Yacht Rock Revue excels at escapism. If you want to steal away into the night or are in need of a cool change, Yacht Rock Revue is your band. But the members of the group aren’t just the world’s greatest AM gold and Top 40 band, they are artists.

In 2020, Yacht Rock Revue took a bold step forward with a shockingly tight, cool, and strange set of originals, “Hot Dads in Tight Jeans.” Now the band tops itself with a double LP concept album — part one is out now, part two comes Nov. 29 — about riding the ups and downs of life, love, and being in a beloved tribute act. It’s appropriately titled “Escape Artist.”

“On the most obvious level, ‘Escape Artist’ is what our band does, we provide an escape for people and I see that out in the crowd as they escape from whatever is going on in their life,” band leader Nicholas Niespodziani told the Herald. “But underneath that there’s a cliche, or expectation, about what a band like ours is supposed to be able to do.”

YRR has blown up a lot of those expectations. The band regularly headlines 3,500-seat venues — YYR plays Roadrunner on Sept. 22. In 2023, it opened up for Kenny Loggins on his farewell tour and just wrapped a summer tour with Train and REO Speedwagon. The biggest hurdle has always been the idea that tribute acts just don’t make their own music.

“We’re trying to break out of that,” Niespodziani said. “I can’t separate out the artistic part of me. I can’t picture having gotten this far without trying to make our own music.”

The album’s song titles evoke classic yacht themes, see “Waves,” “Sail On,” “Tropical Illusion,” and the title track. But the lyrics have an introspection, an existentialism, that’s often missing from Toto songs — a couple gems are “All my time is my time is my time/I’m finding my shine/I might be losing my mind” and “Don’t rest on your laurels/We’re far from immortal/Every day is a new day.” The arrangements and production have as much in common with indie acts Animal Collective and the Flaming Lips as Boz Scaggs (so dreamy, so shimmery).

“My natural inclination is to write pop songs,” said Niespodziani, who wrote much of the album and produced all of it. “But my inclination on how to produce those songs tends more toward psychedelic pop or art pop. That’s my natural lane. But being in a yacht rock band for 17 years, those grooves and those chords and that mentality has seeped into my writing and my creativity into ways I can’t even quantify.”

In an odd twist, Niespodziani’s artistic approach has become more unique since becoming the leader of a cover band. And that hybrid of yacht and art, that incongruous mix of pop and angst, pushes “Escape Artist” to be a great album.

Now that YRR has three dozen original songs in its catalog, it needs to work harder to figure out how to get them to its audience. YYR has some hardcore fans but they probably won’t go home happy if they don’t hear two dozen expected hits at a show.

“It can be frustrating when the (original) songs don’t get listened to as much as we’d all like,” Niespodziani said.

The band is working on a music video, a live stream, and a whole bunch of other promotional tools to push the tracks on “Escape Artist.” While it seems unlikely anything on the record will become as beloved as “What A Fool Believes,” it seemed really unlikely a cover band would share the stage with Kenny Loggins, sell out a dozen national tours, and make a killer 21-track concept album.

For music, details, and tickets, visit yachtrockrevue.com.