Airport Girl, Slow Light

3 / 5 stars
(Fortuna Pop)

It's hard to believe Airport Girl's frontman Rob Price when he sings: "I can't wait for this winter to pass." His band's second album revels in bleakness, its morose lyrics and minor chords steeping listeners in the melancholy of cold, grey days. These are songs of faltering relationships and damaged hope, people "mired in our old ways" who "will not fail to fail again".

They could sound unbearably dour, were it not for the surprisingly confident, buoyant music. Show Me the Way is particularly fantastic, its teeming guitar and melting strings dancing sinuously around each other, tracing echoes of the Beatles' Norwegian Wood. Twice Around the Bay breezes along on a gust of percussive vocal harmonies, Don't Let Me Down Again on jaunty trumpets that recall Love at their gentlest. Not every song is so ambitious, but even when they stick to a more straightforward indie jangle, as on Hold Me Through the Night, Airport Girl make it mesmerising.

The result is an album to make you glad it's winter, a time to huddle indoors and wallow.