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A kitchen sink of variety awaits those intrepid enough to peruse the The Strangest Colored Lights by 13 Ghosts. It’s an album that delights as well as frustrates on early listens, as you hear a song you like, and then fret as they change to another mode altogether, fall in love with the new style, and mope as the band continues on its itinerant ways. Eventually, though, an appreciation dawns, of the album as a whole, of the artists at work, and you come away from the experience far richer for the listening.

It’s an album that almost begs for a full track by track accounting, so as not to miss any of the highlights. The Lonely Death of Space Avenger, starts the disc in an atmospheric mood, with a noise like that of wind rushing by coloring everything else within the track. The album shifts smoothly into second gear with Soft Houses, a gentle acoustic number that rhythmically recalls, of all things, Sublime’s mid-90s hit, What I Got. A third level is achieved with the third track, a mild roots rocker graced by jangly guitars and Brad Armstrong’s haze-wrapped voice coming out as if from a distance, or as he sings, “…from the corner of a dream.”

At this point, there’s a feeling that this disc is going somewhere, entering realms more frenetic, continuing on this upward trajectory. Instead, 13 Ghosts drops it down a notch or three, delivering a stunning piece of emotionally charged music in Riverside. The track’s melody is borne out by horns, Jason Lucia’s drumming is subtly martial, and whatever feelings you’re experiencing at the moment are amplified tenfold. Bury Me, just keeps the flow rolling. A folky piece with a distorted guitar setting the tone, and the defiant, “Don’t take my boots when I’m gone,” for a kicker, it also aims straight at the heart, and plays havoc with emotions. You feel the protagonist’s loneliness as Armstrong sings about, “The wind will call/And the black bird will dance with the worm/The Moon will call/And the black snake she swallows the world.” All that is prelude, however, for, King of the Thieves, an emotional torture chamber, and the best song on the disc.

Armstrong’s voice is gradually joined by the rest of the band, providing a rising tension that spills over directly into Go to Sleep, which is shockingly loud by comparison, with Armstrong providing a couple of Jack White-style (White Stripes) guitar blasts, as Buzz Russell handles vocals duties. The album closes with another absolutely beautiful, brilliant track, the split, 12-minute Transmissions. The first half exhibits instances of Beatle-esque melodicism, with other moments reminiscent of Pink Floyd, tugging at the heartstrings and uplifting the spirits simultaneously. The last part of the song, which comes across as an entirely different, yet equally strong track, talks about the immortal, yet forever lost works of the unknown artists. Set to a folksy, heartland Americana soundtrack, Armstrong delivers the dramatic, heart-rending climax, “The only thing immortal is the epitaph that we’ll carve in your stone.” The Strangest Colored Lights isn’t an album, on its face, that I would have expected to like. But it’s one of those discs that worm inside, and find a place inside the heart, for its sparse brilliance, for the emotional ride it takes a listener along, for the moments of sheer exhilaration it finds amongst desolate lyrical and musical landscapes. 13 Ghosts have created an early candidate for the best albums of 2008.