Even though every other review of a Jaga Jazzist album touches on this point, it’s worth noting again just because it strikes me as so bizarre: in their home country of Norway, Jaga Jazzist is popular. Like “we get featured on television shows and get radio airplay and hit #3 on the pop charts behind Coldplay and Queens of the Stone Age” popular. Canada got tons of praise not too long ago for cultivating a strong musical presence, but even so you wouldn’t hear anything like Jaga Jazzist’s seven-minute “All I Know is Tonight” in regular radio rotation. Even the three-minute single mix (used at least on the video, if not also for radio) is a heady yet complex concoction that appears to have no business playing on the radio.

Until 2005’s What We Must, Jaga Jazzist was primarily an electronic outfit, with skittering drum machine beats serving as the foundation for the band’s jazz-influenced flights of fancy—you might’ve called them contemporaries of organic electronic pop artists like Four Tet and Caribou. What We Must relies far less on electronic wizardry, thus moving the band closer to post-rock territory. More uplifting than a Godspeed! You Black Emperor and more immediate than a Sigur Ros, Jaga Jazzist is about as pop as post-rock gets—which maybe explains why they manage to get on the radio in Norway.

“Oslo Skyline” sparkles with barely-contained spectacle, only to explode forth in the second half with a breathtaking orchestral attack. It’s like a fireworks show committed to tape, small blasts of perfection leading to a stunning climax full of starbursts and towering skyscrapers of light. Like many of the songs on What We Must, “Oslo Skyline” is full of occasion. Even without lyrics to guide the way, you can tell this isn’t a band interested in the mundane details; Jaga Jazzist is devoted to tidal waves of sound and soaring crescendos. Even the low-key songs instill a sense of anticipation of what’s just around the corner—the next firecracker is never long in coming.