The breadth and crazy ambition of concept albums were slowly drilled into my skull by my father, who grew up on the overblown artistic expression of '70s progressive rock. Jethro Tull, 10cc, Godley and Creme, Gentle Giant, Pink Floyd and countless other artists straining at the boundaries of what albums could be and accomplish - these were mysterious warlocks who took turns terrifying and tantalizing me. Always, I appreciated concise songcraft to abstract exploration, but certain bands managed to wrap their albums in far-out concepts while still maintaining the approachability of standard LPs.

As I grew older, I found the indie rock renaissance of the '90s and beyond, where bands once more became comfortable returning to the sort of giant artistic bursts that punk and New Wave eschewed in the '80s. Genres began fervently coupling, and the idea of a band being conceptual was all but taken out of the hands of the artist. If you were obsessive and analytically minded, like me, you could create narratives in your head just by looking at the profound unlikelihood of these two disparate genres colliding together to create one entity.

Emby Alexander is a collision.

"We all met in college, where we were studying audio engineering, so we'd geek out on that," says lead singer Michael Alexander from a farmers' market in San Jose, California. "I was obsessed with extreme music - really loud, really quiet, and trying to pit these things against each other. The dynamics just really create a dramatic feel by letting the whispers happen so that, when the screaming comes, it feels large, and vice versa. I'm a huge fan of punk music and a fan of classical music, so I wanted to find where those two genre both find their extremes, and try to find a space where all of that could exist in one band."

Hailing from Phoenix, Arizona, Emby Alexander's first LP, Frontispiece, is comprised of four song suites, meant to be listened to in their entirety. This formality is the classic approach to the concept album, back when LPs would sometimes be divided into four sides. Modern listening enables the audience to skip around or isolate, but to experience one piece of work in its entirety is a valuable aspect of taking in an artist's work.

As a band, Emby Alexander resemble Parenthetical Girls, who also dabble in experimental album structures and concepts. Combining chamber pop with modern affectations and unbridled energy is the calling card of Emby Alexander. The variety and depth of the bands to whom they're compared should say it all - among them being the Beach Boys, Van Dyke Parks, the Smiths and David Bowie - but the aggressive beauty denotes a restless worker behind all of these frantic sounds. While they don't quite possess the assertive experimentation of the Dirty Projectors, Emby Alexander don't lean on the inherent prettiness of their classical experimentation. Including looped samples and virulent percussion, Emby Alexander come prepared to attack.

"Our goal is to treat live performance and recording as two separate arts," says Alexander, when asked about the band's beginning in audio engineering. "We steal from ourselves. The album inspires the live show and the live shows inspire what gets recorded. They're both independently approaches. On an album, you can do stuff that you could never do live, but the reverse is also true. We just try to find what those things are."

The only concept during a live performance, ultimately, is the idea that you are standing in front of a group of musicians who have worked long and hard at their craft, just to deliver it to your ears. The concept is graded on how it tickles your ears, and how many sizes your heart grows. Emby Alexander want you to show up so they can establish proof of concept.

EMBY ALEXANDER, w/ Middlewav, The Straws, Crowd the Sky, 8 p.m., Monday, Aug. 25, Northern, 414 ½ Legion Way, Olympia, cover tba, olympiaallages.org