The last time we heard from Louis XIV, on 2005’s The Best Little Secrets Are Kept, frontman Jason Hill sounded hornier than a blue-balled sailor on shore leave in Bangkok. To his credit, the San Diego–based rocker doesn’t attempt to deny that, even though he ended up taking his share of lumps from the Pitchfork cognoscenti for being an unrepentant pervert. Among the many crimes in the sexless world of indie rock, few are more punishable than admitting you like getting your rocks off.

What’s striking about Louis XIV’s just-released Slick Dogs and Ponies is that Hill appears to have put his joy-prong back in his pants. “Most of the songs that caught people’s attention the last time around were written in a very short time period in a very hot summer in a room that had no air conditioning,” he says, on his cellphone from a subarctic Chicago. “That’s the kind of environment that leads to sexual lyrics. This one was written a lot more in the cold. Also, I had different things on my mind.”

A big one was making sure that Louis XIV didn’t deliver The Best Little Secrets Are Kept II.

“You don’t want to rip yourself off or repeat yourself,” Hill notes. “I thought that if we did the same record, I wouldn’t feel fulfilled.”

Louis XIV accomplished what it set out to do on Slick Dogs and Ponies. As evidenced by “Sometimes You Just Want To”, Hill, guitarist-keyboardist Brian Karscig, bassist James Armbrust, and drummer Mark Anders Maigaard haven’t totally gotten over their obsession with sleazed-up lo-fi new wave. For the most part, though, Louis XIV successfully shoots for something epic this time. “Guilt By Association” mixes space-age retro-glam with heart-full-of-sorrow cellos, “Free Won’t Be What It Used to Be” drags a drugged-up Beatles through the psychedelic-jazz swamplands, and “Stalker” meshes indie rock with Bristol-brand trip-hop.

“On purpose, we wanted to make a big record with a lot of ideas on it,” Hill says. “We were out to use guitars in a whole new different way, and also strings in a whole new different way.”

To achieve these goals, the guitarist has spent the past couple of years snapping up vintage mikes and recording equipment, which is a big reason that Slick Dogs and Ponies sounds gloriously analogue. As for the strings—which surface on almost every song—Hill and Karscig did most of the arranging themselves, but also enlisted industry veteran David Campbell for three tracks, including the David Bowie–indebted bit of brilliance that is “Air Traffic Control”.

Presumably Campbell, who’s the father of alt-rock icon Beck, was relieved he wasn’t handed songs in which Hill was obsessed with getting his horn scraped. As for Hill, he’s happy that he’s met his latest challenge: re-creating the hyper-majestic Slick Dogs and Ponies live.

“We thought it would be impossible, but we’ve brought a string section out on the road with us,” he reports. “That’s made it a lot more exciting to tour. And really, without the strings a lot of the songs on this record would be impossible to play on-stage. There are too many interesting things going on in them to do them justice with two guitars and vocals.”

Louis XIV opens for Hot Hot Heat at the Commodore on Tuesday (February 5).