Electric Teeth vocalist Taylor Lowrance’s even, borderline-pompous narrator voice mimics the great Don McLean, but It Waits for You is no collection of folksy American classics. The opening track “Tick Tock Man” fades in slowly with a chill, needling melody, like Radiohead if all the electronic tweaks and glitches were phased out. “Is it time to go?” Lowrence begs repeatedly, setting a somber tone for the 10-track album. As you prepare for nine more tracks of eerie, winding guitar parts, the chords are suddenly twangier and the vocals switch to a grandiose, wavering style with a musical-theater quality to it that’s not altogether satisfying or dissatisfying.

By the time you get to “Open Country,” like the song promises, you’ve entered full-fledged Southern rock territory, broken up midway through with contrasting spacey, melodic guitar plucking. Things simmer down in OK Computer fashion on “Hidden Highways” with lulling, bell-like guitar that is, at various points in the track, slightly overwhelmed by the vocals. Speeding up the tempo or changing styles altogether partway through a track appears to be both a specialty and flaw of Electric Teeth. The listener grows attached to an arrangement or feel of a song, only to have it promptly taken away. But the band is able to transition fairly well for the amount of influences they incorporate. If nothing else, listen to “Bells,” the outlier and exquisite highlight driven by beautiful acoustic strumming and tearful keys.

The track “Creepin” is named appropriately since both title and song sum up the album as a whole as the band hones the influences that strike their fancy, to hell with compatibility. It Waits hovers between unsettling, almost electronic-sounding eeriness and Southern-fried boldness. It’s hard to simultaneously lurk in the shadows and be in the spotlight, but musically, Electric Teeth battle for both.