By Scott McLennan

The jam band’s most thematically focused album yet turns digital overload into anxious, shape-shifting rock.

Big Modern!, Goose

Goose’s Big Modern! is a timely dispatch from the digi-dopamine age. These songs embrace the frantic, manic, elated, and deflated sensations we subject ourselves to daily. Goose doesn’t take a reassuring position on the virtual world: it ends up feeling uncertain about how to judge what it all means once you step back and ponder the costs and benefits of our hyper-connectedness.

Goose leans more into the absurd rather than the disturbed, so the record never sinks under the weight of techno-despair. Some songs mimic the vapidness of the culture Goose sends up, while others register the burnout of those who find themselves trapped, always projecting and never reflecting. Arriving ten years after the debut album Moon Cabin, this provocative disc is the work of a band that has grown and matured, but remains mischievous and wry.

Big Modern! is a record that demonstrates, once again, how well Goose puts albums together, a valuable skill that eludes many of the other bands in the jam and improv ranks. On this effort, guitarist Rick Mitarotonda, drummer Cotter Ellis, keyboard player Pete Anspach, and bassist Trevor Weekz set their sights on a clear theme, then discombobulate expectations (satiric and otherwise) with songs that shapeshift in tone and style from track to track.

New Wave and other signposts from ’80s rock frequently pop up on this trip, beginning with the album’s title track, which evokes the Talking Heads and ably pulls off a lyrical list of non sequiturs whose abstract images suggest coded meanings. Initially, the band chips away at our too easy acceptance of modern electronic indulgence, yet finally finds that it is OK to deal with today’s “rattle in my brain.”

Things become more sinister on a suite comprising “Savenger,” “(you are here),” and “((savengersspell)).” Mitarotonda ratchets up the paranoia quotient and the experience of loss with slicing guitar riffs and sneering vocals. Then, with the melodic surge of Anspach’s piano on the second number, Goose loosens its grip before pushing the tensions back up, resolving the conflict with a meditative closing segment, drawing a captivating contrast between Mitarotonda’s melancholy guitar work and Ellis’ percolating drumming —  ripples that don’t stop emanating across the calm.

“Good2B” is a big, funky jam driven by Weekz’s bass groove, which holds together a succession of quick turns, from the frenetic to the grand. The ominous, slow-burn stress of the combo of “Torero” and “(faena)” is sandwiched between a couple of kitschy toss-offs, “Media” and “POP.” The pair function like comma pauses on this album (and may really just be excuses to allow Mitarotonda and Ellis to go off on guitar and percussion  interludes).

The epic “SALT” is the album’s centerpiece. Musically, the song is relentless in its drive and sense of exploration as it wrestles to find something real amid all the illusions we willingly tap into.

The band Goose. Photo: Juliana Bernstein

The interlude “(again)” connects the powerful determination of “SALT” to the sweet temptations offered in “Good Times/End Times,” a song that’s perfectly framed by Anspach’s bold piano work. “((nocturne))” explores the darkness that’s pulling us away from any remnants of shared humanity. But all the fury and despair ultimately dissolve in the closing “(((postplace))),” a beautiful example of songcraft anchored in chamber pop: it moves listeners from the flashy neon explosions heard earlier on the album to a quieter place of solace.

Big Modern! provokes rather than preaches. Goose’s selection of songs embraces the vulnerability that comes with admitting “I don’t know what all of this means.” Perhaps that is the most human thing anyone can do right now, given the delusional ease of being a know-it-all —  if there is an internet-connected device in your hands.

Goose’s summer tour brings it to Leader Bank Pavilion in Boston on June 30 and July 1. The band’s fall dates include Nov. 13 and 14 at Mohegan Sun in Uncasville, CT, and Cross Arena in Portland, ME, Nov. 15.

Scott McLennan covered music for the Worcester Telegram & Gazette from 1993 to 2008. He then contributed music reviews and features to The Boston Globe, Providence Journal, Portland Press Herald, and WGBH, as well as to The Arts Fuse. He also operated the NE Metal blog to provide in-depth coverage of the region’s heavy metal scene.