This is the last band I would have expected to be in my top five at the beginning of the year. Not that I have anything against them, just that their sound isn't my usual thing, and while bands of a similar style have won me over before, it's an admittedly rare occurrence. But Harmlessness is kind of undeniable. It's a long and ambitious album with a little bit of something for everybody, from folky acoustic songs to energetic pop-punk to expansive post-rock to cathartic, heart-on-sleeve emo. The band pulls all of these off with equal ease, resulting in a vast, intense, and unpredictable melting pot of influences that ultimately defies labeling as a specific genre. Harmlessness is a passionate tribute to the recklessness and uncertainty that accompanies youth, enthralling to its final seconds.

There's so much here to love, but I have to start with "January 10th, 2014," which was released as the album's first single. I listened to it because I'd seen a lot of people speaking positively about it; five minutes later, I still had chills down my spine from its staggering, anthemic beauty. Its lyrics ingeniously pair the mythological figure of Diana/Artemis with the contemporary true story of Diana, Hunter of Bus Drivers, a Mexican woman who sought revenge against bus drivers who had been sexually violating female passengers. This interweaving of dichotomies - fact/fiction, present/past - is taken a step further in the dual male/female vocal delivery. During a suspenseful lull in the song's middle, David Bello asks tentatively, "Are you Diana, the hunter?" to which Katie Shanholtzer-Dvorak returns confidently, "Are you afraid of me now?" By the time the aggressive instrumentation kicks back into gear, her transformation from woman to goddess is complete: "Don't you quiver/I am an instrument/I am revenge/I am several women." It's a moment so chilling and powerful that I even ended up writing a poem with those lines as its basis of inspiration.

While it remains probably the best song on the album, this distinction is more a testament to its enormity than a slight to the tracks surrounding it, which are utterly spectacular. The opener, "You Can't Live There Forever" is surprisingly vulnerable and lo-fi before opening up into a lush swirl of strings and stacked harmonies, while the sorrowful, banjo-accented "Mental Health" is an intensely personal reflection on sanity. Meanwhile, songs like "The Word Lisa" and "Wendover" are quick bursts of pop-punk vitality, full of springy synths, infectious hooks, and irreverent, tongue-in-cheek lyrics ("Freaking out again at the supermarket/Putting out-of-order signs on things that work"). "We Need More Skulls" is a dark post-rock dirge featuring a single lyrical couplet that fades in and out of hearing ("We set out to make up all the mistakes of our parents and their friends/We set up a safety net but it was above our heads"), and "I Can Be Afraid of Anything" and "Mount Hum" are glimmering, ominous epics.