There’s a fairly well-known (if probably apocryphal) story about a British music critic whose advance copy of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Two Virgins was mispressed, resulting in two sides of unlistenable white noise. Not knowing any better, he gave it a rave review.

When the Straight receives its digital copy of Singer’s Unhistories, the track “Dumb Smoke” is blighted by a string of jarring audio drops. Presumably it’s a glitch, but—just to be sure—it’s not supposed to do that, right?

Calling from his tour van in Austin, Texas, vocalist-guitarist Eric Vida laughs. “No,” he says. “It’s just a glitch.” Still, in fairness, such extreme audio manipulation wouldn’t be entirely out of place on something as fractured and demanding as Unhistories.

The album’s opener, “Slow Ghosts”, plays like a Pavement intro given the cubist treatment over five-and-a-half minutes. “Divining” follows with mercurial and shifting drum patterns, the quartet’s four spooky voices, and a dappling of electric piano all conspiring against each other for half of the song’s running length. When it does come together, we’re in the morbid Jandek wilderness of detuned horror-folk. “Please, Tell the Justices We’re Fine” throbs here, squeals there, and voices warn, “For our purpose your head will roll,” before a tortured jam of no fixed destination eventually ensues. “Oh Dusty” heads down a relatively conventional path in that it builds vertically to a climax, but don’t expect too much radio play.

There’s almost nothing in the way of relief on Unhistories, but then, Singer’s collective background in Chicago’s head-fuck community runs deep. Vida is joined in the band by two veterans of much-loved postrockers U.S. Maple—his brother Adam on drums, and guitarist Todd Rittmann—plus bassist Robert Lowe of 90 Day Men.

But even while they exhibit such a compulsively thorny aesthetic, Vida is delighted by the warm responses he and his bandmates have been receiving on Singer’s current tour.

“Well, we just played in Montreal, and it was fantastic. That’s a city where you know you’re going to get a certain type of weirdo,” reports Vida of the live response to the band’s fitful sets.

The 34-year-old feels modern listeners are demonstrating a greater curiosity for challenging music, and a surprising feel for avant-garde history.

“You’ll play a set and some kid will come up to you and hit you with ‘Oh, that reminded me of [Karlheinz] Stockhausen,’ or ‘That reminded me of Tony Conrad,’ or some shit like that, and you’re like, ‘Wow, all right,’ ” he says.

“We’d like to get the chance to do more all-ages shows,” Vida continues. “Usually the kids who are just getting out of high school or into college are just so interested, and into getting their minds blown open. That’s an exciting time. It was an exciting time for me.”

It’s intriguing to hear the guitarist claim, more than once, that Singer is “just out playing rock and roll music”, but Vida is clearly bowled over “when people get it”.

“Last night when we did ‘Dumb Smoke’ in Denton they were singing along with some of the parts, so that was a surprise,” he says of a song that—its almost-chorus aside—still adheres to Singer’s vow of melodic abstinence. “An immense surprise,” he admits, chuckling.

Singer plays the Media Club on Monday (June 16).