Fram are five guys from in and around Glasgow who wouldn't particularly care to see their faces plastered on billboards by way of plugging their wares. They're not much interested in press days either, or being obliged to chum it up with A-listers. Not that they're reclusive mind; they just prefer to do things by themselves, for themselves.

It's cold up North. To illustrate, a frosty and ponderously strummed guitar opens the album to reveal a panorama that chills a winter's skin. And as if to prove the point further, the track shares its name with 'Endurance', the ship that carried the polar explorer Shackleton on its ever colder journey towards Antarctica in 1914.

The mood of icy contemplation floes (sic) throughout the album, with the country-tinged balladry making it an apt huddling companion for contemplative self wallowing that can arrive like winter after golden lazy autumn. The band keep to their glacial course with the only diversion being a very occasional tendency to not be as tight as the songs demand but, on the whole, This Is How We Live Now offers more than enough redemptive romance to warm the heart.