I have a feeling that the presence alone of this review might cause a few readers to do a double take. For many people, the revelation of a new Julia Brown album might be a surprise. The Maryland pop band who released last year’s to be close to you, a 16 minute long boom box recorded love note, released their follow-up last week in a quiet and unique way. And even with such an unconventional release process, the band fronted by Sam Ray (Ricky Eat Acid, etc.) has managed a familiar, yet wholly different experience with An Abundance of Strawberries.

To begin the story of An Abundance of Strawberries means traveling back to late 2013, when Ray distributed demos for the album through Dropbox to friends and writers, as well as posting outtakes and alternate versions of songs on the band’s Tumblr page. At one point I had personally amassed a collection of songs with titles like “album opening fake master mp3 dont leak,” “CLOSING TRACK DONT LEAK UNMASTERED,” “and my heart broke again (acoustic/demo).” The process of An Abundance of Strawberries involved an equal amount of outside input from peers over months of recording and deliberation. For full disclosure, at one point I was asked to leave a voicemail message repeating the phrase “An abundance of strawberries” to be used in a track. Where my voice is buried, if at all, within the album is still a mystery, but it speaks volumes for the way Ray utilizes unconventional resources to achieve a specific sound.

The first time I had a full, focused listen to An Abundance of Strawberries came this May, on a road trip through the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State. There between moss-coated trees and salt-stained highways, I felt like I had experienced the album in an ideal setting. While not as noticeably lo-fi as to be close to you, Strawberries still contains a sufficient amount of fuzzy edges and warped-tape noodling (save for “The Way You Want,” which first appeared on the band’s Library 7″ last year). Most of the album has a dense, overwhelming sound palette, which kicks in immediately into the album’s title track. Toy keyboards and shattering cymbals create an anxious space of noise that hovers just along the surface of nearly each song.

But the real surprises come in the middle of the album. “25 days (may15)” is driven by warped electronics and delicate glockenspiel, but Ray’s raw vocals that erupt into sudden shouts recall a primal, anxious feeling like some of Daniel Johnston‘s most unhinged work. “Snow Day” clunks along with a glitchy, stuttering drum beat. And maybe the biggest surprise of all is “You can always hear birds,” which begins as a juke-influenced, frantically-fast electronic song before tape-warping into a gorgeous guitar driven ballad with Ray’s vocals processed through some sort of glimmering, robotic harmonizer. It’s almost like a musical easter egg for fans who equally nerd out over each of Ray’s many side projects.

Lyrically, Strawberries strays from to be close to you‘s themes of longing and heartbreak by addressing intensely specific personal moments. “Snow day 2005 / pick me up from school / hold me in your basement” is how “Snow Day” opens up. Elsewhere, on the Orbison-esque “The Body Descends” more dates and personal moments arise: “It’s Halloween 2008 / I’m strung out again / my body descends.” While still bearing the scars of a heartsick love letter, An Abundance of Strawberries is a personal album, written by and for the artist.

In retrospect, this explains a lot about its release. At the completion of its mastering, the album was announced via a post on the band’s Tumblr. Included was the caption: “if you want to hear it, aren’t rude, and won’t leak it, email and talk to me about it / why you wanna hear it / just ask and i’ll send it when I have a chance. Just don’t leak it. We’ll talk.” No one leaked the record, all the way until it was “officially” released by a Dropbox link from the band on numerous social networks. This is personal album for those who seek it out.

Somewhat of a thesis statement shows up in the album’s final song “Bloom”: “It’s not art it’s something much smaller than that.” Ray has written a lot of lyrics about intensely personal events, but Strawberries is an unequivocal personal diary of tragedy and beauty. It wasn’t until I decided to replace the “official, final, mastered, finished” version e-mailed to me with the link posted on the band’s Facebook that I realized “25 days (may15)” had been added in the weeks between. I can’t think of a more accurate representation of Julia Brown than that: even when it feels like things are complete, finished, and through, there’s always surprises to come.

Download An Abundance of Strawberries now via Dropbox.