Chairlift have never shirked away from a creative challenge. Even if their best known track may still be ‘that one that got used in an iPod ad a while ago’, the duo of Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly refused to get stuck in the pigeonhole of pretty, inoffensive pop music and have spent two albums since trying to figure out what their alternative is. Finally, on their third outing, they have found it. Toning down the excessively cerebral and arch qualities of Does You Inspire You? and Something (two albums with awkward titles to match their aloof, self-absorbed tone) and finding a new, vibrant vitality, Moth is an album with serious impact but with the thought and insight to back it up.

Chairlift’s sound palette has always been 80s-influenced, but opening track Look Up shows how much this album’s production doubles down on it, with clattering drum machines, FM bleeps and gliding synth strings backing up Polachek’s voice. By a minute into the track, a quiet saxophone lead line and palmed guitar part straight out of the most disgusting of power ballads are lurking in support. This definitely isn’t ‘genre’ music aiming to resuscitate tropes from the past, but the music certainly mines deeply ingrained attachments to pop music from the likes of Madonna and Diana Ross. It does take the care to pack in the attention to detail to mark itself out as properly thought-out and inventive, but that pop music core keeps the album relatable and grounded throughout in a way that Chairlift had never managed before.

That pop sensibility is the most notable feature of this album, a change this album shares with the similarly powerful Art Angels from Grimes. However, where Art Angels was manic and explosively charged with an abundance of competing ideas, Moth maintains a much tighter focus. Caroline Polachek’s voice arcs over every track, laser-like in its accuracy, while the songwriting is honed and concise; the two lead singles Ch-Ching and Romeo are a study in minimal, functional construction. It is a talent that was hinted at in the highlights of Something (Sidewalk Safari and I Belong In Your Arms most obviously), and was used to stunning effect while writing No Angel for Beyoncé, and is now being exploited fully in everything Chairlift do. Romeo presents a feminist flip of a love song – aping the myth of the huntress Atalanta that a suitor needs to match the protagonist in a running race: “If I win, you’re done with / But if you win, you win my heart… / Hey Romeo / Put on your running shoes, I’m ready to go”. It is all wrapped up in a shuffling, sunny and really danceable drum and bass track, one of their most unconventional but strongest tracks yet. Ch-Ching, meanwhile, is a grooving dancehall-RnB banger, all bass and swaggering confidence – from the close-miced whispers to the squeals of “Ch-ching!” in the post-chorus, it is packed with a bright, infectious joy.

That relentless pop-charm does make some of the album’s more bare moments come across in a less than elegant way. Crying in Public seems to want to act as the emotional centrepiece, but the coy cuteness of the instrumental fails at sustaining the track’s sentiments in a way that doesn’t appear slightly naïve. Ottawa to Osaka seems to have an instrumental straight off a SNES Donkey Kong soundtrack, but its dreamy sound and obtuse lyricism fail to impact in the same way the more straightforward tracks do. Unfinished Business is a remarkable exception, with a propulsive, chugging instrumental and one of Polachek’s most gloriously dramatic lead lines.

The album does suffer the same problem as Art Angels, even if to a lesser extent: subtlety and complexity are often the first victims of a pop retooling. In this case, it is no great loss – Chairlift have always been best at their most direct, and this album is packed with those kinds of tracks. Moth is a beautifully measured and intelligent take on modernist pop music, with a lucid head and an open heart.

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