ollerball’s excellent Trail of the Butter Yeti, from 2001, was an odd and spiky mix of ornate pop and experimental textures, sounding like a jazzier Nurse With Wound. Unfortunately, the record never really caught on and the group seemed to vanish once the Portland-based Road Cone Records closed up shop. Now after a few years of inactivity, Rollerball have found a new home on Silber Media, and Behind the Barber is their second release within the space of a few months. Their first album on Silber, Real Hair, found the group in unexpectedly accessible form, but despite a few strong tunes it was a somewhat unexciting return. Thankfully, Behind the Barber is more than enough excuse to trumpet Rollerball’s re-emergence, as they’ve come back with a record that is their most experimental yet, without completely sacrificing the gorgeous melodies that have always tempered their spacier ventures.

Behind the Barber captures the full range of possibilities laid out in Bathing Music and Butter Yeti, jumping without fear from the free jazz skronk of fellow Portlanders Jackie-O Mofo to dub pop to stately gothic melodrama. Early on, the group delivers their most comprehensive mission statement to date, the 16-minute “Slits Arandas,” with Jackie-O’s Jef Brown on a wailing sax. The track starts as a slow burn, with tumbling, smoldering drums joined by light piano accents and extended horn notes. By the time the simmering female vocals join in, the track has acquired a driving forward rhythm that suddenly downshifts into a horn interlude. The next few minutes are dedicated to a loose free jazz stew of soloing horns, but it isn’t long before the momentum is regained with some more gorgeous late-night atmosphere. By the time the song proper kicks back in towards the end, everyone has melted so thoroughly that those upbeat horns and charging drums are actually a shock.

This is Rollerball at their absolute best, deftly incorporating odd experimental touches with gorgeous pop songs as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Elsewhere, they take one of Real Hair’s high points, “Starling,” and remix it as a dub pop tune that’s even better than the original. The echoey production is perfectly suited to drummer Gilles’ disaffected vocals and the spurts of melancholic horns that explode between the verses. It’s all coated in a bass-heavy throb, and the coda—with Gilles moaning “I forgot the taste of cold, sanitized steel”, only to be answered by an echoed chorus of overdubs—is stunningly sad. The instrumental “Autotelic” is similarly lovely, building from a slow-motion conversation between violin, horns, and piano into a dense and claustrophobic climax.

Elsewhere, the group is aided by electronic producer Nudge (who also created the amorphous ambient blot “Analogue Skillet” that opened Jackie-O’s Fig. 5) and Italian improv outfit Ovo, who shared a split release with Rollerball back in 2002. Nudge’s “Burning Light” is a surprising standout here, both in quality and style; it’s a dark techno rocker that submerges Rollerball’s late-night mood music in a techno pulse and heavy bass. The vocals sound like they’re floating across the dancefloor from a distance (when they’re not being chopped up and skipped across the surface of the beat), and the occasional organic outburst, bright and emotional, of the band’s horn section sounds especially striking in the context of Nudge’s low-key production. Ovo joins Rollerball for some overdubs on “Quiela,” which is a quirky but not too distinguished instrumental featuring some vocal chirps and squeals from Ovo’s Stefania Pedretti to accompany Rollerball’s own shrieking horns and arrhythmic percussion.

The album’s last few songs are more blatantly experimental and less melodic. Of these, the closer, “Fake Tan” works best. The song builds out of an undercurrent of sizzling electronics, gathering into a tense, molasses-slow rhythm that has the incantatory power of witchcraft—an impression immensely aided by the ghostly vocals that sweep up out of the mix. It’s a chilling and mysterious way to end an album. And completely in tune with what Rollerball is about.

As a whole, Behind the Barber is a fine return to form for this unfairly overlooked band. In the few years of their absence, they’ve apparently honed their songwriting chops while stretching out into increasingly eclectic territory. The melodies here could hardly be called hooky or blatantly poppy, but they have a mantra-like quality that’s infectious and slightly eerie. This is moon music, dark and moody, the sound of witches gathered around a blazing fire shouting spells at the devil. It’s quite possibly their best LP yet.