Tune-Yards (or to be precise tUnE-yArDs) is the moniker of New England resident Merrill Garbus. Her debut album “Bird-Brains” is an astonishingly animated experimental pop record that is soothing and unsettling in equal measure. Opening track ‘For You’ starts as a lo-fi folk guitar-strum with sweet, faux-naif vocals which abruptly veers into dialogue (mother talking to son about fresh blueberries). The apparent harmony of this touching domestic vignette is undercut by electronic rumble and hiss and sudden sound-level changes. For all the suburban sweetness, there are equal amounts of spookiness to compensate. If Fever Ray’s album was the dark twilight world of insomnia directed by Ingmar Bergman then this Tune-Yards’ record is a sunshine-lawn double-dutch-skip directed by David Lynch.

The album was recorded with a digital voice recorder and shareware mixing software. The final record does not try and hide these origins and feels distinctly ‘demo.’ In fact Garbus manages to revel in the rawness this gives her inventive bedroom beats, riffs, nursery rhymes and chants.

The template for each song is similar, they consist of a guitar riff or drum rhythm used as a template for Garbus to sing over. Then layers of other sounds (percussion, ukulele, wooden spoons or glass bottles) are added with all the rough edges, hiss and compression kept in. The songs often adopt toy-box rhythms and sing-song verses but are much more sophisticated than this suggests - plus the songs can end up in very different places to where they started. ‘Fiya’ goes from simple folk-blues into wailing chant; ‘Lion’ from basic-but-taut march swells to modern R&B diva-like love pledge.

There are two songs that excellently encapsulate the Tune-Yards’ world, and the uncertain listener should start with these. ‘Sunlight’ begins as a hi-hat and drum shuffle with a simple declaration from Garbus’s sweetly innocent and fluttering voice - “I could be the sunlight in your eyes / couldn’t I?” With each repetition of the chorus guitars, bass drum, percussion, yelps and volume are added by turn so the song finishes as a loud propulsive rock tune with much of the innocence knocked out of it. ‘Hatari’ is Congotronics by way of a suburban New England bedroom, starting with a tribal wail, it is propelled forward for its unhinged five and a half minutes (not a second of it unnecessary) by ragged jit-jive guitar and jaunty African drums. It's delirious and deliriously uplifting. The record continues to astonish and delight - from the spooky dubstep rhyme of ‘Jamaican’ to lover-baiting ‘News’ which comes across as The Magnetic Fields-on-helium with strummed ukulele and kitchen utensil percussion - it is brilliantly inventive.

Early records by Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil gave 4AD a reputation for pristine production. “Bird-Brains” does not follow that path, but will not damage the label’s reputation, only extend it. With this record Tune Yards takes her place alongside other great avant-pop experimenters like Solex, MIA, Dirty Projectors, The Raincoats and Micachu. And might even give the more adventurous end of year album polls a run for their money.