ADAM Granduciel is not an artist who subscribes to the view that to banish imperfection is to destroy expression. He drove himself beyond his limits to make 2014’s Lost In The Dream, the first album by the Philadelphia band he not just leads, but defines, after his split with long-time collaborator Kurt Vile.

In the process, he drove himself virtually round the bend. Channelling the likes of Springsteen, Don Henley, Tom Petty and Neil Young into your own brand of drive-time Americana might sound relatively simple, given the scope that such influences offer, but it left Granduciel a nervous wreck.

Wherever it took him, though, he must have learned something. Because A Deeper Understanding has the sharpness that comes from perfectionism, but also the lithe nature of an album made by a man who’s realised that easing up doesn’t mean giving up. The result is a piece of work that lives up to its name, with its vulnerable insights and the world-weariness of its themes countered by the impact and the sheen of its sound.

This is an excellent modern indie-rock record, where tracks regularly break the five-minute mark yet avoid feeling overblown or indulgent, and which could have been made for radio play without ever sounding like that was the intention.

It seamlessly ducks between the brilliantly-paced atmospherics of Up All Night – with a pulsing backbeat ever so slightly reminiscent of Big Love by Fleetwood Mac – Holding On, In Chains and Nothing To Find and the soul-searching of Strangest Thing (which resembles Foreigner, only a much, much, much better Foreigner), Pain and You Don’t Have To Go.

It’s big music with the lightest, most easily-digestible texture, occupying a different, richer, more gleaming sonic universe to anything The War On Drugs have ever visited before.

A need for control should defy expansiveness, but on A Deeper Understanding, Granduciel blends these two contrasting approaches to impressive, often outstanding, effect. The only concern now for this particularly intense musician is how he follows this up.