Luke Wyland mixes pop and experimental music to create the golden sounds of Au. Now, he just needs to keep his band together.

Luke Wyland, songwriter and sole permanent member of Portland experimental pop collective Au, celebrated the release of their sophomore album, Verbs, in the only way fit for a sonic architect dedicated to creating expansive melodic constructions.

For the album’s release party, Au swelled to a 15-person ensemble that included a full choir and a small army of singing drummers. It was “a real communion of sorts,” Wyland says, “that became the best musical experience of my life thus far.”

Although he one day dreams of touring with an ensemble like the one he performed with that night, he says that for now high gas prices and the economic reality of being a struggling musician dictate that he’ll have to settle for a comparatively meager four-person road unit.

To make matters even more irritating, other pesky “real world” concerns upended the 27-year-old’s plans when his former band mates, Jonathan Sielaff and Mark Kaylor—both in their 30s—left Au shortly after finishing the album.

“[They were] amazing friends and players, but when it came down to it, they weren’t able to hit the road for months on end, as both of them are married, and Mark is about to have a kid,” Wyland exclaims.

“So after Verbs was finished, I had to immediately start looking for a new band with people who were into making this their lifestyle,” he adds. “Ultimately, it’s hard to maintain a solid lineup, as the project has fluctuated in the past between being a solo project and a band.”

Listen to two tracks from Au’s latest album, Verbs.

But lineup struggles and economic limitations aren’t the only issues Wyland must contend with in order to make his music. He has a speech impediment that, although it would never stop him from doing what he loves, often makes an already difficult job even harder.

“It has definitely been a real struggle with this whole bandleader thing and the idea of being on stage as the frontman. It could ruin a show if I stuttered while introducing the band or said something awkward while trying to cover up my speech,” he says. “I’m definitely still working it out, so in no way am I over it. Ultimately, I’m always hoping one of my band members will take it over, and I can just do what I do best and play the music.”

For Wyland, the real world isn’t just about dealing with hassles. Portland’s relatively cheap housing and cost of living means that residents “don’t have to work ridiculous hours, which is good for me.”

This means that after three days of laying down basic instrumental tracks at a professional recording studio, Wyland was able to quit his job at the online store CDBaby and spend months with his old Mac PowerBook, adding layer upon layer of sound to his compositions.

“I do tend to do most of the layering on my own. It’s a large part in how I compose a song and definitely helps things develop over time. I’ll start with a kernel of an idea—maybe something we used to play live or just a theme that’s been running through my brain—lay down the skeletal structure, and then go from there.”

The galaxy of jaunty keyboards and wall-to-wall handclaps of Verbs standout “rr vs. d” were achieved by “lots and lots of tracks. But they’re all live takes,” Wyland admits. “I tend to stay away from splicing or digital editing. The music breathes a lot more when it’s a real person playing along with the recording. It’s the nuance that gets embedded into a song by this process that I’m most in love with.”

The end result is that Verbs is a dense, deeply layered album that not only reveals new melodic flourishes with each listen, but feels more full and vibrant the louder that it is played.

Although Au’s self-titled debut garnered praise from Pitchfork Media and the Portland Mercury, Wyland knew he wanted to go in a less abstract direction for the follow-up effort.

Even better live: check out three videos of Au playing live and experience the truly layered sound as it was meant to be heard.

Some of his earliest memories of music are of hearing the hits of Paul Simon and Michael Jackson, and he remembers listening to pop tunes while his mother taught aerobics classes.

But it was improvisational jazz luminary John Coltrane who was the “first real giant of contemporary music that successfully blew my mind apart.” He listened to jazz in high school, but it was hearing Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and his experimental, mid-career work that changed how he looked at music.

“I was really captured by the way he transfixed you with his emotional honesty. From there I spent a lot of time traveling down the free jazz road—Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Miles Davis’s early ’70s stuff, up to the contemporary blend of modern classical and free improvisation.”

Because of his love of the flexibility of experimental music, Wyland says that it’s impossible for him to write “a straight-up pop song that does’t integrate something from my background in experimental music. There is definitely a battle between the experimental and pop worlds that I think is vital to the progressions of both. Without these tensions, I think both might remain relatively stagnant.”

From John Coltrane to Terry Riley, listen to clips from some of Au’s favorite tracks, and read how each one influenced their sound.