If The Slow Show’s music was in a film it would a rom com, as the hero walked away into the sunset after finally splitting up with the girl he still loves; as the camera followed him into the middle distance he’d give a little happy skip because, hey, life’s not that bad really.

This new album from the Manchester band is a little slower than their debut White Water, with added strings and choir, but singer Rob Goodwin is still talking his baritone way through the songs as the band lays down atmospheric layers behind him.

In sound he resembles a gloomy Leonard Cohen, though the album is more uplifting than downbeat and the songs are the world-weary reflections that Cohen could make.

Opener Strangers Now is about how easily people become estranged after intimacy while Ordinary Lives celebrates the changes in everyone’s lives no matter how heart-breaking or unfair; This Time is about new beginnings.

It’s not all of the heart: Lullaby is about; well, the lyric goes: “If this is England that I see, then all your values are foreign to me”, so maybe Brexit is behind it, while Brawling Tonight is a romanticised account of Manchester evenings and street fights.

The Slow Show have one sound and it’s not one you’d want to wheel out every day, but’s rather beautiful the times you do play it.

Slowly click here to buy: