Brah

On Spills Out, Brooklyn gauze-niks Ptereodactyl make a surprise left-turn toward accessibility. While always shielding playful structural moves (or at least structures) in a haze of demolished guitar tones, the band’s third album finds the trio not only slathering wild arrangements in pleasant harmonies, but also allowing room for the songs to breathe. There’s still plenty of abstruse art-party stomping ( “Aphrasia” ), but Beatles-y marches ( “Allergy Shots” ) and noisy power pop ( “The Break” ) carry the day. In many regards, the harmonies provide an aural illusion – or in the case of the moody Zombies-biting “Zombies,” an allusion – arranging the band’s other weirdness in a neat through-line. But all music is illusion (allusion, too) reassembled by the brain as something pleasurable and, for Pterodactyl’s sake, hopefully recognized as awesome.