The Dredg you knew are dead; long live Dredg!  The Southern California foursome — singer Gavin Hayes, guitarist Mark Engles, bassist Drew Roulette and drummer Dino Campanella — remain firmly intact, but on their new album Chuckles And Mr. Squeezy, there’s nary a trace of the musically and thematically complex progressive rock that brought the band to prominence.

Chuckles And Mr. Squeezy is easily the most “pop” album Dredg have ever written, but it’s not the sort of pop that has made anyone popular in a long, long time.  Guitar chords are almost totally absent; many of the songs lurk around the dark hazy edges of mid-80’s synthpop, moody and atmospheric in a reserved way. Even the odd lonely saxophone floats in and out of earshot. The result is a pervasive melancholia that matches the album’s lyrical focus on aimless faith and the loss of purpose.

For their part, the band seems entirely self-aware of this transformation; they’ve dropped a statement of purpose into opening track “Another Tribe.”  Hayes sings, “they always say they’re against the grain // come on, they all look the same // they just joined another tribe // to help them build up some old fight // nothing new to see here.” In Dredg’s estimation, it seems, the once-outsider world of progressive music has become a trend too.  Chuckles And Mr. Squeezy is instead a sharp left turn down a path that I’m not sure any band has explored in decades; I suppose that makes it understandable, then, when the outfit gets lost in the weeds on occasion.

Not every track is a winner.  “Kalathat,” a sweetly-voiced fingerpicked acoustic ballad that might be— at least sonically— a second cousin of the Beatles’s “Blackbird,” runs aground on its clunkily apoetic lyrics.  And while “The Tent,” one of Dredg’s three collaborations with Dan “The Automator” Nakamura, features an amiable spaciness reminiscent of the ambient movements of Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” the core melody is a dud.

But overall, there are more successes than failures here. “Somebody Is Laughing” tosses a sitar riff and killer oh-oh-oh backing vocals atop an electronic beat to splendid results. “The Ornament” cribs a melody from Peter Gabriel classic “In Your Eyes” and marries it with Radiohead’s “Crawling Up The Walls.”  “Where I’ll End Up”’s classic pop melody feels like a restored relic of the sunshine ‘60’s.  And “The Thought of Losing You” mines the same vein as The Graduate’s best work, marrying a killer melody with Engles’s chiming guitars, steady propulsion and flat, glassy vocals.  It’s a straightforward pop-rock number, and it’s one of the best songs Dredg have written in their long career.

Of all the tracks on Chuckles And Mr. Squeezy, “Upon Returning” is the one that feels closest to the old Dredg, a slinky groove full of spiky staccato guitar bursts and squealy synths that owes a heavy debt to Minus The Bear. But much as MtB traded their angular jones for sexier moves on their last album, OMNI, Chuckles And Mr. Squeezy is a collection largely devoid of sudden movements: no alarms and no surprises, as it were.

I don’t think there’s any question that this album is going to prove the most divisive of Dredg’s career, and for those fans who are put off, I can hardly blame you.  Dredg have never been afraid to push boundaries, and in this case it means a refusal to recycle the same old left-of-center progressive-rock tropes. But it’s asking a lot, even of an open-minded fanbase, for your fans to follow your band through such a stark change in approach.  Chuckles And Mr. Squeezy, while channeling the Dredg spirit, is so far removed sonically from the group’s past work that it might as well be a different band with the same players. As Hayes sings in closing track “Before It Began,” “started in a familiar place // but ended up in a foreign land // but as the story usually goes // nothing quite went as planned.” This is uncharted territory for the outfit, but they’ve navigated it well, crafting a challenging cypher of an album that rewards repeat listens.

***.5/*****

*This review was composed by Jesse Richman