Au’s sophomore full-length leaves the general impression of a high school marching band run pleasantly amok. Brainchild of Massachusetts transplant Luke Wyland, the Portland-based collective’s second album is a case study of how to marry pop songwriting to gleefully bombastic arrangement. Wyland’s hooks are undoubtedly the album’s bedrock and Au’s “all are welcome” approach to instrumentation manages to ensure that there are few dull moments over the course of Verbs’ nine tracks. At its best, the album straddles this line between orchestral formality and haphazard communalism with skill, creating a persistently shifting sonic landscape populated by clarinet, pipe organ, flute and whatever other noisemakers Wyland and company manage to lay hands on. This instrumental menagerie tends to produce the feeling that Au is perpetually fighting the impulse to wander off on some musical tangent and Verbs shows that the band is becoming ever more adept at knowing just how far down those paths to take us.
Standout tracks: “Are Animals,” “RR vs. D”