Supermoon may have evolved from Movieland, but don’t confuse the two bands. Yes, three of Supermoon’s members—multi-instrumentalists Adrienne LaBelle and Alie Lynch, and drummer Selina Crammond—were also in the earlier group, but thanks to relative newcomer Katie Gravestock and some crafty instrument-swapping, Supermoon has developed its own distinct sound.

That sound is heard to good effect on the local quartet’s soon-to-be-released Mint Records debut, Playland.

“This album for sure feels like a definite extra step beyond Movieland,” LaBelle says when the Straight rings her up during her lunch break. “In Movieland we had a rule that no song should be over two minutes long; they should just be short, poppy songs. We just wanted to do fun, short pop songs. Our songs are all still pretty short, but we don’t have that same idea anymore. It’s a bit more open and we’ve explored songwriting in a different way. We’ve taken a bit more time with it on this record, so I think our sound has changed a little bit. It’s a bit darker in parts. It’s still poppy, but it’s a bit more experimental for our purposes. We definitely have branched out in songwriting.”

Indeed, songs such as “Night Division” and “Bottle Ships” are carried along by chiming guitar licks that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Cure record circa 1985. The latter track ends in a swirl of dissonant feedback and fuzz that leads naturally into the next cut, “Stories We Tell Ourselves About Ourselves”, which somehow blends stop-start postpunk riffs with surf’s-up drumming and Middle Eastern six-string.

What truly sets Supermoon apart is its seeming disregard for the rock ’n’ roll rulebook. There are invariably two guitars playing, but rather than dividing the labour up into a rhythm part and a lead part, Supermoon more often intertwines a pair of melodic lines that occasionally clash in unexpected but not unpleasant ways.

“There’s not been any game plan where we masterminded the whole thing,” LaBelle says. “It’s just what happens. When Katie does play a chord, they’re always discordant. She always goes for the Sonic Youth–y kind of thing. And then Alie plays guitar, but she always comes up with really poppy riffs.

“One thing that happened on this record is that we switched,” LaBelle continues. “I was the bass player for all the songs before, and on this album Alie and I switched for four songs. I think part of what has happened is that I was originally a violin player, and this is my first time playing guitar on a record, at all. I think I play guitar like a violin a little bit. I’m just straight-up not good at playing chords. It doesn’t come naturally to me. So by default I play riffy bits.”

Playland will come out this week as a pair of 7-inch records. This is a flashback to a Mint Records classic of days gone by—cub’s Betti-Cola was released in the same format in 1993—but it’s also practical. The demand for vinyl LPs has outpaced the production capabilities of pressing plants to such an extent that it can take months to get a full-length record manufactured, and Supermoon wanted to put Playland out now, not in the fall.

The double 7-inch idea actually came from Mint Records founder Randy Iwata (who also happens to be the brother of cub member Robyn Iwata). According to LaBelle, Supermoon was happy to run with Iwata’s suggestion, especially given how hands-off the folks at Mint are when it comes to artistic matters in general.

“They’re not trying to take any creative control or anything, so that was really nice,” she notes. “It’s basically just like having friends help support you with your music, and just an extra set of hands and all that sort of stuff. They were always around for the past two years as friends and supporters, and we knew that they liked our music, because they kept asking us to play things, so eventually we signed the deal with them, and that was nice.”

Supermoon plays a record-release show for Playland at the Astoria on Thursday (May 19).