A human Tesla coil, Calgarian Chris Vail crackles with mental energy. He cheerfully reminds himself to steer conversation towards his band’s recently released full-length, Pop Violence. Vail confesses his natural tendency is to plunge forward, his mental chronometer perpetually running a little fast.

"I keep jumping ahead and talking about the next album," he laughs. "I’m always behind. It’s good to me to have the future set up. I like to plan ahead. I panic if I don’t have things set up."

Vail may want to leave a little room for spontaneity in his life. Judging from the early, mostly rhapsodic, reviews of the aptly-named record, there could be more demands on his time than he anticipates.

Pop Violence is a decadent orgy of sound, a white-knuckled audio joyride through a blender of musical touchstones. It’s a Chinese fingertrap of an album–the more you struggle to pull it apart, the tighter it grips you. Vail’s songs have a whiff of deviance about them, nothing you can put your finger on, but rather just this sensation of being a little off-kilter. In the capable hands of his bandmates, largely comprised of Cowtown’s art rock luminaries, they swell to epic freakout proportions. Strident glam rock beats careen through Gary Numan-venerating synths. Noodley ’70s guitars rub up against Studio 54 bass lines. There are so many influences at play that the songs transcend homage and take on a weird solipsistic logic of their own.

"The interesting part is that we did it in a high school band room," offers Vail. "The concept of the recording was that I was sick of slick recordings. I started thinking of the albums that were important to me, albums that are magical in my ears: the first Shins album, old Bowie, Motown. They had character flaws. We went in for the weekend, and unless it was a bad mistake, it didn’t ruin the song but made them better."

Keyboardist Brent Gough’s day job as a teacher and rugby coach granted them access to the band room, where Vailhalen proceeded to go to town on the music nerd instruments it housed–marimbas, gongs, tubular bells, and the like.

"Everybody was singing along–lots of gang vocals. People were playing instruments we weren’t recording," Vail adds. "The piano wasn’t mic’ed. Ambient mics on the drums caught background noise. We turned that up and it added to the sound character." The girls’ rugby team added their chants to ‘Girls Fight!’, and if you listen carefully, you can make out the squeal of sneakers from the basketball court.

For the Edmonton CD release, Vail’s tunes are getting a more intimate, though no less worthy, treatment. "I’m doing it solo, that one voice/one guitar thing," he says. "You lose some sonic impact and danceability, but there’s more room for the songs to breathe. More subtlety, and you can hear the most important melodies."

Of course, Vail will give us a glimpse of the future and play some new material too. "The new songs are about monsters and supernatural things. Like one where a vampire and a mummy are getting it on."