Despite the amount of grief that Taylor Swift gets, writing about relationships is one of the pillars of songwriting. If albums are indeed snapshots of particular moments, then life is bound to creep into the music. With than in mind, things don’t seem to be going too great for Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes. The band’s 13th and latest album, Aureate Gloom (Polyvinyl Records), is nearly entirely concerned with Barnes’ separation from his wife of 11 years. The darkness of the subject magic won’t hit you right away as the first thing that’s striking is the huge stylistic leaps throughout the record. Still, it’s generally not quite a John Zorn cut-and-paste type of thing. Instead, Of Montreal mashes together a bunch of different musical ideas that really shouldn’t work. So in one song you may have a Stevie Wonder keyboard line matched with a Beach Boys vocal and a glam rock guitar line—and it makes perfect sense. It’s done in such an nonchalant manner that it’s easy to never question the how and why of it.

On a surface level, Aureate Gloom is a relentlessly sunny album, but when you dig into the lyrics there’s a confessional element that though it may exist elsewhere in the Of Montreal catalog, on this batch of songs, Barnes jumps in with both feet. In some ways, 2012’s Paralytic Stalks was a precursor to this album, but this time Barnes chooses to be more plainspoken. Where in the past he’s been obtuse or buried his vocals in the mix, here he’s not hiding. Barnes still knows how to turn a quizzical phrase, but he’s also not afraid to come out and say, “It never hurts as deeply as I want it to,” (“Empyrean Abattoir”). The music might fool you, but lyrically all the anger, bitterness, and regrets are spelled out so clearly it’s almost uncomfortable. Luckily, the music balances out the mood so it never feels like a strident slog.

Aureate Gloom may not instantly supplant the classic moments in the Of Montreal catalog, but it is an undeniably honest and inventive record. It’s both on the edge of chaos and laser-focused at the same time. It may not be revelatory or a reinvention of the band’s sound like past records, but it may end up sitting as one of Of Montreal’s finest outings.