What’s outstanding about this release is not the dramatic vibrancy of *Hush The Many’s * sound, but the fact that the song with the most elegiac beauty, ‘In Bloom’, is the B-side.

With a female vocal quivering in the dim light, their girl/boy harmonies work best when the instrumentation is minimal. In fact, save for the bare sparks of an amplified acoustic guitar, there’s nothing but a pool of sounds coming from Alex and Nima’s vocals. It’s so engrossing that just as the final line of “I can’t do it on my own” is uttered, it’s a shock to hear the sharp smack of rapturous applause follow such a hypnotic, perfect version of a song. There are few bands that could pull off such a triumph in a live atmosphere.

Of course, lead track ‘Song Of A Page’ is impressive, too. Muscled dynamics see the cello and drums on the cusp of chaos as words are hysterically listed concerning “apples in a sea of squiggly lines… a flying peacock”. Hush The Many deliver the kind of emotional instability that presents itself without the need to flail its arms or pull its hair out, and that’s the kind of madness we all need in our lives.