LVL UP is a few weeks away from dropping Return to Love, shop arguably their most thoughtful record thus far, but guitarists Nick Corbo and Dave Benton are already contemplating how to rebrand.

“We could’ve done the number 2. Like, Return 2 Love,” Benton suggests, eying early ‘90s R&B records as inspiration.

The sentimental nature of a title like Love was acknowledged all the way back to when co-guitarist Mike Caridi brought a demo of the same title to band practice, but the name stuck long after the demo was cut from the album’s shortlist. It’s the kind of statement a band would’ve painted on their tour van underneath a wizard and unicorn forty years ago (and yes, we spitballed van designs too), but in a year of other maximalist slogans like ‘Make America Great Again’ or ‘Stronger Together’, Return to Love feels like a friendly alternative were the band considering a political run in their next lives.

“It is kinda funny,” Corbo acknowledges. “Almost classic rock-y,” Benton adds. “It’s not a full-on tongue-in-cheek title, but we’re not taking it too seriously.”

A surface layer of “not taking it too seriously” has been a winning characteristic of the New York four-piece’s persona since their beginnings at SUNY Purchase, but the trait feels more necessary than ever now that a national level of attention has been placed on Love, their first full-length record with venerated indie label Sub Pop. Luckily for them, Love completely delivers, expanding on the hooky guitar rock that won them a devoted fanbase with 2014’s Hoodwink’d while expanding their standard lyrical wheelhouse of anxiety and relationship strife to include debates on religion and the afterlife. It’s certainly the band’s most ambitious record conceptually, but at the same time, Love is the kind of smirking “coming-of-age” album only Corbo, Benton, and Caridi could’ve written, no rebranding required.

“We didn’t really think about it. Like, we weren’t trying to make the mature record and it wasn’t like anyone was saying ‘I have a theme or vision’ with this album,” Corbo admits. “I mean, the band’s called LVL UP, so we’re not as deep, religious or spiritual as you might think.”

“[Return to Love] is about feeling deep and heavy stuff in normal life, but trying to make it sound interesting, so you end up talk about magic instead,” Benton adds jokingly.

This isn’t even close to the first time either songwriter has been asked to expand on Return to Love’s lyrics. And, for better or worse, it’s not going to be the last.

It’s not that LVL UP have never been a “mature” band. If maturity in a band is measurable by transparency and self-realization in its lyrics, LVL UP has been delivering maturity pretty much their entire existence. Sure, images of witches, hexes, and roman candles populate their lyrics and titles like “Bro Chillers” or “Stoned Alone” give some indication to their sense of humor, but what happens when the jokey titles are replaced for songs about being naked with God?

“I think we went into recording this record being like ‘oh, we have all this time in a studio with our good friend [Mike Ditrio] as producer, so let’s try the wackiest stuff we have.’ I think Nick has wanted to do a song like [“Naked In The River With the Creator”] for a long time,” Benton said.

“Creator” is the 7-minute closer that will almost assuredly earn a prominent place in LVL UP’s canon based on its length alone (almost every LVL UP song up to this point wraps up in under three minutes), but its organ-led ascension into four minutes of guitar dirge heaven is the case-in-point of LVL UP’s growth as a band fearlessly teasing out each songwriter’s wackiest impulses.

“When the drums come in, that’s actually five partial drum kits set up in a star pattern around a Leslie speaker that was playing a drone from the keyboard,” Benton says. “We all listened to the song at the same time and slammed on the drums. It took a really long time to set up, but it sounds like the Universal Studios intro.”

“I listen to a lot of really repetitive, borderline-boring ambient music, so sometimes I get this idea like, wondering what it would be like to be in that kind of band or, like, a doom metal band or a nice band with strings and shit,” Corbo adds. “There’s a certain sense though when you have three songwriters in a band that you can try that stuff if you want.”

Love is filled with classic LVL UP songwriting like the high school nostalgia that blasts through “Blur” or the affirmations of loneliness on “I”, but our conversation kept going back to the realizations of mortality via garden-watching on “Cut From the Vine” and finding traces of God on “Hidden Driver”.

“We’ve had interviews lately where a lot of the questions have been about our intentions and thought process going into this thing. And, not to say there isn’t any thought process going into things, but a lot of things just happen without us worrying or thinking too much about it,” Benton says.

The title of “Driver” itself came tangentially from the book The People’s Platform by Astra Taylor, which Benton cites as “an academic look into internet and culture”, but its appearance in the songwriting is prime “not thinking too much about it” decision-making. “I wound up getting the title from the author’s website, hiddendriver.com… I just really liked those words.”

Specifically, The People’s Platform questions, as Harper’s Magazine suggested in their review, “the notion that the Internet has brought us into an age of cultural democracy. Largely, the argument is that the Goliaths of online culture beat out the Davids, specifically that “content is sensationalist and powered by advertisements, quality work is underfunded, and corporate giants like Google and Facebook rule.” While the notion is certainly not unfounded, fellow SUNY Purchase bands, many of whom are assembled on Benton and Caridi’s label Double Double Whammy, have built their own rapid online legitimacy alongside LVL UP’s due to this overarching ethos of caring, but not over-worrying the process.

“In terms of Double Double Whammy, we’ve just been observing [Sub Pop] in way they manage us and our expectations. We’ve kind of taken some of their methods like how they handle artists and creating a positive experience,” Benton says.

Changing the Double Double Whammy formula even beyond that would be risky with the two incredible years the label has had in 2014 and 2015. As artists like Mitski, Porches, and Frankie Cosmos graduated to other labels after finding success on DDW, Benton and Caridi have just recently let another small label assist them in mail orders so they can continue doing what they do best: cultivating a roster of friends and beloved artists like Florist, Free Cake For Every Creature, and Told Slant.

The basic, uncluttered approach to their label is similarly why an album title like Return to Love just makes perfect sense for LVL UP at this stage of their game.

“If big, crazy things start happening to you, you’re just going to want some normalcy [and] to write songs about watching Netflix original series,” Benton says. “Deep down, some of the songs are mundane, but if someone can interpret that as something special or beautiful to them, then that’s really cool.”

As far as how they anticipate their new album and campaign of Love will take them from here, Corbo reverts to the band’s trademark brand of self-deprecation.

“I think we’re pretty honest about not knowing what’s going on pretty much ever,” he concludes with a laugh.

Return To Love will be out on September 23rd via Sub Pop. LVL UP will be at Great Scott tonight with Black Beach and Funeral Advantage. For tickets and further information, check out the Facebook page here.