Are you ready to be heartbroken? Little May are here to help you through the blues

Singer Hannah Field and singing guitarists Liz Drummond and Annie Hamilton created a sizeable buzz with their self-titled five track EP last year and in the process they attracted the attention of The National’s Aaron Dessner no less, who handles the production duties here with no small degree of aplomb. For The Company sees them deploying storytelling to brilliant effect to paint pictures of loves’ vagaries, offering glimmers of hope and redemption, only to hit the ground with a resounding thwack by the records end.

The opener “Cicadas” is named after one of the world's ugliest insects but the sound of the song, all gently picked guitars underscored with subtle strings, couldn’t be more different to its insect namesake, where Hannah Field’s voice evokes the hesitant yet beguiling croon of Emilie Nicolas. The sense that unrequited love is something one is never quite cured of makes its first appearance, with Field pondering "Why are you on my mind again?" Yet by the close, the love in question remains very much unfinished business with the line "I don’t ever want to leave your side".

“Seven Hours” continues the theme of waiting and patience, opening with the line “You said I’m all you ever needed but you don’t want me all the time”. The light touch of the guitars and the bright melodies sound optimistic rather than forlorn, and as with “Cicadas”, its closing line ("You’re still here) speaks of persistence in attempting to get past loves obstacles.

Yet when the stories get sadder, such as on “Chemicals” with its starkly raw words on dealing with loss, "So I drink away the last thing on my mind", love's complications get more intricate. Amidst the bluesy chords of the chorus the words are impossibly sad - "But these strangers know you better now" - and like First Aid Kit’s tear-jerking “Long Time Ago”, it’s a song that’s in the depression stage of the five stages of grief.

On “Bow and Arrow” the mood of troubled love is chillingly realised. It’s certainly their most epic sounding song, brooding and intense and with its sombre, funeral-like march feel, it has the stately pace of Dessner’s alma mater The National, with a frustrated sadness at its heart ("Don’t act like this is our last touch. Again").

The happy(ish) ending to a story of a broken heart is acceptance and moving on, and the closing “The Shine Is Brighter At Night” is a fitting denouement to the songs of frustration and let down that precede it. Fields’ opening line "Rest my eyes, I don’t want to see you, rest my brain, I don’t want to know" draws a line in the sand. Given that they recorded most of the album in a converted church, fittingly it sounds like a hymn and moves beyond the raw hurt of a song like Sharon Van Etten’s “Your Love Is Killing Me." Its tale is a retrospective look at the havoc a relationship can wreak, but somehow it manages to find a sense of solace, albeit a bittersweet one.

Writing songs about relationships and heartbreak is a tricky beast, as haven’t such themes been articulated a gazillion times already? Yes, but with a compelling musical and lyrical narrative, such stories can be told over and over. With For The Company, Little May have added another worthy entrant to 2015's albums of modern blues and, unlike the relationships that inhabit its songs, it gets better with each visit.