While 2008′s debut affair We Brave Bee Stings was all wide-eyed and tingling senses, synapses firing at new experiences and possibilities, this is a true follow-up, way more wistful, with hindsight the order of the day. This is an album that’s learnt its lessons, but without getting maudlin; it’s a bit more worldly-wise, but not quite yet world-weary. It was out in the States a few months ago, but it’s also my runaway favourite of all the long-players on the shelves over here this week.

After the opening challenge of the 33-second field hymnal of “The Clap” (no smirking at the back, Jenkins), with its fists-raised refrain of “If this is how you want it, ok ok“, the album veers between the hip-shaking soul-tinged stomp of “When We Swam” to the Ben Folds-y indie piano pop of “Cool Yourself” to the folky and wryly self-aware pluckings of the title track, which features a mean fiddle appearance from Anderw Bird.

Thao’s voice is a whole story on its own, with its apparent frailties telling sad tales of wounds to the heart, but with an unmistakeable undercurrent hinting at a solid steel core. On “But What Of The Strangers” she almost whispers some of the lines as if a stiff breeze could shatter it all in an instant, but on “When We Swam” she’s back with “Bring your hips to me”, in charge and indomitable.

All that guff aside though, what truly makes this a bit of an event for me is that you can – and believe me, you will – sit down and listen to it over and over again, and it will take some considerable measure of time before you stop taking new things from it. It’s just not predictable – it doesn’t start off on one path and stick to it, it reacts, and gets knocked off course, and has to get itself straight again, mirroring the themes that went into the album itself. It makes it feel human.

Pitchfork described the closing track “Easy” as ‘boogie-shoegaze’ (no, me neither), and it’s here where the punchline to the album comes – surely there isn’t another line anywhere else as evocative, using as few a number of words as “Sad people dance, too“?