The latest album from MSTRKRFT is indicative of a band growing into a more approachable electro-pop sensibility while still trying to maintain their chunky, rough-edged sound.

I’ve had an interesting relationship with MSTRKRFT, the white-hot hipster dance club duo from Toronto. Love/hate may be too strong a term for a band unless you’re the kid from Almost Famous (or banging them backstage), but there have definitely been ups and downs, leading to several reversals of opinion about their place in my music library. No matter how popular they seemed to be getting, I could never decide if I wanted to go along for the ride. With their latest album, Fist of God (out now on Last Gang records), it’s starting to fall into place.

MSTRKRFT - Click Click (Featuring E-40)

MSTRKRFT first came to my attention via their remixes for bands like Wolfmother, Bloc Party, even member Jesse Keeler’s previous band, Death From Above 1979, which took catchy pop/rock grooves and turned them into pounding dance floor dynamite. Some of their best work has been in that vein, a few recent examples of which are on their MySpace page alongside their latest singles.

But then I caught a live show in support of their first album, The Looks. At first their distortion-heavy throb was energizing, but before long I’d started to space out to the heavy house drone. I was to the point of checking my watch until they pulled in more samples toward the end — instinctively snapping back to attention once Daft Punk and/or Justice entered the equation — and walked away thinking maybe I’d misjudged. As clear as it was that they were drawing from the same well as their peers, some magical element seemed to be missing in a live show dedicated to their original material.

What, you might ask, does this have to do with Fist of God? Last year’s single ‘Bounce’ — with the b-side ‘Vuvuvu’ and both of which appear on the new album — is actually the perfect microcosm to use as an example. These two tracks capture the duality of the band, and an internal conflict they seem to be working through on this album. On one hand are the several tracks featuring guest vocalists adding rhymes or vocal hooks, with ‘Bounce’ remaining one of their best. They give those like me who missed the rave years something to lean on while getting lost in the beat, and some lines to get stuck in my head; the number of times I’ve found myself randomly declaring that ‘All I do is party’ since last April are too numerous to count. ‘Vuvuvu’, on the other hand, may drive my big beat buddies wild, but leaves me relatively bored, bringing back flashbacks of that live show where I spent too much money on drinks to pass the time and doubting my relative hipness to the asymetrically-coiffed crowd.

Luckily, the yin and yang are well balanced here, and bouncing back and forth between the two brings out the strengths of both types of track. Second single ‘Click Click’ with E-40 reaches the same energy level as N.O.R.E. on ‘Bounce’, just faster and more frenzied, offering the cocaine tweak to the previous track’s ecstasy bounce. ‘Heartbreaker’, featuring John Legend, shows a new side of their repertoire with less of their trademark buzzsaw synths and a more organic piano loop (though I’m more partial to their mix of Legend’s ‘Green Light’). ‘1000 Cigarettes’ is a driving force in its instrumental form, and made more exciting when reprised with lyrics from Freeway. Overall, the featured vocalists go a long way to giving the songs texture, but some of them are underused — it seems like a waste to have a heavyweight like Ghostface Killah on just for a few sampled phrases instead of contributing a full verse. The instrumental tracks are less repetitive and more propulsive, and work well as interludes instead of the main event. As a whole, the songs are shorter and tighter, and indicative of a band growing into a more approachable electro-pop sensibility while still trying to maintain their chunky, rough-edged sound.

It must be tough for someone coming from a band to make the transition to the decks without suffering a bit of disorientation. Rock bands essentially sing directly to their audiences, pouring out their souls on stage. Electronic musicians need another way to connect with their crowds, to have that moment akin to the sing-along chorus or the guitar solo. The easiest way, if you’ve ever been to the Coachella dance tent or an all-night warehouse dance party, is the trite standby of dropping the bass out and bringing it back for a collective cheer, but cheap tricks can only get you so far. MSTRKRFT’s thick beats and expert production got them to the party, and with Fist of God they seem to be working through how to make that connection with the audience now that they’ve arrived. It’s not a flawless album end to end, yet any one of these tracks would make a solid entry on a party playlist. If nothing else, it’s decided the question of whether or not they were worth keeping up with, and the answer is yes.