Perennial pop and indie rock wizards Yukon Blonde return with On Blonde, their third LP and follow up to widely acclaimed sophomore breakout album, Tiger Talk. Recorded over a period of several months by Colin Stewart (Black Mountain, Dan Mangan, Sleepy Sun) at The Hive in 2014, tracking commenced during a long hot Indian summer and went on well into a deep winter. Setting their own pace while working and writing in studio, playing with ideas set loosely within parameters of well-curated sonic influences, the band captured these songs on a 24 track analogue board renowned for recording Studio 54 Disco bands.

On Blonde builds on Yukon Blonde’s reputation for seamlessly crafted pop songs with infectious melodies and hooks, while experimenting with psychedelic, digital, and synthetic sounds. It is an album laden with analogue synthesizers, modulating Moog saw tooth leads, and FM soft pads, an ephemeral ambience akin to city street midnight meanderings. This sonic atmosphere permeates through the entirety of the record, as wiry guitars, occasionally stabbing or jangly, make way for fuzzy phasing lead tones. Yukon Blonde is a band who are tight and fierce, but wander dreamily where they need to.

Yukon Blonde did their homework; having Tony Hoffer (M83, Beck, Foster the People, Air, Depeche Mode) mix the record was an obvious choice. And it is Hoffer’s shimmering pop production coupled with Yukon Blonde’s trademark hard-hitting choruses that sees On Blonde effortlessly transverse, finding its place in the contemporary indie pop landscape. All the while, it is an album gazing wistfully away towards the more shadowy elements of pop production, soft synthesizers, thin punching bass lines, crushed drums, ’80s cosmic pop compositions, and saturated psychedelic guitar effects.

It is in this chronic ambivalence for the modern pop machine that On Blonde firstly finds its feet, followed by its depth, for there more than what first meets the ear. More dynamic, more visceral, instantly accessible, and sonically denser than its predecessors, On Blonde is an ambitious, fully realized psychedelic pop record from a band truly in the ascendency.