here’s a fine line between a signature sound and a gimmick, and on their fourth album, Mates of State come perilously close to defining their strange and strangely old-fashioned sounding organ-based indie pop as the former rather than the latter.

At their most simplistic, the organ lines might bring to mind a misspent childhood dicking around on your parents’ cheap electric organ. Where Bring It Back succeeds most is when lines are piled on top of each other to make formidable walls of sound, uniting with the two-part harmonies created by Kori Gardner and Jason Hammel’s involved, passionate vocals.

Opener “Think Long” is perhaps not the best demonstration of this, wearing a comparatively uninteresting collage thin by going, well, a bit long, by virtue of a chorus whose investment can’t make up for its lack of a pleasant tune. It certainly makes an impressive racket in a pair of headphones, but the repetition doesn’t embed it in the ears sufficiently.

There are nonetheless numerous flashes of excellence throughout where the formula produces some nicely skewed, quirky pop. “Beautiful Dreamer” is a good attempt at marrying clattering drums and alternately discordant and melodic organs to a breezy, feel-good pop song, and its “na na na” refrain has a carefree joy to it that carries the rest of the song along with its enthusiasm.

“Fraud in the 80s” is like a midway point between Johnny Boy and The Faint, and its synth-esque intro could be someone trying to recreate “O Superman” without singing a note, and its nagging blank-wave riffs and fuzzy bass create quite an enticing soundscape—dense and interesting. “Nature and the Wreck” is by contrast, a restrained and pretty intermission with a simple and affecting melody. Other songs, such as “Like U Crazy” oscillate between these two styles to varying degrees of effectiveness.

The second half of the album seems to drift somewhat; the organ settings coming across more as schlocky gimmicks hiding songs that are a touch thin (especially “Punchlines”), but the closer “Running Out” rights things to a large extent, showing up most of the rest of the album while showing that there’s inventiveness and songwriting nous. The elements present on this track in particular: the woozy, inventive organ lines piled three deep, the fluctuating melodies and the enthusiastic singing and harmonising, are present in varying degrees on the other nine songs, but the alchemy isn’t always present, which makes listening to the whole album a slightly numbing experience, even if the highs are creative and engaging.

There’s a really good EP waiting to be edited out of this, but what hits the target is enjoyable and refreshingly different, and “Beautiful Dreamer” becoming a left-field hit would certainly brighten up college radio. When Mates of State’s songwriting catches up to their ambition and zest, they might well make somehing great—the only problem is whether the average listener will be able to get through a whole album without fatigue.