TOMATO FLOWER

Tomato Flower return with Construction, a new set of dense, knotted pop songs. The Baltimore-based quartet melds irresistible melodies with rhythmic trickery and unexpected structures, bending genre at will. Math rock, dub, and bossa might flash by well before the outro. Formal constraint becomes an opportunity for play and surprise; the pop form becomes a psychedelic capsule.

Turning the band’s utopian impulse toward the worldly, Construction refers both to “constructedness,” processes of artifice and social construction, as well as the material activity of building. Recorded in the same time as their debut, Gold Arc, the songs are intricate constructions of their own, expanding the palette of a rock band while maintaining the strictness of pop songwriting. They don’t adorn their songs with experimentalism; they build freakiness into the form.