remove the velocity from the handful of stunning moments, most notably the maudlin Morrissey-vamping of singer Carson Cox. It’s not that he does it wrong, it’s that it happens so much it begins to bog down the proceedings to almost bloated levels. The otherwise inventive and shanty-worthy sway of “Looking Glass Waltz” is a total bummer thanks to Cox’s dramatic navel-gazing. The same can be said for the penultimate title track, where the band, in death-march mode, sounds as if they themselves don’t know where this album should end. Thankfully “Exile and Ego” saves the day (and the record) by mixing all of those bright, kaleidoscopic traits into a concise, nearly-acoustic lament. Trimmed of the flubs, After the End could be an album of the year contender. Regardless, it’s one of 2014’s biggest surprises and proof that almost everything from the ’80s—from Go West to the Thompson Twins—has some sort of merit.