Run Wild, POSTDATA’s latest LP, from its first springtime keystrokes, is a brilliant, technicolor indie rock odyssey.

There is a palpable sense of magic and possibility and light to the record, even in its heavier moments. With this collection of 10 songs, Murphy has crystallized the elements he’s played with for decades: pop melodics and structure, prog-and indie-rock arrangements, avant-folk intimacy and quirk. Murphy plays the mad alchemist, precisely combining these pieces to create a record that feels like a thick, sprawling, sun-soaked magic garden, where listeners can sprint and jump and scream and laugh, and feel whatever it is they need to feel.

“I felt like it was time to take POSTDATA someplace new, and be a little more free with what it is,” he says. “I was trying to go all-out stylistically, and trying to flesh out all the differentplaces that it could actually take it. I wanted to give it more space, allow it to go wherever it needed to.”

Run Wild, from its encouraging, bright-eyed title right through Murphy’s lyrics and prose, brings vibrations of self-discovery and growth. Murphy explains that a lot of the songs ended up being about trusting yourself and coming into your own, two processes that often go hand in hand. “At its best, songwriting is a place where you can feel yourself transitioning to new heights and lows,” he says. The dark, frantic, post-punk spiral of “Moons” hints at this: “Becoming yourself again/Reanimating/You are the paths you take.”

To bring Run Wild to life, Murphy and co-producer Joe Chiccarelli (The Shins, The Strokes,Morrissey) met at Tragically Hip’s renowned Bathouse studio in Ontario, Canada for a five-day stretch of 15 hour work days. Murphy initially planned to work on a record of heavier material, but Chiccarelli listened to a batch of 40 demos and narrowed it down to a well curated, diverse grouping, encouraging Murphy to take the album to more provocative and innovative new places. Drummer Jordan Murphy and bassist Keith Doiron (Walrus) tracked the record with them, then Murphy recorded all the vocals from his home in Halifax. Nyles Spencer (The Tragically Hip, Kevin Drew, July Talk) engineered the record, and Matty Green (U2, Dua Lipa) mixed it.

The care and vision of Run Wild are immediate. Opener “Mine The Sea” channels late-Beatles pep and imagination, a classic pop-rock jaunt with a sunny, salty oceanside chorus: “Mine the sea, swim the deep/Endlessly, how do I know you?” Murphy sings. The invigorating start gives way to the indie-folk splendor of title track “Run Wild,” a tender jolt of a love song. The soul-searching, beautiful “Look To The Stars” is based on a melody that Murphy would sing as a lullaby to his son, meditating on space; “Holy Hollow” begins with pinging, distorted synths and builds to a pounding art-pop climax. The nearly-disco violins and 4/4 engine of “Dead Man” dance around Murphy’s new wave guitar riffing, then “Circular Ruins” takes the wheel, steering into a glitchy prog-rock descent.

The metamorphosis of “Moons” expires and collapses into “Twigs Underfoot,” which in the studio turned into a stream-of-consciousness love song that celebrates connection with your surroundings in fleeting moments of joy and calm. The electronic R&B sway of “Try” finds Murphy wrestling with the Sisyphean struggle of working as a musician, the sweetness and the bitterness that swap places each day. “Try, try another road, drive until you breakdown/Try, try, weather all the storms, drive into the eye now,” he urges on the chorus.

The journey of Run Wild culminates in the swelling, sublime acoustic closer “Raven.” Lyrically, the track paces into the more haunted paths found within that same garden of self discovery, twisting in the twilight, subsiding ultimately into the “black raven eyes” of darkness, grief, and self-doubt, which threaten to extinguish everything once and for all. But with all that has come before it, the warmth and beauty of the music swelling up and wrapping around its narrative, you get a sense that this sort of struggle and torment is an integral process. That there’s so much beauty and grace to be found in facing the abyss and moving through it. That there’s reason to.

Run Wild is out September 22nd on Paper Bag Records.