The opening salvo on Mamalarky’s latest album sounds like a pre-school sing-a-long. The song “Frog 2” is a toddler jammer. Not what you’re looking for from indie rock? Stay tuned. Pocket Fantasy is a gooey, 12-stack layer cake, shotgun-blasted with rainbow sprinkles by a laughing clown on a merry-go-round. There’s impressive artistry and tight musicianship under all that sugary goo. But I know a secret or two about goo. And Mamalarky won’t mind if I tell you.

The sweet exterior is not an ornamental come-on – it’s a core feature of Pocket Fantasy. The band wants to envelop listeners within a gauzy aural womb, and then poke and prod them once they’ve arrived. There’s a little bit of the art-provocateur in Mamalarky and it's expressed in the restless inventiveness of the songwriting that transforms song to song, stanza to stanza, line to line.

Frontwoman Livvy Bennett’s breathy vocals hang out on the upper register, inviting the audience along on a medium-to-high tempo genre romp through a musical mall food court. Prog is celebrating a Grand Opening, jazz closes in 20 minutes, and rock n roll is handing out free samples. On songs like “Mythical Bonds” and “Shining Armor” the assemblage of offerings sounds inspired. Shades of Deerhoof’s fitful starts. Shades of Lane’s new prog. Shades of MGMT’s genre mash-uppery à la “Flash Delirium”. But the confluence of influence can drag on songs like the stilted and stiff “Little Robots,” though DEVO fans will appreciate the guitar riff.

Halfway into the album, a secret is revealed: there’s a less bleeding-edge version of Mamalarky that relishes a good smooth jazz or 70s AM soft rock number. This might turn out to be your favorite version of the band.

You hear this version in songs like the superlative “It Hurts,” which channels Tennis-style pastiche into a cool, throwback ballad that is pulled back from the edge of banality by superb and understated musicianship. The keys sparkle while the rhythm section creates a perfectly subdued mood for Bennett’s dewy delivery.

You hear this version on songs like “Dance Together,” which stitches together jazzy chord progressions into a dreamy meditation about an invitation to dance. Keyboardist Michael Hunter has some fun with exotic synth sounds on the refrains, but it’s the more conventional keystrokes during the verses that pull the listener into the fantasy promised in the album’s title.

You hear this version on songs like “Mote Controller”. The song starts as little more than Bennett speak-singing over the rhythm section. The bass of Noor Khan leads the way, providing a much needed bottom end on an album that sometimes gets lost in the upper atmosphere. The drums of Dylan Hill keep a spritely time – urgent yet sedate, all at once. The showstopper arrives in the final minute as the guitar ascends a spiral staircase of a solo.

Some fans wouldn’t mind rolling all these smooth jazz, AM rock ballads into a single EP and leave aside the jigsaw genre art rock altogether. But the prickly tunes are part of what makes Mamalarky Mamalarky.

On the closing track “Now”, Bennett sings: “I will never take for granted all the time spent with you…” We can safely read into the lyric a kind of farewell to the listener, regardless of whomever the singer had in mind when she penned the line. 

At one level, the farewell is merely a mechanical courtesy. The studio version of the vaguely ingratiating behavioral norms that govern live performance, where you’re trying to win over strangers and not piss off the locals. 

At a deeper level, though, the lyric acknowledges a bond of trust that forms between an artist and the viewer, listener, smeller, taster, viber, what have you. The artist is creating something. It’s new. It’s unexpected. Often it’s a surprise even to the artists themselves. That a stranger will go along for the ride represents a leap of faith. 

Mamalarky rewards that leap of faith by using, not abusing, that faith and leveraging the wiggle room it provides to write and record an album that challenges listeners’ expectations around what constitutes “indie rock” these days. Longtime fans of the band will be pleased that the new album retains much of what was edgy and magical on their self-titled debut album Mamalarky. Pocket Fantasy is not an album that takes it easy on itself, constantly hitting its own reset button. In twelve songs the band searches out a musical homebase the way a Wagnerian prelude seeks out the tonic. That is, coyly, if not disingenuously. 

Pocket Fantasy is searching music, performed by searching musicians, made for searching listeners. Yet for all that strident creativity, Mamalarky is still eager to please, and slathers their innovations with enough musical frosting to entice the less adventurous in the crowd. Whatever type of listener you take yourself to be, you’ll appreciate the downtime during the more conventional numbers. Even top flight chefs like to throw back a Big Mac from time to time.