“People have always been good at imagining the end of the world,” wrote Rebecca Solnit, “which is much easier to picture than the strange sidelong paths of change in a world without end.”

The future won’t look like the past: dystopian dread takes this for granted, but utopian imagination is just as valid. Future Politics, Austra’s third, and most ambitious album to date, calls for radical hope: “a commitment to replace the approaching dystopia,” says Katie Stelmanis, who leads Austra with the support of Maya Postepski (Princess Century, TR/ST), Dorian Wolf, and Ryan Wonsiak. “Not just...