Everything about this album screams "acquired taste". Frontman Fred Thomas's off-kilter vocals could have been recorded as he stood in front of a mirror with a hairbrush, pretending to be Elvis Costello singing Belle and Sebastian songs; his quivering yelps blaze with enthusiasm but miss every note. The lyrics are prolix; the cluttered arrangements are held together by the thinnest of threads, stretched so taut they often snap. Allow yourself to acquire the taste, however, and this is an album to savour. Thomas is a dizzyingly impressive songwriter, verbose because he is constructing entire stories, heart-rending tales packed with epiphanies and insight. And there are enough other, sweeter voices here to ensure that his words are communicated beautifully as well as eccentrically. If the music is messy, it's because it's crammed with ideas. When I Lose My Eyes, the album's strangest, smartest song, is so frantically inventive that at one point it literally has to stop to catch its breath.