It should be said that “No Nations” is an ideal headphone record, as close listens expose several layers on tracks that otherwise might have seemed a bit too simple. The nuanced “Heading for Nowhere,” one of few songs on the record that have a sticks-in-your-head quality, is a great example.

Although the band, which hails from Victoria, British Columbia, would probably grimace at the comparison, Kittredge’s vocals occasionally stray into Chris Martin falsetto territory, but in a good way, as his shoegazer sentiments seem to have more depth than most of his peers’. ‚ On the folksy standout “Weathervanes (In the Way)” he croons, “If we take this something to escape that something / Don’t it just end up there in the way?”

For a band whose name calls to mind obtrusive noise, everything about the record is pleasantly understated.