Sometimes, as even Bowlegs knows, getting let go can be the best thing, really. For your bosses, for you, for everyone. The Leisure Society’s Nick Hemming might have feared the worst, though, recently. As provider of the scores to Shane Meadows’ ‘Dead Man’s Shoes’ and former band-mate with the director and actor Paddy Considine, Hemming would have been forgiven for worrying about his erstwhile collaborator’s success. And then there’s the current dismantling of the British film industry, one of the few places, according to Hemming, where musicians can earn a bit of money.

Well, no fear. Film-score’s loss has been pop music’s magnificent gain. As the title of one of their songs has it, it might be better to be ‘…Written Off Than Written Down’. The melancholy sounds of the Society’s debut have dissipated, revealing a band getting into their stride and falling in love with the possibilities of their craft.

Their foundation remains the Ivor Novello-nominated Hemming’s songs, delivered with the panache of a quite vast musical collective (even in these post-Polyphonic Spree times) finding their (un)common groove. Songs like ‘You Could Keep Me Talking’ and ‘The Hungry Years’ build hypnotically, with their various rhythms and whirling fiddles reminiscent of the big music created by another generation of musical adventurers.

There’s a cliché about bands like The Leisure Society, that they try to give the listener three different styles, often within the space of the same song. Well, while the Society are as much magpies as anybody, that kind of try-hard madcap approach is the furthest from their intentions. The album has a beautiful mathematical correctness that justifies every diversion, from the intro to ‘A Phantom Life’ – that sounds like a colliery brass band – to the closing collision of banjo-plucked light country and vintage clarinet jazz. The band sees these things with admirable clarity in their murk. -James Milne-