Sunderland’s finest return with a new album and suddenly the winter months don’t seem quite so bleak. It’s a release that is packing delights wherever you look, with those delights slowly revealing themselves to you with each new listen. The band have mastered a kind of apollonian funk, featuring chattering rhythms that are as tight as snare drums, and wonderfully subtle melodies that don’t take much encouragement to take flight. You can hear bits of Steely Dan on ‘Limits of Language’, along with slithers of Talking Heads, chunks of XTC, and even the odd bit of ‘Talking Book’ era Stevie Wonder on tracks such as the wonderful ‘Absolutely Negative’. An album to live with. RM

Out now on Memphis Industries