It’s rare for music acts in New Orleans to embrace synthesizers, much less to evoke in doing so the instrument’s embryonic paradox of enhancing pop music and elevating beyond what was previously considered musical. Sharks’ Teeth do so comprehensively. Four synthesizer operators, headed by Tyler Scurlock of Sun Hotel, create astral electronic atmospheres and gleaming shapes that most immediately recall Yo La Tengo’s minimal, melancholic indie and modern synth pop experimenters The Knife and Fever Ray. In the dark, emotional lineage of New Order and John Maus, Sharks’ Teeth offers a powerful affective interface through lyrics and melodies dipping into profound dejection while always keeping open the option to dance and move with the band’s brazen-yet-thoughtful pop expressions. “It Transfers & Grows,” their first release on Community Records, on top of all of this, evokes Todd Rundgren’s early soft space-funk balladry and Orchestral Manoeouvres in the Dark’s outsider anthems. All of this, Scurlock’s Bandcamp-published experimentation, and such creative performances as their quadrophonic orchestra situate Sharks’ Teeth as a synth pop act remarkable in a way New Orleans hasn’t yet fostered.

FFO: Kate Bush, Oppenheimer Analysis, and Bjork