IMAGE: Jason Quigley

For a band that’s frequently associated with all things geeky, Jesse and Emily Laney’s North Portland house hardly resembles an ode to Dungeons Dragons. Despite the odd thrift store gnome or tchotchke—and the Darth Vader helmet resting on a keyboard in the front room—it’s relatively tame for a group like World’s Greatest Ghosts, one that sings about evil monsters, magic potions and secret elixirs. Not until you walk down the basement steps to the band’s practice space, lined with concert posters of friends’ bands and K Records staples, does one realize that the house is more of a temple to the synth-rock quintet’s real unabashed obsession: playing live music.

In fact, sitting around a table at NoPo dive the Florida Room, it’s hard to get through a conversation without delving into a discussion of favorite shows and albums. “Have you heard the new Built to Spill yet?” guitarist Casey Laney interrupts. “The first track is one of the best album openers in years.” His brother Jesse quickly jumps in: “I was just going to say the same thing!”

Finishing each others’ sentences is nothing new for World’s Greatest Ghosts. Until recently, the four core members of the band—Casey and his brother Jesse, who sings and plays keyboards, Jesse’s wife and bassist Emily, and guitarist Brandon Anderson—all lived in the same house. It’s that closeness and familial bond that led to frequent arguments, laughs and missteps that inform its debut album, No Magic. Recorded by local producer Skyler Norwood—whose previous credits include work for Blind Pilot, Horse Feathers, and Talkdemonic besides moonlighting in Point Juncture, WA—No Magic is one of the best-sounding and -sequenced local efforts in years. From the opening “Phantastes,” a ringing, anthemic pop song with dual-guitars slithering like a snake trying to make its way out of a labyrinth, to the infectious singalong “On the Shore,” it’s an album that isn’t afraid to shake a leg and have some fun amid the turmoil.

“We don’t always love each other,” Jesse admits. “We’re all family and friends that have gone way back, but we still fight. I think it’s better to be a real band that has problems but still has so much fun than [one] who paints a pretty picture all the time but secretly hates each other.”

The Laneys moved to Portland in 2006 from outside Nashville, Tenn., on recommendation of a few friends and a desire to move away from any scene that emphasizes anything other than the music. Though Jesse jokes it’s actually because of his disdain for the South (“summers there are filled with humidity, ticks and assholes”), the brothers’ upbringing was surrounded by music: Dad Alan Laney is a well-known country and bluegrass songwriter. Still, Nashville and also New Orleans—where Jesse and Emily briefly lived before Hurricane Katrina—lacked anything resembling the Portland underground house show circuit that helped birth the current band.

For most of its first three years in existence, WGG rarely played a show in a traditional venue, instead hitting up almost every basement, living room and arcade in the city. “It was such an incredible experience,” Casey says. “Playing with punk bands and alongside really avant-garde people was rad. I mean, we’re a pop band, and to be submerged in that kind of scene really imparted a lot of good things on us.” Those wide-ranging influences are heard on No Magic, which jumps from synthensizer-led rave-ups (“Magick Words”) to songs like “Loudest Speaker,” the album’s closest thing to a ballad and only moment in its 33-minute run time where things slow down enough for you to catch your breath.

Following the mastering of the record in the spring, World’s Greatest Ghosts also had to pause for a second: Drummer John Damiani decided to move to Oklahoma City for grad school, and label Lucky Madison pushed the release of No Magic back to the fall. New time-keeper Eric Ambrosius was actually in attendance at Damiani’s last show with the band, a Tender Loving Empire showcase in June, and after just two months has already integrated himself into the World’s Greatest Ghosts family.

“We’re excited to record with him and see what happens when we don’t all live together,” Casey says. “It could be a disaster, but at least at the end of the day we’ll still be friends.”