BADBADNOTGOOD are now officially jazz veterans. The Canadian band’s first album was released ten years ago, and since then, they’ve taken their sound from punchy Flying Lotus covers to sprawling soundscapes that are equal parts mature and energetic. And with their newest album, ‘Talk Memory’, they seem to have sought out a further away, more lavish corner of modern jazz.

So, it’s safe to say then, that they were the last artists we all expected to be the beneficiaries of TikTok fame. A fan-made remix of ‘Time Moves Slow’, a standout from BBNG’s 2016 album, ‘IV’, currently has more Spotify streams than the whole of ‘Talk Memory’ combined.

Whilst this is great, for the group’s pockets and for those being introduced to BADBADNOTGOOD for the first time, it’s hard not to feel a tinge of disappointment reading these figures. ‘Talk Memory’ is in many ways the album BBNG have always wanted to make. Esteemed guests such as Karriem Riggins, Terrace Martin and Arthur Verocai, and a distinct lack of compromise anywhere on the record.

What I think the success of the TikTok remix has uncovered, ultimately, is the group’s talent to make music that is simultaneously complex yet catchy. When unpacked - or in this case sped up and looped - what can be found are layers of lush melodies and rhythms.

And on ‘Talk Memory’, BBNG have never sounded more lush. The opener, ‘Signal from the Noise’, is a nine-minute journey in which the band treat the song’s many sequences - and the listener - as something to be pulled back and forth without warning. The result is something cinematic and contorted, more beautiful and polished by the end of it, but you’re left with the memory of the process - like watching a vase be made on a pottery wheel.

Other highlights include the orchestral ‘City of Mirrors’, a winding example of the band’s knack at making tighter, shorter songs. It’s a power they rarely wield, and it sets the stage for the album’s bouncing second act. The songs that follow, ‘Beside April’ and ‘Love Preceding’, are really searching for something. They’re poignant, emotional, driving; going through the gears of what ‘Talk Memory’ represents, the catharsis of unpacking and rebuilding.

The entire album is upholstered in this velvety texture that feels classic in the best kind of way. The kind of way where you see how it was informed by what came before it. The kind where you might be able to hear what could come after it. It’s hopeful and doesn’t rely on any individual component.

The electric guitar, for example, has never featured so prominently in BADBADNOTGOOD’s entire catalogue. Here, it’s sprinkled throughout, almost as a tool to disrupt and segment songs - a kitchen knife slicing ingredients and helping them into the pan. It’s sometimes too much of a departure, an exploration into a jazz-rock sound that’s almost always executed lazily. The difference on ‘Talk Memory’, however, is the heart in which melodies are played. The way the guitar is mixed into the songs and remains so stuck to the groove.

BADBADNOTGOOD have shown they’re able to dodge boxes and avoid the stagnancy most groups show by their fifth album. And it’s not just good because it’s a fifth album. It’s good because it doesn’t stretch itself further than it needs to, and sounds rarely feel unnecessary. Rarely does the beginning of a band’s second decade sound so dynamic and uncompromising.

With a jazz album so grand and grown-up, you start to believe it almost doesn’t deserve to ooze with the amount of ideas it does. Each song is like a short film in its own right, freewheeling through a plot the director is yet to finish putting down in writing.