Justine Kline’s musical style is an antithetical combination of brightly colored power-pop and sad-bastardry, both of which are locked in a ceaseless game of rock-paper-scissors; are his songs neon-pink happy, or unbearably miserable? One certainty is that if you hear Kline once, you’ll decide immediately whether you love him or can’t stand him.

A multi-instrumentalist, he performed guitars, bass, keys, drums, percussion and his emotive, wide-eyed vocals on his latest EP, Doormat, whose four little tracks may have found the middle ground between two previous bipolar records the Pulse reviewed in past years.

In 2010, there was the Triangle EP, which was like sucking sour candy, so intense was the sugar-coated despair. The powerful Cabin Fever Songs followed in 2012, a gem of a misery record in the same conceptual vein of Bon Iver’s breakthrough album in that the songs were Really. Fucking. Sad . . . compared with Triangle, anyway.

On Doormat, released earlier this spring, Kline sets the bar with a hooky opening title track: I’m made of colorful designs/Woven with threads not hard to find/I’m getting stepped on half the time/Working at the drop of a dime/I’m your doormat, baby/It’s not fair, believe me/That I’m your doormat, baby.”

The almost too self-aware “I Wanna Feel Normal,” in which he laments sucking so bad at life, follows along with the words of encouragement to a Mr. Victor: Hey Mr. Victor/I heard about the strings/That have you tied in so many knots/Entwined with hurtful things.

Hooky, wry, sonically energized and lyrically downcast, Kline is, as always, equal parts impending disaster and perpetual cheeriness, like kittens, Pop Rocks and Mr. Rogers all in the same room with roadkill, divorcees and a long winter. With Doormat, Kline proves once again nobody’s happier to be sad.