IN MANY ways, the third studio album from Public Service Broadcasting is identical to the previous two.

Atmospheric melodies? Check. Clips from historic factual films? Check. Seamless melding of historical social document and 21st century music? Check.

Emotional, moving and all-round excellent? Check, check and check.

Perhaps it’s over-simplifying things to describe PSB as a couple of blokes playing prog rock over public information recordings, but at the end of the day, that’s what they are.

It’s done in such a way, however, to ensure you’re hearing a story, learning and discovering elements of the past while being entertained by music of the present, and how that’s done is a far more complicated thing to explain.

Every Valley focuses on the coal mining communities of Welsh villages in the 20th Century, starting in its heyday and chronicling its eventual decline, as the industry became mechanised, jobs were lost, pits closed, and communities were eviscerated.

Stylistically, it’s not a million miles from the Second World War-themed Inform - Educate - Entertain, with stiff-upper-lipped Brits talking about Spitfires replaced by passionate Welshmen talking about the importance of coal, and the future of the industry.

The Pit mixes this with music not dissimilar to Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice work, while The People Will Always Need Coal is an optimistic piece similar to Cliff Martinez’s Drive soundtrack.

This album sees welcome guest vocals from James Dean Bradfield on the solid Turn No More, and Camera Obscura’s Tracyanne Campbell on the excellent Progress - a track which works brilliantly not just through its refrain, but also with the juxtaposition of its positive and upbeat message and the knowledge that progress was the very thing which killed the mining industry.

For the strikes and pit closures, the music takes a more techno-inspired style, while the documentary clips get sadder, the tone more sombre, before penultimate track Mother Of The Village features older, former miners looking back at the strikes and battles, over a slow, simple rhythm, before Take Me Home wraps up the album with a moving performance by the Beaufort Male Choir.

In short? Absolutely stunning.