Jesus H. Foxx – Endless Knocking

Seven members comprise this leftfield Edinburgh indie outfit, who mingle strings, cornet, and glockenspiel with more orthodox instrumentation. Yet even the guitars and percussion here are deployed with imaginative verve, somehow interlocking influences that range from Afrobeat and minimalist composition to gentle post-rock melancholy. The weirdly disjointed pitch-shifts of the backing vocals on tracks like Permanent Defeat suggest a poppier, more immediately accessible take on the Dirty Projectors’ labyrinthine song structures.

Such breadth of ambition could result in a mess, but Jesus H. Foxx have a gift for intricate composition, a melodic sensibility, and an astute ability to strip things back when appropriate. Half the Man You Were overlays delayed guitar arpeggios with shimmering crescendos of distortion, but such bursts of intensity are juxtaposed with the honeyed pop of songs like So Much Water. Somehow, Endless Knocking shoehorns a disparate range of influences into a whole that’s both cohesive and, above all, fun.