Sometimes it's best to shut up, stop overthinking things and enjoy the album, and this is probably the best way to approach "Elevator to Mars," the latest album from the Worcester-area power-pop trio Thinner.

With this album the band — which will be performing with Little Big Wheel at 9 p.m. May 10 at Vincent's, 49 Suffolk St., Worcester — has created a soundscape that's vibrant and fun, with enough shadows and downbeat turns to give it some texture and substance.

But for the most part, these are breezy little rockers and, as such, are immensely enjoyable, a vibe that kicks off immediately with the album's title song.



Elevator To Mars by Thinner

There's a temptation to look for a metaphor in the hypothetical elevator, but that's likely folly. What's important in the song is not the lyrics — "jumping off buildings, running into passing cars, riding on my elevator to Mars" — so much as the sense of elevation and propulsion. Those sensations permeate the song, buoying every rapid chord progression, each joyous uptick of percussion.

This impressionistic feel refrains throughout the album, giving way at the end to more linear songs, such as the lonely-hearted rocker, "Save Me." But while songs such as "Save Me" have plenty for a listener to grab onto, both with their easily understood narratives and poppy retro vocal stylings, the more abstract songs near the top are a bit more interesting.



Elevator To Mars by Thinner

For instance, the album's second song, "Black Forest Walking," tackles pretty much the same subject matter as "Save Me" — an absent lover. But the approaches are different, with "Black Forest Walking" taking a more nerve-jangling approach, adding a sinister tone, a sense of desperation to the song that makes everything seem more urgent.



Elevator To Mars by Thinner

For the record, I have no idea what the phrase "Black Forest walking" means, save for a vague association with fairy tales and wicked witches. But even that doesn't matter much — it's the sense of shadows, of being lost in the forest, that's important.

This is a game that's easy to play with this album: The underlying themes of someone being missing, and the dissolution into pop carbonation and abstraction. You can not listen to the lyrics and have a perfectly lovely musical experience. But if you do listen to the lyrics, that sadness and absence begins to tell, especially on great lines such as "you're slipping out of the vapors gonna pull yourself away," on the song "Black Lacquer Girl."

At a certain point, the listener is forced to ask if this is one love story, refraining in recurring ghosts and sugar-high tones that, upon reflection, don't seem as sweet.

That's probably an open question, and one that can't really be answered. Whether by intent or not, the album flows together well along those lines, only interrupted in spurts, such as with the bit of rock 'n' roll fun, "Slackers and Laggers."

If there is a coherent love story to be found here, it all lands in the final track, "Mr. Aviator." Make no mistake: This is probably the most fun song on the album. It's the one you bounce to manically when the band plays it or it appears on the stereo. But there's a flipped perspective on the song, a sense of watching that absence we've felt throughout the album from the outside.

We become voyeurs in someone else's failing love, singing joyously along as the song's persona implores the absent partner: "Hey Mr. Aviator, hey do you love or hate her … enough to give her up?"

It's delivered like candy, but It's a deadly serious question, and one that doesn't need much analysis to understand. That sense of propulsion and flight from the first song remains, even if it seems somehow less joyous now.

But that's OK. The band keeps the undercurrent hopping throughout, and that's easy to enjoy, no matter what sadness is buried in the song.

Email Victor D. infante at Victor.Infante@Telegram.com, and follow him on Twitter @ocvictor.