LET'S get this out of the way first: it’s not all Ed Harcourt’s fault, but please can artists stop using Intro as the title of the first song on an album?

At least Furnaces - seemingly Harcourt’s most obvious tilt at the mainstream since he won a Mercury Prize nomination for 2001’s Here Be Monsters and then disappeared down Roni Size/Reprazent Road – doesn’t live down to that unpromising start on the naming front.

Although Harcourt’s multi-instrumentalism and penchant for serious lyrics have kept him in demand for collaborations, recognition on his own terms has been scant. Furnaces is probably too dense and daunting to change that, but with Flood – who’s had the occasional production success with U2 and Depeche Mode – manning the controls, it’s a unified, ambitious album that aligns contemporary touchpoints (Foals, The Horrors) with Harcourt’s own uncompromising worldview.

The World Is On Fire, Antarctica and Last Of Your Kind (a shadowy cousin of Coldplay’s crowd-pleasers) are big music, while Dionysus flicks between the respite and the rage of an artist who can’t quite settle. Furnaces is hard work at times, but at least half the album makes the effort worth it.