For all their own skill and charm, Sky Larkin have nearly ended up being defined by the people they associate with. Publicly running these past three years or so with diary entry maximalists Los Campesinos!, guitar pedal mangling yelpers Johnny Foreigner and fight-pop noiseniks Dananananaykroyd, it’s hard to grasp their particular indie cult scene selling point. They have a female singer-guitarist (rare enough in British alt-rock at the moment, granted). They sound a bit like US college rock of the early to mid 90s. The drummer grimaces a lot and occasionally breaks cymbals. Erm…

Clearly, that’s not wholly fair. Not that TLOBF’s review entirely agreed, but in this corner at least last year’s debut album The Golden Spike was an unshowy marvel, and as with that album they’ve headed to the Seattle studio of John Goodmanson to let him oversee Kaleide. As well as producing obvious influences Sleater-Kinney, Goodmanson also oversaw – them again – Los Campesinos!’ We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed and Romance Is Boring. In the same way that under his watching brief that band moved from collapsing excitable indie kids into something much darker, here, Goodmanson, albeit not as forcefully, thickens up The Golden Spike‘s punchy guitars and roughshod melodies into something that while sounding more honed and able doesn’t sacrifice what they’re good at, rather reinforces it with extra heavy material. Katie Harkin’s voice is more nuanced than before, capable of subtle switching from casual sweetness to come-on emotive. Everything around her seems, more often than not, poised for take off. Witness ‘Spooktacular’, a beefy coruscation that reminds a little of the great lost Seafood, speeding through with what seems a renewed sense of purpose until a point where the guitars and bass sound could get no more huge.

Maybe the reason they don’t hit everyone immediately is they tend to write songs that insinuate and blossom into their full potential on the third or fourth pass, when the sort of lyrics that seem oblique up until then click into place and the twisty, stop-start nature of the guitar becomes more apparent. The optimistic jagged stomp of ‘Tiny Heist’ twists itself tightly round TLOBF’s new best friend Nestor Matthews’ bustling drums, pulling around Douglas Adams’ forceful bass with a wrongfooting minimal mid-song breakdown. ‘Landlocked’ equals Tubelord to the power of Pavement. Single ‘Still Windmills’ uses the non-moving energy-giving buildings as a metaphor for human possibility, managing to get away with the couplet “I know there’s a precipice, not saying it’s a piece of piss”. They can do some just as interesting things without guitar, mind you. While they’ve always used the Korg in their more unsettling moments, here its form allows them to do something different. Throbbing keyboard and decorative piano settles around a plaintive, emotionally charged vocal on ‘Anjelica Houston’ and it’s only afterwards you realise the whole song had allowed itself to be built around one intriguing line. ‘Year Dot’ meanwhile rides on organ, something almost danceable and criss-crossing multitracked vocals atop ending up in a gang chant of what passes for the song’s intriguingly dark chorus line, “one pile of bones so they know we were friends”.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t end up as the all-out statement of intent it could have been. Having headed off with such determination it suffers from a noticeable quality slump in the final third where, while not entirely bad, the songs and production seem less inspired and drag a bit until the surprisingly effective closing reinvention of former freebie ‘Smarts’. Slightly underwhelming in its previous incarnation, the ‘Shh version’ comprises Harkin, echoing guitar and low electronic looped pulses, allowing her to bring a kind of resigned sympathy to the story.

So will Kaleide turn Sky Larkin from mini-scene also-rans (that sounds harsh, I know, but others around them have a greater public persona) into a proper force? There’s a lot worse, and a lot less likeable, bands it could happen to, and at its peak it’s an imaginative, tensed up record, never neglecting the lyrics or melodies but being able to twist them into intelligent, fascinating shapes while still within the angularly tight power trio formation. In a nutshell it’s the same Sky Larkin you’ve always known, only smarter for the experience and beefier for the development. If it’s not perfect, it’s the ideal step up.