“How long do you mean to be content?” asks the art of Esben and the Witch’s second album. The answer from the band themselves would have once perhaps been “Never”, their particular brand of goth post-rock being filled with dread and mood that gets under your skin, aggressively restrained. But with this album, while most of their old way of doing things remains, a new confidence and structure has emerged. This, their second album, features some actual songs.

Opening with the crashing, wide rise of ‘Iceland Spar’, the opening raucous drums with a rousing guitar riff drop out to reveal the greatest strength of this album as opposed to its predecessor; vocalist Rachel Davies’ voice is phenomenal, set far more to the fore than was previously allowed. On tracks like ‘When that Head Splits’ you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d put on Warpaint by accident, with vocal harmonies between Rachel and her double-layered ghost self carrying the melody while the band fiddle underneath.

‘Despair’ finds them in more familiar territory, agitated, scratchy with sporadic guitar bursts. An old weakness rears its head in closer ‘Smashed To Pieces…’, a song that rises and rises but is never allowed to peak, petering out flatly just before it should have let go and gone all in. Other strangely flat moments aside, the album is a joy to listen to, in as much as music this macabre can be so.

Label: Matador

7/10

Words: Sam Coe