There’s a good reason that the cover of Deerhunter’s excellent new record, Halcyon Digest, is a photo of a circus freak—er, special performer?—praying up to the heavens. The album is by all appearances an electro-fuzz opera on the contradictions and failings of religion. “You know He loves you the best,” frontman Bradford Cox pouts to a potential prayer-partner during “Helicopter.” And on “Revival,” the record’s first single, he croons, “Darkness always / it doesn’t make much sense” as the congregation works itself into an rapturous lather. Sonically, Halcyon Digest is a small but significant departure from anything the band has recorded so far. The songs are shorter and more direct, and the quartet seems unafraid to to step from behind the curtain of distortion that dominated their previous two LP’s. What remains is is sunny pop (“Memory Boy”), unexpectedly pleasurable saxophone solos (“Coronado”), and 50′s-style teen angst sing-a-longs (“Don’t Cry”). The album’s high note is its closer, a dark star of a song that starts out full of celestial light before falling hopelessly into a dejected cowboy shuffle. It was supposedly written in memory of the late Jay Reatard but given its title you can’t help but wonder if it’s the band’s answer to the question, “What would Jesus do?” According to Deerhunter, “He Would Have Laughed.”

-Nick Burd

Halcyon Digest is available September 28th via 4AD