If Southend experimental outfit These New Puritans sometimes resemble a glorified art project, third album Field Of Reeds brings that perception to its apotheosis. The sparse ‘This Guy’s In Love’– “a digital field recording of a woman’s half-remembered interpretation of the Bacharach and David classic track of the same name” – is as elusive as the description suggests, straining to make any real lasting impression.
As a rickety intro to an album that subsequently grows in cohesion, it would be fine. Alas, Field Of Reeds is often indecipherable. ‘Fragment Two’, guided by noirish horns that recur throughout the album, offers nice ideas but feels somehow like a Radiohead B-side. Similarly, ‘The Light In Your Name’, for which an entire day was apparently spent smashing panes of glass, has a potentially great song buried in there somewhere, but you’ll really need to work hard to find it. ‘V (Island Song)’ is more of the same; occasional explosions lost within a cumbersome narrative.
Field Of Reeds, though apparently not a concept record, is something of a repetitive one, frequently re-treading earlier arrangements and textures, without the desired profound effect. Songs that threaten to soar – such as the intriguing ‘Organ Eternal’ – eventually hit a languid middle-ground and settle and, ultimately, there’s nothing on here to match the coiled spring of ‘Elvis’ or ‘We Want War’. We should never demand snappy accessibility from These New Puritans, but a little more energy and punch would go a long way.

Key Track: 'The Light In Your Name'