Quad Cities musician and engineer Pat Stolley is not a good interview. He’s plain-spoken and blunt, and when asked last week about the origins of Intricate Maps – the new album from his band The Multiple Cat – his answer couldn’t be more ordinary and pragmatic: “I had a band that was doing stuff.”

In the past, the singer/songwriter/guitarist said, he had difficulty keeping a band together, with people moving away or being less than reliable. But following 2013’s The Return of the Multiple Cat, he had a solid ensemble that wanted to keep working. So it was as simple as the confluence of writing songs and having interest from the local label Cartouche Records in putting them out.

Chalk up Stolley’s manner to preferring creation over discussion. Starting with the opening seconds of lead tracks “Maps” and “David,” the record is dense with pop rock that is precise, detailed, and economical but also organically vital and often joyously catchy.

And while the eight tracks that fit that description would be plenty rewarding, the three “Theme”-titled pieces bridge songs and help shape Intricate Maps into a dynamic, breathing album. Listening to the record’s carefully modulated flow, it’s difficult to take Stolley at his word that his limited time dictates that he use just about everything he writes; it’s a triumph of songwriting, instrumentation, and arrangement dovetailing with smart sequencing and evocative connective tissue.

While the Multiple Cat has over its intermittent 20-year-plus history largely been Stolley’s show, Intricate Maps was more democratic, with bassist Ben Crabb and drummer Phil Pracht writing most of their own parts. (Andrew Barkau has since replaced Pracht.) The bass and drums here are essential organs, not merely the rhythm section as necessary window dressing.

The bass and click-y percussion drive “Maps” as much as Stolley’s vocals and more than his guitar, and its sharply segmented structure is a model of shifting energy and mood within a stable whole.

“David” has an even layering that allows the listener’s ears to prioritize sounds more than the mix – the throbbing bass rising at times, the keyboards swimming to the top at others, Stolley’s breathy falsetto surfacing.

“Green Ice” is a delicately swirling drawing, with sturdy bass lines and warmly enveloping keyboards contrasting with the finer, darker textures of hushed vocals, light guitar, and horn.

Lyrically and thematically, Stolley said, he was inspired by the deaths of two first cousins – one from cancer, one from alcohol – and analytic psychologist Carl Jung’s interest in alchemy.

And if that paired with my descriptions of Intricate Maps’ calculation makes the album sound sterile and a touch academic, I’ll stress that Stolley’s craft leaves plenty of room for pumping blood and humor. “The Boring Game,” he said, is told from the perspective of a Ouija board’s spirits: “These beings are beyond time and all-powerful thinking, but they have to field all these sixth-grade-girl questions.”

And in the album’s back half, “Magic That Works” is angular and dominated by guitar, a straightforward and bright rock song that helps release some of Intricate Maps’ building pressure.

“Theme iii” strips away all pretension with its simple jam – Stolley’s lyrical guitar and Crabb’s distorted bass playing off each other – and the Multiple Cat then takes its final U-turn into the luxuriant piano-and-cymbal comfort of low-key closer “Bells.”

Each song on the album, Stolley said, is discrete, but Intricate Maps still feels like a satisfying journey with the best tour guides one could hope for.

The Multiple Cat will perform on Friday, February 12, at Rozz-Tox (2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island; RozzTox.com). The 9 p.m. all-ages show also includes a set by Dirty Swears and a DJ session with Just Let Go. Admission is $10.

For more information on the Multiple Cat, visit TheMultipleCat.BandCamp.com. Intricate Maps is available from CartoucheRecords.com.

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