It’s been nearly a year since I saw Iji play. It was the end of August, and all the black chairs and polished faux-wood tabletops at Louis Restaurant had been moved into a closet. Marvelous Good Fortune played, as did Nightmom and No Parents. Alongside the bizarro joy of seeing a rock show in a diner that normally operates from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m., I felt unabashed pleasure watching Iji play. The charm of Zach Burba’s ever-so-slightly-twisted pop project is very hard to deny.

Whatever Will Happen is the band’s 12th release, and it cruises right along. Opener “Cruisin USA” shares a title with an arcade game, introducing a record that feels as if it’s written in the world of Generic Cross Country America. Palm trees and pit stops and mini malls and chain restaurants serve as a backdrop for sunrises and sunsets and surfing the radio. It is simultaneously land-locked and always on the beach. On the record’s liner notes, before the credits, Burba drops a couplet: “The sun rises over the Burger Mart and elects me / Poet-laureate of the Mini Van.”

Burba and his band have mastered one utterly essential rock move—dropping back into a groove—and they play with it all over the record. “Hard 2 Wait” consistently falls back on a disco groove, while “All the Light” ebbs and flows through its ascending bass line. The record continuously propels forward while returning to the same motifs. There’s no cynicism to be found in the world of Whatever Will Happen. “Parking Lot Palms” is, in some sense, a love song to the road trip. Even its wistfulness (“Crossing states and I feel the same tonight”) is offset by the joyride (“We passed Shasta, Helen, Rainier, all tonight”).

When Whatever Will Happen hits the coast, it’s at “Eastern Beach,” where “the cross country friendships survive.” I think that’s where I caught Iji last summer. They were right at the edge of a continent and in the company of new cross-country friends. Bruba truly is the Poet-laureate of the Mini Van, and as all seven members of Iji packed up their gear and headed out, I started looking forward to their next visit.

Whatever Will Happen is out now via Team Love Records.