Eight Houses is a remarkable offering of minimalistic, achingly beautiful blues-rock, delivered with the energy of Dylan the Rabbit after a particularly “heavy” weekend.

Jessica Larrabee’s vocals skip playfully between PJ Harvey and Bobby Gentry, with a twist on the theme of a modern day Billie Holiday.

Owl is an alluringly addictive chilled track, a lazy picked guitar part is interspersed with a creeping brass refrain suitable for a cartoon horror character.

Both Sides is about as rocky as this album gets, the pace doesn’t shift out of second gear but this doesn’t preclude the use of some powerful slide guitar chords, Larrabee’s voice bursting from the speakers with a presence which will resonate with fans of Southampton’s Band of Skulls.

Radiance is a sublime heart-wrenching offering, with little more than a metronomic beat and basal piano backing Larrabee’s striking vocalization of emotions.

The album does venture into the semi-psychedelic, Greasy Grass builds Spacemen 3-like from two chords and a pounding beat to a trance-inducing crescendo of distorted guitar and sax wanderings.

This is the White Stripes on tranquilisers, Jack supplanted by an enchantingly soulful yet tortured songstress, delivering laid back earthy-blues rock best consumed late at night.

Out October 13.

7.5/10

Stewart Dennis