When Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan and Matt Didemus sat down to record their first album, 2004’s Last Exit, their top-of-the-line computer only had four gigabytes of memory, making the process “almost impossible”, according to Greenspan.

He says lower equipment costs and increased computing power are to thank for the beautifully indulgent sound on their latest release, but it’s apparent that a certain level of self-control must have been employed when the duo recorded the meticulously produced 11-track LP, Big Black Coat.

Their first album in more than five years sees the Hamilton, Ontario–spawned musicians honing in on exactly what it is that first made them successful: a fusion of melancholic yet seductive lyrics backed by experimental electro-pop.

Over the phone from the Scottish lowlands, where the Boys are taking a break during their European tour, singer Greenspan tells the Straight that an entire album’s worth of new material had been abandoned a few years earlier, following the release of 2011’s It’s All True.

At that time, he was investing his artistic energy into fellow Hamiltonian Jessy Lanza, producing her album Pull My Hair Back with a freedom that he says had begun to evade him as far as Junior Boys were concerned.

Didemus was also focusing on another project, DIVA, and whatever music had been reserved for their next album wasn’t enough for either of them. “I just wasn’t into it,” Greenspan admits with disdain.

“When Jessy’s album came out as a success, it gave me a whole new perspective on how I could do things in terms of working with another person, producer, or songwriter,” says Greenspan. “It taught me how to do things for myself, and how to have that freedom to have a small success.

At that point, Greenspan says, they “scrapped most of the album material, except for a few little things”. Big Black Coat essentially started from scratch—but the pressure was off.

“I didn’t feel like I had to worry about if people would like the album or not, or even if it would be a source of income,” he says.

While Greenspan’s new outlook made all the difference in the studio, the notion that the album might not generate success was clearly ill-conceived: Big Black Coat has already been called an “over-the-top comeback” by the Resident Advisor’s Patric Fallon, with many critics dubbing it Junior Boys’ best album yet.

When Greenspan talks about the duo’s dynamic in the studio, he makes their process sound effortless: “It’s not that much different than if you were to walk up to a synthesizer yourself. I mean, I may have more anticipation, but there’s a degree of randomness there,” he says.

“Once the fiddling is done, something usually happens where you start to hone in on that thing that sounds cool, and then it’s unpacking that idea and it turning it out.”

Trying to explain Junior Boys’ sad-but-dancey synth pop to the unexposed can be difficult, but their sound begins to make sense when Greenspan talks about the contents of his playlist during recording: modern R&B like Jeremih, the Detroit techno of Robert Hood, and the ’70s synth-soul of the Yellow Magic Orchestra.

All of those can be heard in Big Black Coat’s layers of hollow industrial bass and sparkling high-hats, topped with Greenspan’s sensual, whispery vocals.

Take, for example, the album’s second track, “Over It”: a steady, pulsating beat awash in divine synthesizers makes it the perfect soundtrack for a midnight joy ride through the neon streets of Tokyo.

Greenspan’s lyrics on “Baby Give Up On It”, “No One’s Business”, and “Baby Don’t Hurt Me” are like the mantras of a loner in the throes of some cold heartache, but Greenspan’s wanting is masked by sticky soul-tinged disco.

Rumbling basslines and accelerating synth riffs fill the instrumental interludes that pad tracks like “C’mon Baby” and “And It’s Forever”, which stand out as Junior Boys’ darker offerings on Big Black Coat.

One can’t overlook the masterpiece that is the cover of Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love”—a rendition that meets Greenspan’s criteria of not resembling the original in the slightest.

“I like doing stuff that doesn’t sound like it should be covered by us—like, I would never want to do a cover of Depeche Mode, or something someone might anticipate,” says Greenspan.

If evading anticipation is the game, Junior Boys have won: no one could have anticipated an album so rich, so introspective, and so complete from a duo that managed to fly under the radar for five years.

Junior Boys play the Imperial with Jessy Lanza on Thursday (March 10).