In 2008, New Orleans-based instrumental outfit Smiley with a Knife debuted with How a Reign Comes to an End, a brazenly presumptive, morose mélange of metal and math rock dripping with dark irony. With it, they affirmed their existence. On their second album, Long Now, Smiley with a Knife has shed many of the pretensions that plague most progressive rock acts (ostentatious musical and conceptual overindulgence), sharpened their focus, and tempered their playing, delivering an effort that pushes past the borders of sheer virtuosity and cinematic sound collages to span the space between the palpable and the surreal. Here, they claim their sound, which, in the world of instrumental rock, is where most bands fail to distinguish themselves.

Rather than rely solely on instrumental prowess or adhere to a rigid framework, Smiley with a Knife opens up their sound to encompass various streams of influence. Their acutely composed tracks blend the seemingly incongruous angular shifts of math rock, the avant timbres of post rock, the drifting ephemera of shoegaze, and the unpredictable ferocity of noise rock.

This is no easy feat, and there are a handful of moments on Long Now where melodies capsize and along with contrast and texture get sucked into a grating maelstrom. But Smiley with a Knife shows extreme poise for a young group and possesses a keen knack for reeling in a tune winding down the abyss. Early on, the spacious, syncopated drumming and spontaneous rhythmic surges in “Egyptian Porridge” give the intertwining guitars plenty of room to soar and seize and save the song from submerging. Later, a jazzy bass motif molds the cascading glide of “Cosmonauts Are Not So Cosby Nazi” into a cool groove, while a cleverly placed Southern rock bridge prevents the frenetic gallop of “Sexy Butcher” from running over itself. At a tad longer than 40 minutes, Long Now takes the shape of a stream-of-consciousness, macabre tale of self-discovery—bewilderingly cryptic and bitterly post-modern.