Context is everything. You might already be familiar with the work of Nate Kinsella via previous Birthmark albums – or perhaps you’re more au fait with his older cousins. Tim and Mike Kinsella were key members of Cap’n Jazz, the influential, awkward and posthumously-adored Midwest punk band that spawned The Promise Ring, American Football and the brilliantly-baffling Joan of Arc (not to mention a plethora of other acts). After moving to Chicago in 2003, Nate joined JoA’s touring lineup, which quickly evolved into off-kilter indie rockers Make Believe for three solid albums. It wasn’t until 2007 that the first Birthmark LP The Layer finally appeared, and as you might expect, a certain family connection has ensured that the project tends to be viewed through a somewhat skewed perspective. In other words, Tim and Mike cast pretty big shadows.

Nate’s aware of all that though. “I try not to think about what people expect from me by being a Kinsella”, he told The 405 last year, and Antibodies certainly manages to avoid most of his previous outfits’ signature schtick. A clunking vibraphone gets things underway, swiftly joined by a woodwind section that snakes its way around the intro. Slithering from side to side, ‘Stuck’ avoids anything as straightforward as a melody, instead (un)settling for ugly-beautiful discombobulation; a chemical burn in the shape of a snowflake. Suddenly it dies away, to be replaced by a relentless, throbbing single-drum beat, as Nate grimaces: “To the ones who love me: I’m stuck”. He seems to force the words out through gritted teeth, and the overall effect is creepy as hell. Joan of Arc have sounded pretty darn wracked over the years, but they never straddled accessibility and discomfort like this.

The stoned sprawl of ‘Shake Hands’ is more straightforward, balancing delicately upon a taut high-wire funk before the world’s drunkest string section crashes the party to stumble through the background. ‘Pacifist Manifesto’ is even recognisable as something you might want to call “indie”, especially when Nate’s voice hits the upper register and recalls Pinback’s Rob Crow. Plain yet cryptic, lost yet hopeful, he manages to make the phrase “I cannot survive alone” sound like profundity in excelsis, teasing us with existential woes as the music reaches a dizzy, delirious crescendo. Ace.

And that’s not all for highlights: a tense, stuttering rhythm gives ‘Please Go Away’ one helluva serrated edge, and ‘Keep ‘Em Out’ implies how Shoji Yamashiro’s Akira score might go if it was blurred out of focus by fans of vaguely mathy, intentionally cerebral pop music. Meanwhile, album closer ‘Big Man’ is constructed from bass chords and harmonies that make the senses tingle like gentle rainfall in a desert. Will this be the album that pulls its creator out from the wings and into the spotlight? It deserves to be, but given JoA’s late-period return to form with last year’s Life Like, it’s unlikely. For those approaching it with a fresh perspective, however, Antibodies is a slow-burning delight, and that’s all the context any of us need.