Paper Lions learned a valuable life lesson while recording its new album, Full Colour: it pays to embrace the future rather than stay stuck in the past.

The Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, quartet went the traditional route on its last outing, My Friends, setting up in a Vancouver studio with veteran producer Howard Redekopp. No one was unhappy with the results, with the guitar-driven pop songs capturing album of the year honours at the 2014 Music Prince Edward Island Awards. (Paper Lions also took home trophies for best group, pop recording, group recording, and entertainer of the year.)

For Full Colour, by contrast, the band decided to take things in-house, happy in the studio while handling all aspects of the process themselves. Looking back, guitarist Colin Buchanan says that meant having loads of time to experiment. And a big reason for that was no one was watching the clock as they wrote and recorded the songs.

Fittingly, when Buchanan picks up the phone on Canada’s East Coast, he’s just logged a full day in the studio, one of the best things being he never had to leave home.

“The studio is located in the house where I live,” the guitarist says. “It belongs to my roommates. I’m pretty much here all the time—I go into the studio most days and pick away at material for Paper Lions or whatever other project I’m working on at the time. My Friends was super fun to do with a seasoned engineer and producer like Howard—he has a beautiful setup at his studio, and we had a great time making an album of songs we’d essentially crafted in the jam space. Howard did a great job of capturing the essence of our band at that time.”

Back then, it was easy to draw a through line between Paper Lions and Chucky Danger, which is how Buchanan, singer-guitarist John MacPhee, drummer David Cyrus MacDonald, and bassist Rob MacPhee once billed themselves. While the group’s name changed in the middle of the ’00s, its brand of postpunk-influenced guitar pop didn’t, older tracks like “Travelling” and “My Friend” perfect for iPod playlists built around the likes of Sloan and Weezer.

On My Friends, Paper Lions tapped childhood memories for lyrical inspiration, the bandmates recalling shared experiences as friends in rural P.E.I.

“A large part of that album was nostalgia,” Buchanan says. “This one is more futuristic in a way. It’s not going back, it’s looking forward. That’s the result of, I don’t know, just wanting to flip everything on its head.”

As part of that looking forward, Full Colour’s songs are brighter, bolder, and breezier than the band’s past work.

With its swooning synths and chorus-of-angels backing vocals, “I’ll See You Soon” is guaranteed to brighten the most miserable of winter days, while the impossibly buoyant “Born to Rule” answers the question “What did the ’80s sound like?”

In the studio, little accidents were treated as gifts, which explains the fragmented bass line that rumbles out of nowhere at the end of “Honestly”. There are also moments insane enough to leave you wondering what the hell Buchanan and his bandmates were thinking—which, of course, is meant as a compliment. (Those who’ve never heard an ’80s sax solo they didn’t like can proceed directly to the slow-burner “End of July”.)

“In the few years between My Friends and the recording of this album we got way more adept at recording and producing ourselves,” Buchanan says. “Before we’d spend a lot of money looking at the clock and feeling rushed—the old-school studio model is kind of draining on everyone involved. We were afforded so much more time by doing Full Colour ourselves. Instead of jamming things out, we’d go into the studio a couple of days a week and just write from nothing. Then we’d develop that into minute- or two-minute-long demo ideas, which were then whittled down into 11 songs we ended up recording. Or, for the short answer, there’s less guitars, I guess.”

Paper Lions plays the Biltmore on Saturday (November 26).