Us Little Devils seems like a name too deviously coy for a band that’s named after their hometown’s sunny climate. Yet Sunparlour Players’ latest release is certainly not lacking in contradictions. Within a scant 36 minutes, listeners are dragged through a disorienting mixture of frenzied, eclectic, pop-rock Canadiana. What results is an album that attempts to make up in heart what it lacks in focus.

Case in point is lead singer Andrew Penner: while his voice comes across clear, nuanced, and evocative in some songs, in others it’s downright inaccessible. This is only compounded when one takes the band’s sound as a whole. “One For You and One For Me,” with its reflective lyrics and banjo twang, so clearly conjures up an image of a paint-crackled porch under the wide blue expanse of the Saskatchewan sky. Then the album lurches to the cookie-cutter rock stylings of “Like An Animal,” which, despite the urgent “Want you to act like an animal/Want you to breathe like an animal,” is only alarming in its mediocrity.

Standout track “Don’t Be Afraid of That Spark” arrives late in the album. Clearly grounded in the realm of pop with its light smattering of piano notes and a lazy, strolling, infectious beat, even Penner’s voice sounds rounder, fuller, and more controlled. While Us Little Devils may not be rare amidst the sea of folk-pop in the Canadian music landscape, it is the endearing sentiments captured in those lines that the album conveys at its best.