The Moth & The Mirror – Honestly, This World

Comprising previous and occasional members of bands including Frightened Rabbit, Smoke Jaguar and The Reindeer Section, The Moth & The Mirror form a smouldering collective, finely balancing tentative acoustic suggestions within patterns of climactic cacophony. Opener Everyone I Know heralds this approach, as delicately picked notes contrast with sturdy bass undertones and dissolving layers of steely guitar.

Vocalist Stacey Sievwright, whose performance here at times recalls Beth Gibbons in collaboration with Rustin Man, is complemented by Tony Doogan's nuanced production; in fact each song illuminates the strengths of each player as well as the potent chemistry of the group.

Amongst the album's brooding atmospherics and cavernous echoes, Beautiful Creature unexpectedly smuggles raunch into a tight, rapidly shifting mix of trumpets and horns. Elsewhere, the title track's unobtrusive, haunting piano line succumbs to the friction of wild, exuberant guitar abandon and is probably the best example of the Moth dynamic, while the closing Oceans and Waves succeeds by tapping into melancholy and joy simultaneously – a fitting end to a striking debut.