OPENING with the melodic Bones, Josh Record sets out the stall for his debut album as an uplifting and moving collection.

With echoes of Snow Patrol and Bastille, Record’s style is slow-burning, driving songs, heavy on piano and deep, bass drums, with high melodies over them as tracks build to a crescendo in less than five minutes. The excellent Pictures In The Dark is worthy of both of the above bands, with a catchy chorus and the music dropped out in all the right places, while Alaska creates an intimate yet epic soundscape, with vocals whispered like a cold wind over sparse guitar before drums and the chorus kick in.

For Your Love has been given radio airplay by national stations, with its high chorus and melancholy feeling, and new single Wide Awake is exactly the sort of track that will get him noticed in the charts this year, thanks to a big harmonic singalong chorus and gentle, basic verses, but it’s the less obvious tracks that will keep you listening after the album has dropped out of the top 100.