Immolate Yourself is a sad final document for Telefon Tel Aviv in a number of ways. The band that could conjure up melancholy soundscapes while reading the morning paper, but that makes it all the more likely that we’ll always hear this album in conjunction with TTA member Charlie Cooper’s untimely death just before the album’s release. The album also sounds like a group figuring out how to move from its warm, textured, sweeping pieces in a more pop direction, broadening its palate in the process. “Helen of Troy” and “Stay Away from Being Maybe” are more immediate than they often are, and much of the signature buzz-and-click texture that laid over symphonic strings are gone in favor of an early ’80s, cool electropop. Unfortunately, that’s a sound other bands are doing right now, so Cooper and Joshua Eustis’ last recording together isn’t as distinctive as Map of Everything that is Effortless or even Remixes Compiled.

Still, Immolate Yourself remains true to the group. The pop songs never entirely give themselves up to pop, and the more atmospheric pieces never settle gently in the background. The light, meditative murk of “I Made a Tree on the Wold” gives way to a swelling burble that emerges optimistically. “Your Every Idol” is defined by a lopsided rhythm that recedes as a calliope melody emerges, then reasserts itself hypnotically, such that it seems to turn itself inside out as it pans from side to side.

Telefon Tel Aviv’s albums have always been extremely well crafted and musical, and Immolate Yourself is no exception. The attention to sonic detail is obvious, even when it results in vocals that are just prominent enough to define a melody, but hushed enough to keep the songs from being about the words. The mood and mystery they evoke run through all of the band’s work, even as it looks in a new direction as it seems to here.