In the four years since Danish duo Murder’s last full length, the over-looked and under-rated Stockholm Syndrome, the band have done some growing up. In 2008, when Stockholm Syndrome saw its release in all territories outside of their native Denmark, Murder were about to embark upon their biggest tour yet, a tour which would conclude in them being personally invited by Tindersticks’ Stuart Staples to open for them on their own European dates. The incarnation of Murder demonstrated on Stockholm Syndrome was still raw, still unstable, unable to settle upon a distinct sound or identity. While largely drawing from the same acoustic palate throughout, there was no sense of a united front, and the album’s overall impact suffered from a lack of continuity. If they learnt anything from the consistently consistent Tindersticks, it’s that being certain of your own sound can be one of the most valuable weapons a band can possess.

So when lead singer Jacob Bellens sings on ‘Picker of Cotton’ (a track first heard exclusively on TLOBF last year) that “the many different faces I’ve been showing so far / Are nothing but attempts to prove a point”, it sounds like that point might well have been proven, to himself at least. While he continues to switch persona readily from song to song, adopting several different narrative voices, the dominant theme that emerges to tie the album together is, in a half-expected twist, one of unstable identity.

On Gospel of Man, faces become a symbol for identity and its ever-shifting status; on ‘No Room for Mistakes’ Bellens recalls “many different names on many faces,” which he later reveals were “all the same but different stages”. It’s a cathartic moment on the album and one of it’s more personal, as Bellens describes an identity crisis brought about from a conflict between science and religion. The narrator claims that he is “begging for a logical and scientific explanation / for every strange phenomenon that I have seen but failed to understand” but professes in the chorus that he is “getting what I want for Christmas / for I have always been a man of faith.” The juxtaposition of the two stances and the way the chorus repeats this line seems indicative of a man attempting to reassure himself of his faith as much as anything else. I don’t know whether Bellens himself is a “man of faith”, but something about this track suggests to me that he either is or was: it’s as brilliant and honest a portrayal of the uncertainties and contradictions of religious identity in the modern world I’ve heard since Sufjan’s ‘Casimir Pulaski Day’.

It’s not all heavy themes and lyrically dense discussions on modernity. The album’s middle section has some let-up, the nursery-rhyme melody of ‘Excelsior’ in particular providing some mild relief, even if it does threaten to return Murder to the mercurial ways of Stockholm Syndrome, sounding not quite like anything else on this album. Bellens can’t quite give up his “theme for the day”, though, as he croons his way through the line “the moon is very far / It doesn’t matter who you are / But I’ll tell you if you really want to know.” Preceding track ‘Aquaduct’ bounces along on a rhythmic skiffle-esque chord sequence and ‘Ember Song’ opens with an uncharacteristic synthesised drum beat, both lend the record some much-needed levity. Sadly their melodies aren’t as strong nor their lyrics as interesting as what surrounds them.

Drawing upon the same wells of inspiration as Will Oldham, this is a record the Bonnie “Prince” himself could be proud of. If Murder at times lack the emotional impact of Oldham, it’s perhaps because Oldham seems to sing at all times as himself, his openness and rawness leaves little to the imagination, while Murder demand much more of their listeners, adopting the faces of a host of lost and lonely characters, preferring to drop cryptic riddles (“I do not work with cars, I do not know the way to Mars”…?) sooner than the emotional A-bombs of Oldham. It’d be a shame if we saw another four year gap between Gospel of Man and its sequel. Having taken so long to settle on this sound, I hope it’s one they’re comfortable with. It should be.