Based on his previous indie releases I had Max Bien-Kahn pegged as a singer/writer who makes charmingly offhand pop in the same general orbit of Jonathan Richman and NRBQ (and a million miles from his regular band, Tuba Skinny). To a large extent that’s still true on his latest album, but the real highlights here are still pop but more poignant.

The lighter and more characteristic songs are upfront, and his usual homespun sound is augmented with a four-piece band. On the bubblegum homage “Planet of Love” the studio touches—a backwards sped-up tape and a couple of flutes—are as much fun as the song itself. When he writes a love song, he’s good at catching the small details that make up a relationship: “Saturday Night” is about making soup and playing records on a weekend; and on “Whatever You Want” he registers shock that the people his girlfriend serves at a restaurant don’t realize how awesome she is.

So, it sounds at first like another bit of whimsy when he opens a song with the line “I made a return at the mall today, full refund”—but it turns out the singer is returning a suit that he wore to a funeral and couldn’t stand to keep looking at. That’s the mood of the album’s second half which includes “Ghost,” a conversation with an absent friend; and “Mama” about the impending loss of a parent. Here he reaches into a Brian Wilson well for the kind of melodic touches that make melancholia more inviting.