As we settle into our seats in a crowded Williamsburg, Brooklyn coffee shop on an unseasonably warm February afternoon, Caroline Polachek hands me a neatly labeled cassette tape. I’m a little taken aback by the technological relic, and when she explains that it contains a sampling of cuts from her band’s forthcoming LP on Kanine Records, I find myself mentally searching my inventory of audio gear trying to remember if I even have a tape deck sitting around someplace (“Do you have a tape player in your car? You can just hang out with it in there,” Polachek suggests helpfully). The cassette, I’m told, is part of an effort to keep the tracks off the internet before their official summer release; a CD would make it much easier for unscrupulous critics to upload the music for all to hear. If a cassette tape seems a little behind the times, that’s probably just fine with the members of Polachek’s band, the Brooklyn-based trio Chairlift.

After all, Chairlift, a relatively new arrival to the fertile Brooklyn indie-pop and rock scene that has spawned bands like MGMT and Grizzly Bear, expertly meld older influences with innovative sounds. They’re content to let their band evolve and develop before making a push for the kind of scrutiny and overexposure that’s now a fact of life for some of their fellow Williamsburg-based groups.

“Our approach right now is to let the music mature,” said Polachek. “It will find itself as we do more recording and play for more people. It’s good to be under the radar right now and we’re savoring this.” Asked about similarities to other successful bands from the neighborhood, Polachek is respectful and slightly self-deprecating. “We love those bands. But they’re way ahead of where we are now. They’ve been touring all over and they really have it down. We’re in a more malleable and experimental phase. We do have a lot in common—a vibe and a culture—but our music is different from what they’re doing.”

But Chairlift is already enjoying its own modest successes, and they may not be able to stay out of the limelight for long. The band’s cerebral brand of synth-pop (or, as they like to call it, “25th-century folktronica”) recently earned them an independent record deal, and they’ve been playing to sold-out crowds in New York as part of a stellar bill that includes MGMT and Yeasayer.

Chairlift arrived in Brooklyn via Boulder, Colorado, where they went to school. Aaron Pfeming and Patrick Wimberely round out the trio, which came together for good in early 2007. Each of the members is a multi-instrumentalist and it’s unusual to find them sticking to one instrument for very long—though Pfeming and Wimberely seem particularly fond of their vintage keyboard collections.

While Chairlift’s upcoming release is still a few months away from hitting record store shelves, the band has an EP and single available at New York City brick-and-mortar shops and on iTunes. A close listen to those releases, and to their as-of-yet unreleased material (yes, I eventually managed to find a tape player), reveals that Chairlift is a band that’s still feeling its way as it navigates a variety of genres and songwriting styles. There’s a tension between sophisticated and experimental pop and more low-brow synth-based tracks, with the latter sounding diffident and tentative at times—but that’s not uncommon for a band at this early stage of development, and better cohesion will surely come with time. Lyrically, the band shies away from traditional narrative songwriting.

“We’re fascinated by music that is mystical and transportive,” Polachek said. “It’s more about transmitting ideas than telling stories. Some songs start out as a concept and end up as a story but we’re focused on the themes.” According to Polachek, “The primary lyrical themes are probably pleasure, the unexpected, and the familiar,” all of which are mined to great effect in the band’s modest back catalogue.

Their influences are wide-ranging, with Pfeming citing Hank Williams, Polachek giving props to mystical metal bands, and Wimberely admitting a soft spot for punk rock. Those disparate elements come together to form something entirely unexpected and wonderfully abstract. Asked if they consider themselves a psychedelic band, as they’ve often been described, the answer is illustrative of the band’s highly conceptual approach to their own music and to art in general. “I think all music is psychedelic,” Polachek said. “We’ve all had that experience of being high and tripping out to some mainstream shit. But there’s some music that purposely plays with your mind with its lyrics and compositions and our music definitely tries to do that.”

Happily, whether the songs are conceptual or narrative, Polachek’s voice is simply arresting—a remarkably agile instrument. Sometimes compared to Kate Bush, Polachek has the ability to pull off both ethereal purring and full-throated pop exhortations. And Pfeming and Wimberely, who share production duties in the studio, seem to excel at providing swirling soundscapes and an impressive array of sample-based beats to support her. While the results are sometimes brilliant, some songs sound a bit preliminary—a sign of a band still searching for an identity. But to judge from a sampling of tracks off their forthcoming album, the band is making strides toward coalescing around a conceptual and musical identity. That’s good news for fans of the Flaming Lips and art-pop of a similar ilk.

So far 2008 has brought with it touring dates with MGMT and Mixel Pixel, and the remainder of the year will be just as busy for Chairlift—and critical for their success. They’ll continue down the road (“We’ll stay on tour until the money runs out,” quips Pfeming, sounding like he means it) and aim for a summer release of their debut, reportedly titled Does You Inspire You. But I get the sense that big things are in store for this little Brooklyn band. They are clearly a well-grounded bunch with poise that’s unusual for a young group whose members range in age from 22 to 24. And their sense of humor will serve them well down the road. For now, the band is enjoying its infancy, patiently waiting for their turn to shine as Brooklyn’s next big thing—cassette tape demos notwithstanding.

Listen: Various Tracks [at myspace.com]

More articles by Matt Gewolb:

Album review of John Hiatt, Same Old Man

Album review of Okay, Huggable Dust

Album review of Old 97’s, Blame It on Gravity