Richard In Your Mind’s experimental inclinations have seen the Sydney five piece cover considerable ground in a remarkably short time. On SUN, their third studio album, the band has found a more focused and cohesive route, which isn’t to say it’s any less adventurous than The Future Prehistoric or My Volcano. Written on the road and mixed by the inimitable SPOD, SUN compresses a multitude of ideas into a kaleidoscopic 40 minutes that yet again expands on RIYM’s constantly changing sound.

The album opens with the Casio-sounding synth introduction of Vision. Beneath Richard Cartwright’s often indecipherable vocals is a solid rhythm driven by a constant bass-line, which fixes the wandering synths into position. “A vision, forming in the clouds” sings Cartwright, his murmuring voice falling over the rhythm like liquid and converging with sounds that wander aimlessly. The underlying pop sensibilities are immediate. With almost every turn is a hook trying to force its way through the dense layers suffocating it. This is clearly apparent on the second track, Maybe When The Sun Comes Down, which suggests an intimate familiarity with Love’s Forever Changes.

The third track, She Took The Sun Away, is laden with melodies and played with significant restraint, carefully avoiding the psychedelic current it’s nearing. At just over two minutes it’s the shortest and most immediate track on the album and leads into the contrasting Mountainhead, which gathers a polyphony of sounds and let’s them roll out gently in a vast and textured arrangement. Cartwright’s vocal harmonies often sit a fraction out of time. He builds space and creates a drifting sensation with this approach, which coheres with the rootless melodies surrounding him.

Mountainhead indulges in ambiguity and ends with a distorted guitar, echoing and fading into nothing; far removed from the gentle acoustics that started the track. Dimension is underpinned by a huge bass sound that nearly swamps Cartwright’s voice. The beat drives towards sounds that are immediately comparable with the Flaming Lips. On New Morning, pitch-shifting vocals fall into a soft guitar-driven melody. The emphasis on repetition is contrasted with the efforts they make to move away from structure on the previous track.

The most experimental moments are balanced by the simpler tracks, such as Tear Filled Ocean, which treats warm analogue sounds with a spacious vocal melody. Lashes of electric guitar interrupt the track just as it becomes too complacent. The near-instrumental title track again calls to mind the Flaming Lips. Swelling electric sounds ripple into layers of thick synth that are broken by the swaying rhythm and sickly melodious Where Did You Go. The last track, Aplomb, gathers little momentum and casually fades into silence.

SUN is an immediately likable album. At first you are lost in the drifting psychedelic layers that encase the album. By the second and third listens, the underlining pop sensibilities become increasingly more pronounced and that’s when the tracks stick. Beyond its most obvious influences – Love, Barret-era Floyd, maybe even Amon Duul – SUN is RIYM’s most focused yet immerse album so far.