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The self-titled debut album by Baltimore quartet We Read Minds is scarcely more than a half hour long, but its very first track announces itself as something more epic and ambitious than you might expect. The 6-minute “Of The Nest” features a winding, unpredictable structure and a number of disorienting shifts in rhythm. But on another level, it’s also consistently midtempo and accessible, effectively establishing the band’s keyboard and guitar-driven sound. The brooding, groove-driven songs of We Read Minds seem to take a number of cues from a band they’ve opened for, Lake Trout, which is refreshing given that the latter is one of Baltimore’s longest running and most popular live bands, but hasn’t ever seemed to have many kindred spirits or followers in the local music scene.

“Rely On The Moon” feels very much like the album’s centerpiece, perhaps in part because the spare 90-second track that precedes it, “Bastian,” serves as a mood-setting intro for the driving, piano-heavy song. But after “Rely” thunders in, it also offers some of the album’s most impressive musical ideas, including the intricate percussion on the song’s bridge, and functions as an excellent showcase for frontman Justin Gilman’s appealing voice, which brings to mind both synth pop singer Kenna and Jellyfish’s Andy Sturmer.

For all of their ideas and occasional flashes of strong songwriting, however, the band still gets somewhat stuck in the post-Radiohead doldrums with a consistently gloomy mood and a lack of fast tempos to break up the monotony. The album’s final track, “The Difference,” shows how much more We Read Minds still need to grow to catch up to its ambitions, with awkwardly employed drum machine textures and rhythmic shifts that nearly stop the song in its tracks. That “The Difference” and the album’s other weakest song, “The Colour,” are both reprised from an earlier EP, however, suggest that We Read Minds are a young band that’s still finding its footing and improving with every new song.