Those expecting the laid-back west coast sound from previous records like 2011’s Gentle Spirit are in for a shock. The big production on the title track of 2013’s Fanfare offered hints, but Wilson’s gone full mad auteur here.

Perhaps better known for helping out Dawes and Father John Misty, it’s Wilson’s work with Roger Waters that most informs this sprawling, seventies-style double album, the kind of thing Todd Rundgren used to knock out before his lunch of quaaludes and fondue. Think, in terms of scope and ambition, of A Wizard, A True Star, Out of Blue, Tusk, or even Stevie Wonder’s Journey Through “The Secret Life Of Plants”! Do you remember that scene in Almost Famous where the sister is leaving home and gives her brother a pile of albums to “set him free”? It’s that kind of record, man.

‘Trafalgar Square’ goes from ‘Us And Them’ Floyd to a dirty Glam boogie which puts the rhythm guitar from The Beatles’ ‘Revolution 1’ through a blender. There’s more Beatle action on ‘Me’ which sounds like Imagine era John Lennon, complete with Plastic Ono Band drums, covered by the ELO, as does ‘Sunset Blvd’. ‘Over The Midnight’ is the kind of thing Kraftwerk might have worked up in the Casio testing room had they grown up in California listening to The War On Drugs.