(Haldern Pop Recordings, out now on CD, vinyl and limited edition vinyl)

In keeping with their debut LP released last year, The Slow Show’s second album Dream Darling is a dazzling piece of minimalist orchestration which provokes the maximum emotive response from its audience. Through sparse but atmospherically substantial arrangements, the band build swelling melodies that immerse and envelop the listener, with Rob Goodwin’s croaky vocals the icing on this cake of sublime storytelling.

Despite the fact that they explicitly distance themselves from the title of The National song with which they share their name, The Slow Show bear undeniable characteristics in common with the Cincinnati five-piece. Even though Goodwin’s vocals bear more resemblance to Nathan Nicholson of The Boxer Rebellion, Kurt Wagner of Lambchop or even the recently departed Leonard Cohen than Matt Berninger, the melancholic texture of his crooning is comparable and both bands excel at crafting beautifully weaved tapestries of sound which bubble and build towards emotional crescendos.

In Goodwin’s own words, the songs on this album have been shaped by “the typical life-changing experiences that men in their late thirties and forties experience”. The uninitiated should expect lashings of heartbreak and hurt, laced with a wry acceptance of life’s slings and arrows. It’s soulful, sad and deeply moving, guaranteed to strike chords with anyone who’s been at the sticky end of a breakup.

However, it’s this relentlessly downbeat aesthetic which holds the band back from really grabbing hold of its audience by the balls. The Slow Show pride themselves on drawing the listener in with sparse compositions and liberal uses of silence, and though this is effective in overlaying their work with meaning and sentiment, it becomes somewhat stifling in its entirety. The fixation on life’s hardships and heartbreak threatens to drown the album in its own tears, with only Ordinary Lives featuring a full backing drumbeat or any semblance of vitality and vim.

That’s not to say there aren’t other stand-out tracks. In Hurts, Goodwin shows glimpses of his true vocal range if only he were willing to let it off the leash, while the duets on this and Last Man Standing with fellow Mancunian artist Kesha Ellis provide a welcome relief to the relentless drone of his baritone elsewhere on the album and the masculine viewpoint it embodies. Meanwhile, the album closer Brick is wonderfully touching tribute composed mostly of instrumentals and harmonic falsettos.

However, it does feel almost as if the album never really gets out of second gear, and with such obvious talent on display in the musical arrangements behind the songs, this seems like a crying shame. A few rabble-rousing tracks in amongst all of the overbearing pathos would elevate this record into best-of-the-year category and the band into the realm of stand-up-and-take-notice great, rather than sit-down-and-stare-into-the-bottom-of-your-glass good.