Nap Eyes have always kept one foot on the ground while pursuing philosophical musings about the co-existence of dark and light and pain and relief; mental, spiritual, and physical disharmony; the interconnectedness of all people and things; and solipsism. On the Halifax-bred band’s fifth album, The Neon Gate, they stand on tiptoe as they continue to contemplate amidst their most adventurous songwriting to date.

Following an improvisational practice, singer, guitarist, and principal songwriter Nigel Chapman has led the band to more free-form songs. Four of The Neon Gate’s nine songs exceed six minutes, with the closing track reaching eight. The electric guitar line that swoops in on “Dark Mystery Enigma Bird” winds like a highway wrapped around a mountain. And if not ambitious in length, some of the album’s songs are ambitious in concept. “I See Phantoms of Hatred and of the Heart’s Fullness and of the Coming Emptiness” and “Demons” are adaptations of poems of the same name by W. B. Yeats and Alexander Pushkin, respectively. (Not only concerned with the “sophisticated” or “intellectual,” “Feline Wave Race” makes reference to the Jet Ski racing video game Wave Race 64 in title and lyrics.)

The more Chapman investigates the metaphysical, the further he drifts from any definitive answers to his questions. “My whole world opened up again / The old time feeling felt new / No, the meaning couldn’t stay the same” he sings on the gracefully finger-picked acoustic song “Eight Tired Starlings,” the squeak of fingers moving up and down the fret board palpable. As a band that frequently circles the same set of existential questions, this is how it feels every time Nap Eyes return with a new album.

The Neon Gate is populated by characters who face obstacles in trying to reach their destinations. They struggle against the power of nature – inclement weather – or perhaps forces beyond inclement weather, as in “Demons”; the song’s steady strumming, wind instruments, and sparkling piano notes bely the urgency of getting stuck in a snowstorm.

Themes of perilous adventure abound even further on a song like “Passageway.” Here, the narrator finds himself in front of his bedroom mirror. But instead of reflecting his visage back at him, it opens out to a fantastical, Narnia-like world: “Bracing myself against a bone-chilling wind, I wrapped my scarf around my head / And entered down a rainbow crystal pathway strangely compelled to follow where it led.” Amid jumbled guitar leads like the ones that criss-cross Wilco’s A Ghost Is Born, “Tangent Dissolve” plays like a metaphor for pursuing philosophical threads of thought and winding up further and further from concrete answers. “There’s a mystery deep cosmic wave,” Chapman sings after the song’s protagonist sails away, “where you can no longer see the land, very far away from the shore, travelling two days and maybe more, out on the windy beach, deep in the craggy rock / And into the heart of things.”

As Chapman rightly believes, in searching for answers about life and the universe, you should find yourself more ignorant than when you began. Nap Eyes’ musical horizons only continue to broaden, and the vistas are something to behold.

Pre-order The Neon Gate by Nap Eyes HERE