The band that sings about having too much time on its hands has been using it wisely in recent years. Circling From Above, out Friday (July 18), is Styx‘s 18th studio album and third in seven years.

What’s driving the group’s output? “Well, we’re always writing,” singer-guitarist Tommy Shaw, Styx’s most prolific composer (alongside former member Dennis DeYoung), tells Billboard during the group’s current Brotherhood of Rock Tour with the Kevin Cronin Band and former Eagles guitarist Don Felder. There’s also a strong partnership with Will Evankovich, who produced 2017’s The Mission, 2021’s Crash of the Crown and this year’s Circling From Above (he became a full-fledged member of the band in 2021).

“Will and I live close to each other (in Nashville),” Shaw continues, “so we get together a lot and co-write things. But the other guys are great co-writers, too; we’ll get together at my house or at Will’s studio and we’ll start cobbling these pieces together…. Somehow, luckily, we’ve always been able to bring these songs and pieces together and tell a story, and that’s the best thing.”

The California-born Evankovich, who first worked with Shaw on his mid-90s Shaw Blades project with Night Ranger’s Jack Blades, adds that all of the Styx albums he’s been involved with “basically happen organically. There’s stuff Tommy and I were writing at first, and then involving Lawrence (Gowan, singer/keyboardist), they just took off on its own. It wasn’t premeditated. Tommy’s always writing; he’s a very creative guy, and I think finding a new writing partner galvanized his interest. But we do it because we want to do it, not because of how many records we’re gonna sell.”

While there were certainly thematic threads within The Mission and Crash of the Crown, both Shaw and Evankovich are quick to downplay any notions of Circling From Above as a concept album. “No, we’re not trying to make a concept album,” Shaw explains. “We’re just trying to stay on the same track. That’s what interests us, to make it interesting to the person listening to it and tying it all together like that. I think that’s fun.”

Circling From Above does start from a specific idea, however. Shaw — whose avid interest in birds helped put a European starling on the album cover — says the Pink Floyd-esque title track, which slides into the equally proggy first single “Build and Destroy,” was inspired by a continuing interest in outer space. “There’s an app I discovered a while back where you can look up and see all the space junk,” he says. “It blew my mind that all this stuff is floating around up there. Every piece of equipment that’s up there, that’s basically junk, is owned by a country and that country knows where it is and is responsible for it. It’s organized chaos, but it’s a junkyard up there. As we discussed it in the studio we were getting ready to write songs, and that influenced some of the lyrics and ideas kept popping off and we had those two songs that go together.”

Evankovich says the other 11 tracks on Circling From Above are not as interdependent. “Pretty much after that (the album) is its own animal,” he explains. “It becomes like a Beatles’ Rubber Soul, where every song’s a little different.” But, as producer, he sought to create a sonic unity in applying elements of what can be considered classic Styx, helping the band sound more like its rock radio-dominating ‘70s and ‘80s era than it had for a number of years.

“The recipe has always been big harmonies, these car horn-stacked vocals, and the great synthesizers and guitars, and we still adhere pretty much to that recipe,” Evankovich says of the band, which has placed 23 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 (including eight top 10s and one No. 1) over the course of its career. “None of it is premeditated; it just kind of falls into the Styx universe by virtue of the fact you have James Young and Chuck Panozzo (co-founders) and Tommy Shaw in addition to the new guard, which is Gowan, Todd Sucherman (drums) Terry (Gowan, bass) and myself.

“When they took that hiatus from Cyclorama, the record industry was in a state of flux and things were a little confusing about selling new music, especially if you’re a vintage band. So these (recent albums) have kind of merged the two; we’re at an age now where the attention span is pretty quick, so we try to compact all the greatness that we can into three- or four-minute songs rather than do those longer, stretched-out songs — which I love, by the way. But this is the mantra now.”