Luke Steele is Australia's answer to Brian Wilson, his musical creations manage to pack as much joy, intricacy and vocal harmonies as The Beach Boys could fit into their career, and yes, he is also a little loopy too.

"Have you seen the shape of your heart yet man?" Steele asks down the phone line from his Perth base. While he may be geographically removed from the rest of Australia, he is also in another galaxy on a cerebral level. "Mine's filled with spiders and birds and sharks, and yours is too, but the rest is up to your imagination."

Steele's wild imagination is a boon for Australian music. With two of the most innovative and unique pop albums already under his belt, Steele and his musical mates look set to become a band for the ages.

Personality starts with a flourish of strings and a whispered vocal "I am everything you wanted, but you wanted more" before it leaps into a technicolour world of layered vocal harmonies reminiscent of Good Vibrations and rich orchestration that turns simple compositions into lavish paintings of joyful music that is offset with the occasional dark subject matter.

"What's dark is light and what's light is dark." Steele says explaining the theme of Personality. "These are songs about the average Joe who lost his pick up and his wife, except for me it got played in reverse and I got it all back."

While previous efforts mix and matched country, pop, psychedelia and rock genres, Personality is a stylistically coherent record from start to end. At first brush the album seems too similar, but further listens reveal the subtleties of the pop hooks that burst out of every track.

If you're looking for this record in shops, it will be filed under future classic.