There’s something exciting happening on the debut album from Dead Dads Club. The music feels familiar, drawing on indie rock, alternative rock, psychedelia, electronic music, and even touches of glam and goth. But rather than settling into any one of those sounds, the band keeps finding different ways to combine them. The result is an album that feels unpredictable and unique without ever losing its hooks.

“It’s Only Just Begun” eases us into the record with a hazy, understated sound. There’s something almost Lennon-like about the vocal, while the mid-tempo arrangement has a little of that restrained Pixies feel. The song gradually builds until the fuzz and psychedelia take over, setting the stage for an album that’s never quite content to stay in one place.

There’s an anxious energy running through “Volatile Child” that makes it one of the album’s early standouts. The bass seems to race ahead of everything else, and just when the song threatens to burst apart, it pulls back before building into another huge chorus. It has the makings of an indie-rock anthem, but the lyrics are coming from a much darker place, dealing with despair and the struggle to find a reason to keep going.

The album takes a darker turn with “Humming Wires.” There’s something almost seductive about its fuzzy, electronic sound, even as the song grows increasingly threatening. That contrast works well with lyrics about being drawn toward someone who seems capable of doing real damage. It might be a toxic relationship, or something more abstract about desire becoming destructive, but either way, the attraction is difficult to separate from the danger.

If “Humming Wires” puts on the black eyeliner, “Goosebumps” puts on the sparkly makeup. The electronic fuzz and heavy bass are still here, but now there’s a funky groove and a little glam-rock swagger underneath all that haze. The lyrics are still wrestling with frustration and the difficulty of making sense of the world, but the music gives those feelings a different kind of energy.

Some of the album’s most inventive writing turns up on “Junkyard Radiator.” The lyrics are full of strange, unexpected metaphors and rhymes that I just love. Musically, the song loosens things up, drifting into a lazy psychedelic haze with a lovely vocal and a sound that occasionally recalls ’60s pop. Beneath the relaxed exterior, there’s a sense of being caught in a destructive attachment that’s difficult to leave behind.

After that hazy detour, “Running Out of Gas” brings things back down to earth. The acoustic-led arrangement has a herky-jerky quality, and the expressive vocal sounds as though it’s struggling to contain everything bubbling underneath. The song seems to deal with someone who’s emotionally exhausted, while the people trying to help him are running out of ways to reach him. There’s a sense of exhaustion on both sides, with neither quite knowing what to do next.

“That’s Life” sounds like it’s building toward an answer. The vocals swell, the electronics rise, and the chorus has all the makings of a big communal anthem. But the lyrics keep circling around competing explanations for existence, from religious destiny to personal agency to pure chance, without finding much comfort in any of them. It’s a fascinating mismatch: the music sounds triumphant, while the song itself seems resigned to the possibility that life doesn’t come with a reliable set of instructions.

There’s a particular kind of frustration in trying to convince someone that you’re not the person they think you are. That’s the feeling running through “Don’t Blame the Son for the Sins of the Father,” where increasingly grand gestures fail to repair a damaged relationship or change someone’s opinion. The music is appropriately abrasive, with heavy bassy guitars, industrial edges, and distorted vocals that give the performance a confrontational quality.

There’s something wonderfully unglamorous about the world of “Need This Around”: a sweaty basement, bodies moving together, and the physical rush of being caught up in a live show. The music has a scruffy, noisy alternative-rock quality, with a loose, lurching groove and electronic touches roughing up the edges. But the song’s central feeling is remarkably straightforward. After so many songs about destructive attachments, it’s refreshing to hear that kind of intensity attached to something that brings people together.

“A Hospital Pillow” is a strange little detour, clocking in at under two minutes and sounding like some kind of country song that’s been fed through a distortion pedal. The bass is fuzzy, the drums crackle, and the vocal sounds as though it’s coming through a bottle. It feels like being trapped in a destructive pattern that’s somehow become familiar enough to be comforting.

The album closes by returning to the feelings that have been hanging over it all along. “I Need You So Bad” is a distorted, fuzzy psychedelic carnival ride, moving between character-filled verses and bigger, swelling choruses. The lyrics return to loss, longing, and the habits that form when you’re trying to fill the hole left by someone who’s gone.

Rather than tying everything up, the song leaves those feelings unresolved. It’s an ending that makes sense for an album that seems more interested in the struggle to live with grief than in pretending there’s a moment when you finally leave it behind.

There’s a lot of grief and loss running through Dead Dads Club, along with questions about destructive habits, family damage, and how we make sense of our lives. Some of these songs recognize the need to change, to find healthier ways of living, or to hold on to the things that bring us genuine happiness. But the album doesn’t pretend that recognizing a problem is the same as overcoming it.

You can learn to live with a loss without ever completely letting it go. You can move forward without leaving everything behind. Sometimes the damage we experience when we’re young becomes part of who we are, even as we try to become someone different. This album seems comfortable with that uncertainty. It doesn’t need to turn grief into a story with a clean ending.

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