Field Music’s gorgeous, audacious 2005 debut wound up eclipsed by the jerky pop success of north-east comrades Futureheads and Maxïmo Park. Following last year’s backstory comp Write Your Own History, their second album proper takes them ahead of the pack.

Emboldened by a year on the road, they’re now a glorious band – supple as a jazz trio, punctual as a chamber troupe – and TOT plays to their new strengths, augmenting tricky prettiness with bold vigour. Simultaneously more pop (“A House Is Not A Home”) and more extreme (“Give It Lose It Take It”) than their debut, it sets the benchmark for – what shall we call it? British Prog Pop? – in 2007.

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STEPHEN TROUSSÉ