Joe Lally was onstage, playing at full throttle, when he realized that his band had found a true kindred spirit. It was the fall of 2021 and the Messthetics — the instrumental trio of Lally on bass, his former Fugazi bandmate Brendan Canty on drums and guitarist Anthony Pirog — were at Brooklyn venue the Bell House, digging into their uptempo riff workout “Serpent Tongue.” Joining them for the piece was a special guest, acclaimed jazz saxophonist James Brandon Lewis, making only his second cameo with the group after a drop-in at another New York show back in 2019. That first meeting had been a success, but this time, Lewis’ presence sparked something new.

“It pushed the song like crazy,” Lally recalls of a passage when Lewis and Pirog began trading fiery solos. As the intensity kept building, the bassist felt simultaneously challenged and exhilarated. “You’re just holding on and going, ‘It sounds great,’” he remembers telling himself. “‘Just keep going.’”

That imperative — the sense that there was more to explore within what began as an ad hoc union among the four musicians — lingered after the performance ended. Now, Lewis, Pirog, Lally and Canty are ready to unveil their first full-length album as a quartet. Recorded in just two days in December 2022 at Takoma Park, Maryland, studio Tonal Park, with engineer Don Godwin, The Messthetics and James Brandon Lewis features nine tracks that capture the combustive chemistry Lally originally sensed onstage while expanding the collaboration in all directions.