Scot Sax is kind of like Elvis Costello or Brian Eno or David Byrne in the sense that he’s always working on something.

Often—as with the aforementioned music industry legends—it’s a collaboration like last year’s Chaos Kids album, on which Scot teamed up with Rachel T, Bear Mitchell, and (on occasion) Gabe Cantrell, or he’s playing live with his wife, Suzie Brown Sax, or he’s putting together his ongoing sketch show, Live from Little Hollywood, or getting his old band Wanderlust back together for something cool and fun.

Other times, he’s working on solo projects, like releasing music he wrote decades ago and forgot about until rediscovering them just recently, as was the case with the WhatWasISaying EP he released in April. Then there are the more ambitious projects, like the just-released Modest Cathedral, which consists of seven songs recorded in the space of two days.

What accounts for this constant forward motion is, I would venture to guess, a restless musical spirit. As the music he’s made throughout his career demonstrates, Scot isn’t one to repeat himself. He’s in the game to explore, to break new ground, and to follow his muse wherever it takes him. And as Modest Cathedral demonstrates, it can take him to some wild, fun, and unexpected places.

The title of the collection comes from a type of reverb that’s often used in film editing, and Scot’s stated goal with respect to the project was to “make a record quickly — so quickly that it’s a timestamp of where I am, right now.” The result is a propulsive, organic, dreamy, and often funny artifact.

A case in point as far as the “funny” goes is a loping bluesy acoustic track titled “Center of Things,” which finds Scot musing on the nature of the evening news and the proliferation of books about love in a hate-filled world. “Hey, the results are in, and it isn’t good,” he observes at one point. “It isn’t bad,” he then offers, briefly softening the blow before stopping on a dime and dropping the hammer: “It’s worse.”

A Motown beat percolates through much of the album while fuzzy guitars burn with a funky sense of urgency. In some instances, like the opening track, “Lateral Movies,” we get something akin to Prince by way of the MC5. Elsewhere, as in “Under,” we get a distinctly 70s vibe with jazzy close-mic’d drums that call to mind Steve Gadd and (appropriately) understated production that would feel right at home on a Steely Dan track. We also get some experimental electronic explorations like the curiously cinematic “Busbee Says,” in which Scot observes, “It doesn’t have to be a sunshine love. That kind of pressure will mess you up.”

One song I keep returning to is “I Was There.” The phrase features somewhat prominently in Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five, and the sound of birds tweeting in the background of this song echoes the final onomatopoeic line of the novel, which finds a bird singing “Poo-tee-weet” in the face of a massacre. The chorus—“I was there. I was there. You better shut your mouth, don’t know what you’re talking ‘bout”–offers a powerful rebuttal to the pundit class that tries to rewrite the history we’ve witnessed with our own eyes.

In a way, I feel like “I Was There” captures the essence of Modest Cathedral insofar as it’s an album about bearing witness—to a moment, to a movement, to a memory. My advice is to take some time and give it a listen. You’re bound to find something to love.