When Bradford Cox started talking about the songs that would eventually comprise Deerhunter’s forthcoming LP, Monomania, he talked about American roots music—“blues hollers, spiritualists.” He mentioned a lack of effects pedals and reverb and called his songs “field recordings.”

What he gives us on Monomania is nothing more or less than that, and those expecting the tight composition of its wunderkind predecessor, Halcyon Digest, will be disappointed. That album was by far the band’s most cohesive work; it was pristine, high fidelity, and accessible even at its artsiest or most punk moments. Monomania is more akin to Bradford Cox’s prolific online output as Atlas Sound, some of which was packaged together in 2010 in the three-volume Bedroom Databank. For those songs, Cox more or less hit the record button on his four-track and never took a second look. It was a necessary release valve for Cox’s free-flowing musical ideas, much of it promising but not always fully conceived. It’s reported that Cox wrote literally hundreds of songs for Monomania, eventually whittling them down to 12. Knowing that makes Monomania feel almost pick-and-choose. The album could just as easily have been 12 different songs.

That’s not to suggest the 12 songs he did choose aren’t absolutely flooring. Opener “Neon Junkyard” putters to life like the beginning of a lazy practice session before taking shape as a slow-burning fuzz-folk ballad. It rambles into “Leather Jacket II,” continuing the scuzzy noise-punk with distorted guitar work and Cox’s mic-swallowing croon. In contrast, the Lockett Pundt-penned “The Missing” sounds crystalline; its pretty melodics and pop sense serve as a welcome breather before plunging into the airless, bluesy do-re-mi of “Pensacola.” That song, more than any other, fits the profile of Cox’s touted “American roots” influences, as he sings: “I came from the delta down to the plains.” It sounds Deep South, a subtle reminder that Cox did, after all, grow up in Georgia. The album’s middle stretch takes us through familiar territory: “Dream Captain” and “Blue Agent” draw from pre-punk punk, a la Syd Barrett or The Velvet Underground; “Sleepwalking” opens up Monomania’s claustrophobic production somewhat with reverbed guitar and shoegazy atmospherics; “Back to the Middle” sounds like a Strokes song turned on its head.

Which brings us to “Monomania.” The title track is as pure punk rock as they come, with a chord progression and axe riffs that would make Ty Segall jealous. The song builds to an excruciating peak, flaring out in a merciless assault of screeches, growls, and the rumbling snarl of a literal engine that turns its listeners into victims. It’s impressive enough on tape; live, the song is downright consuming.

The album’s title refers to a mental disorder marked by an obsession with a single object or thought. Cox has said he was obsessed with neon lights during the writing of Monomania, which subsequently inspired the album’s title and cover art. It turns out Cox first started talking about neon lights back in 2011. Speaking of punk rocker Jay Reatard and the impact his death had on the making of Halcyon Digest, Cox said: “He’s all over that album, and a lot of it was anger, so much anger. We share that anger. Punk. It manifests itself in many ways, and for him it was just there like a neon strobe light.”

In a way, Cox’s monomania for neon lights is another expression of his obsession with punk music, which, in Cox’s world, represents music in its purest form. For Cox, the correlation between oneself and one’s music should be instantaneous, unfiltered. This would explain why Cox’s musical output is so tireless; where other artists might start on an idea and constantly rework it or scrap it altogether, Cox leaves it, unaltered, in plain sight. That’s the nature of field recordings: record what you hear and present it as you find it. In this sense, Monomania is more a documentary than a carefully plotted film. The result can be disorienting at times, and Monomania is full of moments that seem unintentional. But that’s nothing new for Deerhunter; Halcyon Digest, for all its careful arrangement, ended by cutting off the last song, “He Would Have Laughed,” basically mid-measure. As it happens, that song was written in memory of Jay Reatard, and what Reatard represented—immediacy, purity, punk—is what Monomania strives for. By that score, Monomania is a flawless record. By any other score, it’s damn good.