Mood Swings, the latest album from Thomas D’Arcy’s Small Sins (formerly The Ladies and Gentlemen) begins with a baited tease. “I Need a Friend” opens the album and sounds exactly like every song on Small Sins’ self-titled debut. Several synth lines snake around each other and D’Arcy’s yawning vocals swell into impassioned gang harmonies during the chorus. As the song draws to a close, it’s easy to begin dismissing Small Sins as a one-trick pony, whose trick is admittedly pretty neat.

Then “Morning Face” forces that dismissal out the window. Instead of the band’s usual cold, clinical keyboards, a gently plucked banjo supports the song. Sure, the banjo’s melody is still oscillating and repetitive, like most that D’Arcy writes, and the vocals still thicken for the hooks, but next to the familiar “I Need a Friend,” the song sounds like a bold departure.

“What Your Baby’s Been Doing” continues to distance Mood Swings from Small Sins’ early output. Relying on processed cellos and a bouncing piano melody that could have been lifted from Wings, D’Arcy navigates a caddish tale of stolen love in a boastful falsetto reminiscent of Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes.

By the time the sinister slow-burner “On the Line” reaches its conclusion, Small Sins have successfully crawled out their one-sound niche and redefined themselves as a band capable of collecting a disparate array of sounds into their own style. That nearly every one of these exercises in extending boundaries flourishes is just an added bonus and a surprising punchline to the album’s opening joke.