“Memory Drawings” by The Drift (Temporary Residence) – Out now

Bubble-gum pop enthusiasts, look not on The Drift’s “Memory Drawings” for succor. Might as well pass up their first full-length album, 2005’s “Noumena,” as well.

The San Francisco instrumental group draws from numerous sources—jazz, dub, electronica, funk—but the one thing it did not inherit is an earworm squirming through their melodies and into our unsuspecting heads.

No, what The Drift has is something else entirely. It is expansive, nine-minute-long tracks. It is mesmerizing tonal repetition. It is surprise shifts in tempo, dead stops and seductive lead-ins.

The track “Uncanny Valley” probably best typifies the album’s sprawling nature. Starting with the gentle wash of a cymbal, the tune opens up to an edgy guitar riff that has an insistence that is something like language. Answering is a soaring, soulful trumpet, backed by growling electronics. And from somewhere seemingly far off comes ghostly bass lines amid near silence.

It’s pretty emotive stuff, at times riddled with despair. In “Lands End,” the now familiar trumpet plays five notes, on a downward scale, to driving percussion, over and over. But the effect is far from cloying. Moody and ambient, the tune is a sort of journey through musical experimentation.

Halfway through, the riffs disintegrate into watery drips and drops, evoking a damp, subterranean passage. The tune does surface again, slowly, collecting its constituent parts—first the guitar, then drums and finally the horn—culminating into a swelling, plaintive reprise.

There is more than morose drama here. In “If Wishes Were Like Horses,” there are hints of Morphine in its driving bass. But the sullen wail of the trumpet is never far behind—look to the mellow “Golden Sands” a few tracks later. It’s just one of the seductive themes The Drift calls back on to keep you in its groove.

Download this track now: “Uncanny Valley.”