What has really changed since 2014? Ignoring the geopolitical fiasco du jour, the abandonment of a continent and a steady slide into disarray and irrelevance, the UK is still going to be okay, right? Right? Well, ease your minds: the newly returned Sea Kings are back after a decade away with their long-awaited second album of lyrical oddities and chirpy alt-rock melodicism!

The first half of Fear Is All Around has the easygoing arrangements of Teenage Fanclub by the boatload, some gorgeous guitarwork from Nick Kelly that seems to meander far from centre (‘With Heavyweights’, the title track) and just a hint at the subtle experimental touches to come (the canned percussion/reverb of ‘The Bevin Boy’, the extended bridge of ‘With Heavyweights’).

Although ‘Cardinal Sin’ starts like an edgeless Belle & Sebastian song circa 1996 (“All the boys said you…were pious/started a riot/at the seminary you looked extraordinary/a vision of Mary”) that brings to mind Sylvia Plath’s fig tree analogy, it’s in the back half where the literary allusions seem to take hold. ‘Crematoria Dostoevsky’ has a long, dreamlike narrative but doesn’t really stick the nihilistic landing (and the rhyme scheme takes a battering). ‘The Judge’ does better by with-holding information and creating a little mystery. The eponymous lawman from Blood Meridian is invoked in the way he “judges you with a stare” and his dancing (though this judge is more life-affirming than in the book). But otherwise there’s a splurging list of French writers to hammer home the literary bent with all the subtlety of Lloyd Cole with a thesaurus.

‘In the Depths of Despair’ is a vignette that proceeds exactly as you’d expect (abandonment, booze, death), but the offhand details keep it weird: “I fought in a war/it didn’t do us any good,” hinting at the atmosphere of middle-aged divorce that ‘With Heavyweights’ also supports: “a pain inside/every time I hear your name.” ‘What Will Come To Me?’ wins for the most nonsensical line when the Dutch girl dies in the sanatorium (more Magic Mountain than One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) but the overall vibe is reinforced in the closing ‘Pimlico’ when the lo-fi Decemberists shanty returns to technicolour in time for “our children to howl at the moon.”

And this is not intended as snark – if I had a lyric sheet this would be the sort of album I could spend hours with, trying to figure out what the hell Brian Canning is on about, like Taylor Swift for the receding hairline set.

After a few songs you might have this album pegged as serviceably catchy Scottish rock, but just a little digging under the surface reveals all sorts of wee beasties (see: the unhealthy obsessions of ‘The Bevin Boy’ – not sure what conscripted wartime coal miners have to do with stalking tendencies, but I’m keen to find out). Spend a little time with The Sea Kings and there are treasures to be found. Let’s hope it’s not another decade before the next trip down the rabbit hole.