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• Album Review: Kitbash, Anything At All

(Self-released, digital)

Burlington six-piece rock band Kitbash titled their recently released debut album, Anything At All, with an implicit sense of permission. It's tied directly to centerpiece track "A Song About Fish," through which the band tells its listeners, "This is a song about fish / And only that," only to immediately contradict itself with, "You are allowed to think of anything at all."

With this simple passage, the nascent indie group presents itself as a fascinating conundrum. The songcraft is anything but loosey-goosey. Tight, intricate arrangements; furious yet precise instrumentation; and heaps of erudition common to the math-rock subgenre prove Kitbash have created exactly what they intended.

But they want the world to make of them and their music whatever it wants, hears, feels, etc. If every person who listens to Anything At All interprets it differently, the plan worked perfectly.

Composed of a group of multidisciplinary artists and professionals, Kitbash coalesce a hodgepodge of shifting styles: indie folk, emo, art pop, jazz and arena rock, to name a few. The band name, slang for mashing up pieces from disparate sets of model toys or figures to create something unique, encapsulates their modus operandi.

"The goal is to make the unfamiliar feel familiar, and vice versa," keyboardist and coproducer Brendan Rooney said in a press release.

Despite shifting tempos and odd time signatures, like on the whiplash-inducing opener "Afterimages" and the 5/4 churn of deep cut "Future Perfect," Kitbash succeed in "staying accessible enough to dance" along to, a goal stated in their press release. They're betting on listeners having an innate sense of how to groove to their tunes even if they "learn to count them later."

Not everything on this album is an exercise in weird. For instance, "Vine on the Wall," a garage-rock anthem with psychedelic aspirations, unfurls with a peppy backbeat and friendly interplay between keys and guitar.

Its sentiment is self-assured, hopeful and unambiguous: "Tendril that grows / All along the brick and the stone / The others seem to fall / But not the vine upon the wall." People can ascribe whatever meaning they want to "the wall" — friends, creative passion, a deep sense of self — and still derive a feeling of strength and safety.

Then there are tracks such as psych-funk banger "Sprout," which resists rhythmic conventionality even as it tantalizes with thick snarls of rubbery guitar à la your favorite jam band. Punctuated and explosive, the song's energy transcends the defamiliarization baked into its architecture.

Kitbash exemplify the creativity and experimentation for which Burlington's indie-rock scene is known. Their music is likely as welcoming to casual listeners as it is people prone to dissecting and discussing music's multidimensionality. The Queen City needs bands like Kitbash to keep it on its toes.

Anything At All is available at kitbash.bandcamp.com and on major streaming services.