Eight years of French classes and I still don’t understand a damn word of Malajube’s new album, Labyrinthes. Which is a shame, because the music is complex, well-crafted and multi-layered — this is a band that says a lot in a short time, even if you don’t understand what it is.

Each of Malajube’s first two albums have put them on a bigger stage — their debut, Le Compte Complet, made them darlings in Quebec; Trompe-l’oeil made them nationally famous and earned them a Polaris Prize nomination. With such a formula in place, the band’s third album comes with the pressure of appealing to an even larger audience — and there’s no question that Labyrinthes is good enough to do that.

Malajube sound like they’re getting better by the minute without ever really stretching beyond their means. The band shifts between Gypsy rock (“Porte Disparu”), spacey indie-pop (“Casablanca,” “Heresie”) and furious ’80s synth (“333”) with seamless ease. With all of these different directions at play, the album is both dense and minimalist — keyboards and pianos hum in the background, but they don’t overpower the band’s strength, which is its singularly great pop melodies. Vocalist Julien Mineau is as unassuming a frontman as you’ll find. His voice is as much an instrument as anything else, which is a good thing for non-francophone listeners.

There is a haunted element to Labyrinthes as well. The last few minutes of album opener “Ursuline” and all of the closer “Cristobald” bookend the album with piano warbles and eerie ghost moaning. It may sound like an odd addition to what is essentially an indie-pop album, but a band of this calibre thrives on oddities.